Luck, be my lady tonight

Utrecht

2011-09-02T17:58:00.000+05:30

City of dreams. Fount of poetic imagination. Beauty that can inspire divine music. None of these describes Utrecht, which is like any other Dutch city. It sounds like "uterus" and looks like one. No, it's actually quite nice and boasts of being the fourth largest city in the Netherlands, a feat that would impress the unambitious. But I was not there to take in the city's sights and sounds (nobody does that any more) but to take in some alcohol with the man with the aquiline nose.

Sandeep has followed me here as well. He has been sent here for a few months and, by the looks of it, will spend the rest of his life here. To drown his sorrow over this matter, I, of noble heart, take along with me one Glen Moray, a single malt of fitting ordinariness. Wikipedia says Glen Moray "offerings have performed modestly at international Spirit ratings competitions". Goes well with the overall mediocrity of the occasion. I offer him a glass of the whisky, he takes a swig of it and pronounces it smooth. I offer him my hand in friendship, he takes a swig of it and pronounces it smooth. I am appalled.

Our conversations have always revolved around how much our parents struggled for us and how much we haven't repaid them for it. And it soon takes the form of a poker game. He starts off with "My father used to work in some factory". I counter easily with "My father looked at factories and wasn't even allowed inside". He parries deftly with "My parents could not afford milk, on some occasions", which makes me think for a while before I come up with "My father had to take his younger brother along with him to school, and take a loan to get his sisters married, which drowned him in debt for the best years of his youth". But I know he's been waiting for something like this, the swine. He unleashes his trump card, "My father even had to do physical labour". I am stumped, bowled, leg-before-wicket, but I can't let him see it. I mustn't have a tell. So, after looking here and there for inspiration, I submit for the court's inspection "My mother was shot in the leg in the '71 war and she hobbled along on her wounded leg and jumped into a tank and secured vast swathes of Bangladesh for us and then grew a whole new leg in place of the old one. Jai Hind!" and open the window and fly away. There's no point in sticking around after you've won.

We speak to Harish and Arvind, a friends' "Hangout". Arvind is looking delighted like a man who's just had someone sit on his face. Harish is looking delighted like he is that someone. Both inform us that things are normal and LokPal is evil. We are slightly inebriated by this point and promise to vote for Ambedkar in the next elections. I remember relentlessly questioning Arvind about the face-sitting, based on some picture.

This was a couple of weeks ago. I made for Utrecht again last week, this time for free booze and food being proffered by the great Nagaraj (Sandeep's friend, colleague and part-time lover). In my attempts to help them in the cooking by chopping onions, I was set upon by an inhabitant of Andhra Pradesh and his Fu Manchu beard. I am not the best chopper of onions in the world, so he commented kindly on my plight, "'Shall I chop? This fellow is STRUGGLING so much. Businayana Bagepalli Communistu yegenistu Rayalaseema!" That was the gist of it, anyway. I immediately judged him to be one of those guys who prides themselves on being good at something, despite being good at it. Like those idiots with good cameras who put up those infernal pictures of bees, bathrooms, begonias and balls ("High exposure", "f12", "800 metres away"). Fine, I bow to your expertise, stop being anal about it (and then I'll stop being anal about you).

Anyway, Onion Boy was not done yet. He discarded my weapon of choice (a small knife) and picked up a machete. His hand was the size of my thigh and he chopped down powerfully on the hapless onion, mincing it ruthlessly. I felt ruth for the vegetable and it, heeding my feelings, made him cry as he was cutting it. But he wasn't satisfied with just doing the job well, he needed to expound on the best techniques for performing the miracle we had witnessed. For every epic palaver, there needs to be someone who will fan the flames of the palaverer(?)'s ego. Sandeep jumped at the opportunity to do this and asked AbbayiRayudu "How might one best cut onions, O Divine Cook? I saw you 'air-cutting' onions as you said 'cutting onions' and knew right away you were gifted in the art of cookery. Teach us!" And AbbayiRayudu spoke at length for over two hours, as my rotting corpse slowly turned to dust. "Chop the onions lengthwise. Hold the onions with your nails facing the blade. Your onion-holding hand must be perpendicular to the knife, essentially. Then, start cutting and moving the holding hand backwards. Even if your knife is faster than your holding hand, the blade will slide-- haan? -- slide off your nails and you will not hurt yourself. Super, no? I have been cooking since I was 18. In Andhra Pradesh, we play cards for money and you can make tens of lakhs in one night. I visited Y S Rajashekhara Reddy."

OK, those were the things he said over several hours, not in one concise paragraph. Fuck him, I hope he gets amnesia and forgets what onions are. Nice guy otherwise, though.

Cricket, then. Despite being Indians abroad for several years, the bunch of people that Sandeep knows in Utrecht are not complete assholes. They do have an inflated opinion of their own cricketing abilities, however. This is evidenced by the attention paid to (what else?) 'technique' and 'strategy' in a tennis-ball game played in a small park surrounded by slush and trees. Field placement, "That off-cutter you bowled last week was amazing, man!", all these were on show. However, neither that, nor the rain that came down eventually, can conceal the fact that a good time was had by all.

So, in summary, it doesn't matter how you chop the onions as long as you chop them correctly for the occasion. And Andhra Pradesh should stop sending its most epic bladers to annoy me.

Sharma does Holland

2011-02-16T07:15:00.001+05:30

On a fine morning in 1911, it can be asserted, Srinivasa Sarma (as he was then known) stepped into the world and decided this was no place to be tall. So he adamantly refused to grow beyond a modest five feet and strode the dust-paved streets of Thandarai, TN, within this small frame of his. Srinivasa Sarma's mother died young (by today's standards) and his father was left a widower. His father, Vedachalaiah, was no small man, though. A man of notorious determination, Vedachalaiah went on to break up an intended marriage and take the bride for himself after settling certain matters with the bride's father. As a result, Srinivasa Sarma was caught in an embarrassing situation where his stepmother was younger than himself. Both stepmother and stepson were cognizant of this delicate state of affairs and did not speak to each other unless absolutely necessary, for many years. Other casualties resulting from this strange predicament were the birth of Srinivasa Sarma's stepbrothers and stepsisters and the yawning chasm of an age difference between them and him.

TSS, as he was to be known, soldiered on in Thandarai. Madras was 120 km away and it was there that he made his fortune. Such fortune as a modest education and means would allow. The lands back in Thandarai did provide him some financial succour, however, and it is surmised that he purchased his house on Tilak Street, Madras, with monies sourced therefrom. And what a house it was too! Huge rooms and palatial halls filled the house. A bathroom in that mansion was to prove to be bigger than many houses in future Chennai. Unfortunate women hired to serve as domestic help would often marvel at how big the house was and how fortunate TSS and family were to live there.

TSS married, and married again. He took after his father in this respect. His first wife, Raji, passed away before they had produced little Sarmas to dot the landscape, victim to some disease which was to prove laughably curable in the future. Undaunted, and no doubt learning from his father, TSS married again, this time a robust and kind lady named Girija. As though to make up for the opportunities lost by the untimely departure of Raji, TSS and Girija produced five children, two boys, three girls and no hermaphrodites. The children grew up reasonably happily and graduated respectably, securing jobs or spouses or both. It was then that tragedy struck.

TSS Sarma invested his provident fund and gratuity money in some (as it turned out, ill-advised) venture. This was because it was run by trusted friends and relatives and he had known them for some time now. However, as history has shown repeatedly, in matters of money and the heart, trust no one. TSS Sarma, who had by now somehow become Sharma, did not seem to have heeded history's lessons and was promptly defrauded of his retirement savings by his nears and dears. The family was forced to move out of the bungalow on Tilak Street (they had to sell the house to pay off loans and credit) and move into a flat on nearby Thanikachalam road. As they left Tilak Street, Srinivasa Sarma hugged all the pillars of the house and kissed its walls, bidding his beloved home, where his children had played and grown up, goodbye.

His eldest son married in 1981 and failed to produce an heir even when the marriage was as far gone as 1984. Therefore, TSS, troubled, advised his daughter-in-law to read the Sundara Kaanda from the Ramayana because "somebody told me that helps get you a male child". This random piece of advice was adhered to by said daughter-in-law more because she was charmed by his innocence than because she believed reading helped in furthering the human race. These matters aside, in 1985, TSS, locally known as Kullaiyer on account of his imposing frame, was informed by his eldest son, Raghu, that a boy had indeed been borne by his daughter-in-law, in Bangalore. Kullaiyer was thrilled; this was the third grandchild in the family, the first born to his daughter seven years ago and the second born to another daughter five years ago, and this one would carry on the family name. The Sharmas had survived yet another generation through him, he rejoiced. This was still February; Raghu informed him he would bring the boy home in a couple of weeks, after both mother and child had recuperated a bit. In March, Srinivasa Sarma, TSS, Kullaiyer died.

Srinivasa Sarma did not set eyes on his third grandchild; his third, and subsequent, grandchildren did not see him in the flesh either. Tales recollected by parents and relatives, photographs, books collected by him, scrawlings inside those books, these remain testament to his memory. A man of great fortitude, those who knew him say, with a remarkable sense of humour. Glasses as thick as Jayaprakash Narayan's. A man who was, incredibly enough, well known to the Kanchi Swamiji of the time (since that seer wielded no political influence like that of his successor, this acquaintance would prove of no material benefit to TSS). A man who spoke as much as his eldest son, Raghu, was quiet. If he was Vito and Raghu was Michael and Michael was the eldest son instead of Sonny and the family did nothing criminal and instead lost loads of money, this would be the Corleone family.

Kullaiyer would have been happy to know that his son did well for himself, in the coming years. He would have been thrilled to know that Raghu went on to achieve, from humble beginnings, high positions in his company by dint of sheer hard work and determination. Perhaps Raghu would have switched companies and risen higher, had Kullaiyer been alive; the man perhaps would have prodded him repeatedly and said he was worth more than what this company valued him. Srinivasa Sarma would also have been thrilled when his first grandchild went to the US for studies; although he would perhaps have been less thrilled at the news that that grandchild had applied for citizenship thereof. He would no doubt have been ecstatic at the weddings of his eldest grandchildren, and the birth of his great grandchild. He would also have been a hundred years old, this year.

This year, when his eldest son visits his son in Holland. Raghunandan Sharma, son of Thandarai's Srinivasa Sharma nee Sarma, will fly abroad for his first time. Srinivasa Sarma could have waited a bit to see all this. Allow me to address my grandfather, whom I have never seen but heard so much about, as the locals probably would have: Kullaiyere, innum irunthirukkalaamillai? Pottunu poyitteengaLe, enna avvaLo urgent? Paiyyan poyi paerana paakkaraan, neengaLum paatthirukkalaam. Sari, angirunthae paarungo.

[Kullaiyer, could have stuck around, couldn't you? Just upped and left, didn't you? What was your hurry? Son's going to see your grandson, you could've gone too. Fine, see it from wherever you are.]

/senti

A beginning

2011-01-23T07:11:00.002+05:30

Happy New Year, merry Christmas, happy DeepavaLi, Id Mubarak and Yo Buddha to everyone. I wish now because all those things are safely behind us. Days of great rejoicing are always to be viewed with suspicion ("With great rejoicing comes great doubt"). I had a very pleasant year. Thanks to tremendous fiscal strain borne by my parents, I was able to visit a couple of countries and look down condescendingly upon their 'culture' and 'cuisine.' My travels have brought me, after a fashion, to Holland now. Very nice people, pretty terrible food. Except for the pastries, those are nice.

The Netherlands seems to consist of genuinely nice people who, unlike those bastards in France and Germany (who have historically shared a symbiotic relationship), speak fluent English and don't get affronted if you don't speak their language after being here for a whole eight minutes. Amsterdam is a great place in which to spend a day. Not much more, I'm afraid, unless you're really into art and can spend days plodding through museum after museum. I thought I could do that but have recently discovered that I get, how do you say it, bored. But it's got that big city feel; I'm a sucker for that feel. Just being in a place with lots of noise, pollution and people jostling past each other without paying attention to anything makes me feel happy and safe.

I visited the pointless country of Belgium last month and was put up with by the good graces of Sandeep, who has now become a dick and made his blog invite-only. The posts there, as I recall, were not of a scandalous variety so I don't understand the fuss. Anyway, we made train journeys to a couple of places and, as we passed through desolate stations amidst snow-swept landscapes, try as we might not to, we could only think of people stripped to their bare essentials, shivering in 20-below-zero temperatures and digging with shovels while desperately trying to stay alive and eventually being thrown into furnaces. Whenever we passed a station, we'd see cattle cars and people being shepherded into them ruthlessly by men in grey suits. This was because we are very sensitive people and also because stereotyping is fun. I don't understand why Germans today are so sensitive about discussing that entire era. Surely, discussing it out in the open is a better catharsis than bottling it all up and letting it explode, one day, on a man with darker skin (this applies also to bodily fluids) ? India has quite a few shameful incidents in its past (admittedly none quite as horrific as the Holocaust) but we don't fight shy of talking about them. The same goes for America, England, Japan and other countries. Except Germany, whose head-of-state publicly says multiculturalism has failed. Quite the prima donna, aren't you, Germany? Most Germans alive today didn't even have anything to do with all that, so why not talk about it and make fun of the cowards who went along with it and pity those who could do nothing about it but look on in horror? Laughing in the face of horror eases some of the pain. As Sandeep said about the Germans (in a quotable quote), "you destroyed half the world, the least you can do is take a joke about it."

Holland is a nice place, historical betrayal of teenage girls apart. I visited the Anne Frank museum for a second time because Harish couldn't bear to go through it alone, could he? Harish, there's nothing wrong in crying, those days really were that horrible, no, there have not been many children named Adolf after 1945. The language is nice as well, pleasant-sounding and with a lot of near-Arabic sounds. Dutch grammar is structured a lot like Kannada's (or Sanskrit's, for that matter). It seems like the language was constructed to be a bridge between the harsh and difficult German and the simpler and more acceptable English.

A minor ~~shameless plea for attention~~ announcement. The honourable Arun, Harish and I were in discussion some months ago at the roadside gaaDi of one Mr. Gangadhar in Jayanagar. I had just finished reading a book by Mr. A N Murthy Rao and Arun was enlightening us of the many correspondences between that man and his friends and family (compiled in another book of his). Talk soon veered into the forms of literature the great writers of Kannada have tried their hand at. "Practically everything" seemed to be the conclusion and we were ready to leave it at that and go home, having complained to Mr. Gangadhar yet again about rising prices and receiving the same "En boss maaDodu?" reply. I piped up with a question to Arun: what about science fiction? Has there been any writing in Kannada in that realm? Arun thought for a moment and said no. I accepted Arun's word as gospel truth, since he is highly knowledgeable in most matters. However, his answer surprised me, since there had been a great many highly talented men and women writing in Kannada. Someone should do something about it, I thought, and that stayed in the back of my mind for a while. It was only recently that I got down to trying my hand at it myself. All this blade to tell you that I'm going to try and write science fiction in Kannada. Short stories, mainly, but I ramble even in haikus, so these will be longer than usual. It may well fail and I may end up with egg-on-face but it seems like fun and I'm giving it a shot (the same attitude is advisable while entering relationships. Or Kerala).

This is where I'll do it. The URL is extremely lame wordplay. Satya miti ("The limit of truth") as also Satyam iti ("Thus is the truth"). Yeah, I know, I'm slapping myself in disbelief but this is the best I could motivate myself to do. The first part of the first short story is up now. Please read it and let me know what you think. I'll try and put up a new part every week, like a sitcom. Or sooner, if I have decent stuff before that. Life does not allow for timetables.

Update: My aunt (in a response swift enough to alarm most photons) brought to notice the efforts of Prof. Rajashekhar Bhoosnurmath in the direction of science-fiction in Kannada. Apparently, the good man has been persevering in this regard since the '60s. My aunt supplies me with this link for more information. Murthy, in a comment, also speaks of the same Prof. RaBhoo and mentions that the man is from the university of Dharwad. So yeah, all my hopes of creating history of some sort have been dashed. Damn you, RaBhoo.

The Karnataka sangeeta ('Carnatic' music) fanboy clash

2010-12-14T03:48:00.003+05:30

Fanboys rule the Internet. Irrespective (or 'irregardless,' as some people bafflingly insist on saying) of what site you visit, if there is a space open for viewer comments, there will soon be an escalation into full-scale name-calling, slandering and virtual fisticuffs. The general pattern is --> "I think so-and-so or such-and-such is right." "No." "What do you mean, no?" "You're wrong, is what I mean." "You cant just say no. Back up your opinion." "I don't have to. It's so obvious you don't know what you're talking about." "Was your mother raped by retarded bears in the woods?" "Yeah, one of them was your dad! Ha!" "(pause) You realise you just insulted yourself rather than me, don't you?" "(pause) You're a gay Nazi who loves Muslim suicide bombers." (sudden entry of third person) "Ah, Godwin's law." "Who the fuck are you?" "Yeah, all-knowing bastard. But you are still a gay Nazi, dude." "Heck, maybe I am. Friends?" "Friends."

No? That's not how these things go? Anyway, it's Thing vs Thing or Celebrity vs Celebrity debates that fanboys get most passionate about. On things like corruption, terrorism, greed etc., the responses are usually apathy or a cliched cynicism ("This is India and this is how it will always be." "Our politicians are the worst, man!" "Hindu fanatics are ruining the nation." "I pity the nation that silences Savita Bhabhi."). But something like A R Rahman vs Ilayaraja, Apple vs PC, India vs Pakistan, Congress vs BJP, Team Jacob vs Team Edward (that shit is still around) gets people participating like crazy. In all this, I noticed there isn't a decent fight going on in the grand, gentle old world of South Indian classical music. I like to think that if the great composers of yore had been around today, their respective fanboys would have been almost as vociferous as these other ones. Almost. Our folks are gentle.

(The song that Tyagaraja uploads is 'Endaro mahanubhavulu,' rendered by Dr. M. Balamuralikrishna.)

It's a bit long, sorry about that.

Philosophy, die

2010-11-22T19:34:00.008+05:30

I haven't watched "The social network" yet. I don't want to, either. The pleasures of creating a website or writing a program are inherent and private, not shareable or communicable to those who haven't tried it themselves. You cannot, I believe, make a movie as interesting as "The Godfather" or "Taxi driver" out of the story of Gmail. Maybe you could, but you would have to be Scorsese/Kubrick/Coppola/Leone to do that. And even then, the bland truth would not interest a wide audience that stereotypes computer scientists and software engineers. I've often wondered how cricketers would feel if someone taped me at my job for a whole day and played it to them. I know I would watch with interest as the events of a typical day unfolded and nod with identification at scrum meeting jokes and people discovering cataclysmic flaws in their design three days before release, but Sachin would probably doze off fifteen minutes into the movie. It is unfortunately the curse of technology that the most interesting movies about it involve its misuse (Metropolis, The island of Dr. Moreau, 2001 : A space odyssey, The Terminator I and II, Endhiran ad infinitum). Even Iron Man is kind of about misuse, although Tony Stark does claim he privatised world peace successfully.

The reason I wrote that boring paragraph above is this review by Zadie Smith of the film. I agree with her spot-on assessment as she says "From the opening scene it’s clear that this is a movie about 2.0 people made by 1.0 people (Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher, forty-nine and forty-eight respectively)" [Unnecessary italics mine]. From what she says, it seems that this film, despite being a David Fincher offering, falls into the same geek-cliche traps as practically every other geek film. Mark Zuckerberg is capable of creating, or stealing, something as massive as Facebook, so he must be "overprogrammed, furious, lonely." This is in accordance with the dictums of dramatic storytelling as put down by Aeschylus: 'He who typeth furiously hath not friends nor kin but hath only the company of the sweat of his brow and his enemies multifarious.' The programmer is socially awkward and inept. The software type is also introverted and not at all given to displays of emotion (OK, maybe Crazyfuck Ballmer is a bad example. But the point is, it does happen in our world). (S)He is altogether disconnected from the 'real' world and 'real' people and has no comprehension of the repercussions of her/his actions/inventions. The only 'real world' object that sparks any interest in the geek is money and there is no end to the extent to which said geek will go to get most, if not all, of it. In the process, love is sacrificed and love interests are either driven away or killed. Smith says the movie fulfills all these banalities very satisfactorily.

And then goes on to make observations as dumb and pointless as those she criticised in the movie. A superficial one first. She says "No doubt the filmmakers considered this option, but you can see their dilemma: how to convey the pleasure of programming—if such a pleasure exists—in a way that is both cinematic and comprehensible?" Why would she assume no pleasure exists in programming? Programmers are not as esoteric a group today as they were in 1968. Every day, hundreds of thousands of people go through the agony and the ecstasy of running their code. Watching it compile and waiting with bated breath for the outcome (if any) is a build-up filled with almost as much excitement and anticipation as the climax of "The good, the bad and the ugly." Even if we leave aside such, some would say, grandiose comparisons, the same pleasure exists in programming as in any other job well done. The doubtful "if such a pleasure exists" is unnecessary.

The rest of her review is devoted to a subject much beloved of luddites -- the philosophical and ethical implications of technology. Smith quotes from Jaron Lanier's book "You are not a gadget" and argues that we are all somehow being tricked into believing that websites represent us wholely and accurately (Lanier is the only software expert she defers to, in the giant review. He represents the whole software industry.). Our online personas are, we apparently begin to believe, our real selves. To wit:

'We know that having two thousand Facebook friends is not what it looks like. We know that we are using the software to behave in a certain, superficial way toward others. We know what we are doing “in” the software. But do we know, are we alert to, what the software is doing to us? Is it possible that what is communicated between people online “eventually becomes their truth”?'

This is a patently ridiculous point. Almost everyone who is on Facebook or any other website that involves interaction learns quickly enough not to trust online personas. Cases involving paedophiles stalking fourteen-year olds online and preying on them subsequently have alerted us to the dangers of interactive websites. Unnecessary bullshit like ChatRoulette have alerted us to the dangers of random penises being flashed at us. That's why nobody puts everything about themselves online. Atleast, not truthfully. As Gregory House says, "everybody lies."

The software does nothing to me, or anybody using it. If you're wasting hours on end going through Facebook pages and profiles, it proves more that you're an idiot than it does that the software is some philosophical and ethical nightmare. The purpose of 'social networks' is the same as the Usenet groups of yore: bring together people with similar interests and let them share information (photos, videos, memes, whatever). Attributing anything higher, nobler, more sinister to them is purely alarmist. I apologise for sounding like Eric Schmidt here ("If you're doing something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.") but privacy of information is not in the scope of this point that she raises.

Smith says her apprehension that the whole Internet might become 'falsely jolly, fake-friendly, self-promoting, slickly disingenuous' like Facebook was why she quit Facebook after just two months on it. There are people like that too, so while she's at it, she might as well quit humanity. She also says, again quoting the sole expert in the world, Lanier, that pack mentality is encouraged, and made more efficient, by the social networks we use. We apparently see what other people are reading, watching, eating and do exactly the same. Of course, individuality is exempt here. The mere act of going online and joining something like MySpace or Facebook strips you of judgement, character and taste and makes you a drooling idiot who watches celebrity wedding programmes all day.

I submit another example of pure philosophical psychobabble:

'I am dreaming of a Web that caters to a kind of person who no longer exists. A private person, a person who is a mystery, to the world and—which is more important—to herself. Person as mystery: this idea of personhood is certainly changing, perhaps has already changed. Because I find I agree with Zuckerberg: selves evolve.'

Make your own LAN and sit in it. Play Minesweeper and Solitaire and send yourself an email and then wonder who it's from. Person as mystery! How the hell do people come up with this bullshit? What kind of a horrible Web would it be if everyone and everything was a mystery? If no one shared anything and remained private. It might just be this sort of idiot thinking that leads to proprietary software and DRM and greedy music corporations trying to muscle in on FM radio stations to extort royalty for playing new songs. 'I dream of a private network of music lovers. With music as mystery and song as puzzle. Where I try and discover for myself what the artist is trying to say. And feel.' I hate feel.

Right after that, there's this:

'Of course, Zuckerberg insists selves simply do this by themselves and the technology he and others have created has no influence upon the process. That is for techies and philosophers to debate (ideally techie-philosophers, like Jaron Lanier).'

Not on many occasions will we hear this but Zuckerberg is right. Selves evolve by and because of themselves and their social environment. Technology is an aid to human progress and does not supplant any stage of it. Atleast, not yet (because who knows when the singularity will be achieved and we will become semi-machines and can finally bid goodbye to loose motions). And no, there is no debate to be had by techies and philosophers. Fuck philosophers, they're smug, boring, pointless people who expend much time, energy, money and paper on things that are little else but common sense. Exactly what has philosophy achieved that could not have been learnt by us through pure common sense and a little reflection thereupon? All those books by Heidegger, Hegel, Mill, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Sartre and other assholes can be efficiently summed up like the Pythons did with the meaning of life:

"Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations."

That's it, short and practical and quite commonsense. I find the 'philosophical discomfort' that Smith feels with Facebook is as foolish as that felt by people who feared printing when it was invented ("Oh noes! Now our memoriez wil becum poorer!") or that photography would consume your soul or that television would lead to depression and alienation. This alienation thing is another concern of Smith. You can be alienated anywhere. As humans, our greatest invention, society, is also our greatest falling. You can be alone in a crowd anywhere, be it online or offline. Did you see Taxi driver? Do you think Travis Bickle would send a friendship request to Betsy, poke her, have the poke rejected and go on a murderous rampage solely because of that? (Hint: no). Our tastes, attitudes, personalities, stance on the music(?) of Justin Bieber and myriad other 'human variables' come together to determine how we interact with others.

Every accusation that Smith hurls at the Internet and social networks is true of almost every mass medium we have. But we cannot abandon them. Carrying her logic forward, can we afford to take down the Internet because someone somewhere 'dreams of a more private Web' ? Dictated by our attitudes, we use technology as a means to an end ("Hey, I just used my iPhone to find and drown that guy in sewage"), not an end in itself. Fearing Facebook because you're afraid your personal, human weaknesses and inner demons might make you a fool online is a bit lame. As with almost every bloody thing in the world, moderation is the key.

It's this kind of philosophical nonsense that will come in the way of great progress. Not human ingenuity, not non-availability of funds but this kind of pointless discourse on 'ethical aspects' which are not even ethical aspects. When we invent teleportation and time travel, some idiot with a philosophy degree is going to stand in the way. Pay no heed, future generations. Give them a book deal and a spot on a 24-hour news channel and plough on. We have galaxies to explore, diseases to cure, tyrants to kill. We can't afford to waste time on this (although, if you've already invented time travel, wasting a little time to shoot philosophers in the face doesn't matter and is definitely worth it).

If you've made it this far, I apologise for the length of the post. Something about Zadie Smith's attitude towards the web and software irked me and I cobbled this together. I don't think I've put my point and indignation across well, probably kept some of it to myself. Doesn't matter, you probably also like the idea of a 'person as mystery.'

The seventh part itch -- Harry Potter

2010-11-21T06:44:00.001+05:30

Seldom have books been translated into good movies that live up to readers' expectations. More seldom have the movies been better than the books themselves (The Godfather. Leaving out those overlong stories of Johnny Fontane, Nino Valenti, Lucy Mancini and that Doctor Jules were the best decisions made by someone adapting the novel to the screen. What makes it more creditable is that Mario Puzo was part of the writing team. If you agree to chop out massive chunks of your own material, you're either an amazingly generous writer or someone undergoing a circumcision.). But when the book itself is not the best in a series, I suspect it must become easier to make a good movie out of it and satisfy people's expectations. So it was that David Yates had a headstart while making the Deathly Hallows.

The final book of the series ended everything neatly, all ends wrapped up and no loopholes-leaving-open-the-possibility-of-a-sequel of the Super Mario Bros or "Pirates of the Caribbean : At World's End" type. And David Yates does a pretty good job of bringing that to celluloid. I didn't understand, while reading the book, why so huge a part of it had to have our intrepid trio out in the wild. Rowling had such an awful lot to throw into this one book, yet she chose to put in this 'on the road' narrative. The search for Godric Gryffindor's sword and the identity of the mysterious R.A.B and the locket that he takes from that cave could have happened in some other, less wayward manner. But whatever.

The thing is, Yates has done a good job of making that less rambling. There's a road movie feel to that segment of the movie, which is almost three-fourths of it. And it feels a lot like Jim Jarmusch's "Down by law," with the crushing silences and long fadeouts and the eerie suddenness of events. Bits of it look like "The Book of Eli" (which looked nice and tasted awful).

What's with the shaky camerawork? Why is Harry Potter suddenly the place to experiment with your cinema verite / Cloverfield / random documentary type of cinematography? Who wants realism in this fantasy world? That was what annoyed me the most about this movie (little else actually annoyed me but this one stuck out). Eduardo Serra, the camera guy, apparently did this deliberately, as he and the director "wanted to experiment." Well, go do LSD or something, stop this nonsense with handheld cameras in important scenes. There's this one where minions of the Ministry of Magic and Harry-Hermione-Ron have a battle of spells. Couldn't see a damn thing, the camera was shaking all over the place. Yeah, having the cameraman running along with actors and stunt doubles 'to capture the realism and feel of the battle' was a great idea, idiot. I'll quote from Maddox here:
"Why does every battle scene in the universe have to have a shaky cam? Just whose view point are we seeing this from anyway? Wow, the cam is shaky, I feel like I'm right in the battle, looking through the eyes of some idiot who can't fight, yet he still can't focus on an object for more than a few seconds. Hey assholes, here's an idea: how about the perspective of someone who got stabbed in the face? The camera would just sit there staring up at the blue sky as an occasional limb would come flying across, or someone would trip over his body. That would be tits."

I kept thinking about this valid point as that scene unfolded and as the idiot behind the camera shook it violently.

That apart, HP7 -- Part I is a pleasant ride. The actors are up to scratch, not being required to do much. I mean, they do a competent job (more than competent, since they're all 20 or so and not annoying. Yet.). And, joy, John Williams doesn't do the music for this one too. Fine, he's given us some iconic themes over the years but he overwhelms movies with the same generic humongous goulash of violins. You can tell when it's a John Williams score. If it's a children's movie he's composing for, watch out for the cliched music. ET, Home Alone, Harry Potter, all have this similar-sounding buildup-crescendo-deflation scheme going on. Where's the man who scored for Schindler's List? Let him out for a change. Speaking of letting things out, I didn't pee once during this 2-hour long movie. Proud of myself.

That's about it, really. It's worth a watch. I've decided to decide that some movies aren't worth a watch without even watching them. You can tell from the trailers and promo pictures and actors that they're going to be deeper piles of shit than a stack of DMK ministers in a Chilean mine. Guzaarish, any movie with Lara Dutta in it, almost all movies of Ranbir Kapoor, a Hindi movie set in a foreign city, movies with more than four words in the title (Roop ki rani choron ka raja, Jal bin machli nritya bin bijli, Ram Gopal Varma ki Aag, Sanjay Leela Bhansali ke films etc). Speaking of Bhansali, I'm reminded of a comment my friend Rishi made. "You want to see what an Alzheimer's patient really is like? Watch Mohanlal in Thanmathra. Not Amitabh Bachchan in Black, I think he had pneumonia in that. Who shakes so violently?"

Mohammed draws himself; confuses protesters

2010-05-23T22:43:00.004+05:30

In a strange turn of events, the prophet of the Islamic faith, Mohammed, has submitted a drawing of himself to the 'Everybody draw Mohammed' Facebook page and confused the hell out of protesters everywhere, AP reports. The drawing, copies of which were hand-delivered to the offices of major newspapers around the world, depicts the stick figure of a man holding a cup. Critics and scholars everywhere are divided over the meaning and implications of this drawing while protesters are standing around in confusion.

"We can't draw Mohammed, but can Mohammed draw himself?" asked leading protester Fazl ul Hasan. "I can't think for myself, I'm waiting for old, derelict fools to issue orders about whether or not this means we shouldn't protest. But it's a bit like that mountain-Mohammed thing, isn't it?"

"Except....it kind of isn't" concluded he, confused.

Protesters worldwide were stopped in their tracks as news broke of this queer phenomenon. In a statement later released to reporters, Mohammed revealed that the drawing was a self-portrait of himself drinking coffee in the morning. "I don't know, I just felt like drawing myself, you know, and putting an end to all this bullshit going on. I know it's no Rembrandt but it's a start."

Mohammed further clarified that there was no ban anywhere in the Quran on drawing pictures of him, that people had been drawing his pictures for ages now and that this was his method of protest against the strangling of free speech by 'wacky braindead conservatives' [sic]. "I mean, I admit that bomb-in-the-turban thing in Jyllands-Posten was a bit provocative. But there are democratic ways of protesting that stuff, not a blanket ban of drawing and killing film directors and setting things on fire. And claiming God said that about pictures! That would be a silly thing for Allah to say. 'If you kill one person, you kill all of humanity. And if you save one person, you save all of humanity. And screw crayons.' I'd blink twice at that" said the statement.

"The point is, He didn't say any such thing" continued the statement. Mohammed is also said to have 'Liked' the Facebook page and unjoined the community 'Pakistan.'

Stunned conservatives across the world have huddled together to decide on their next course of action while liberals have creamed their jeans in excitement. Meanwhile, NDTV interviewed it's token Muslim, Javed Akhtar, about this development, to which the poet and ace lyricist eloquently replied "I don't even fucking care! I'm an atheist." NDTV's Dr. Prannoy Roy then went on to put Akhtar in the dock for further issues related to Muslims and interrogated him for three hours, as though Akhtar were the only representative for the entire community, which Dr. Roy no doubt viewed as monolithic. Akhtar, Shah Rukh Khan, Irrfan Khan and other prominent Indian celebrities who happen to be Muslims have been reported to have been told to be on standby by NDTV for purposes of condemning any silly protest, violent outburst or terrorist attack that might ensue in the future and clarifying that Islam did not condone it, ignoring the fact that this implied that NDTV thought it did.

In the Middle-East, aged Wahhabi conservatives in the Saudi Arabian kingdom have issued a fatwa against everyone who draws pictures of the Prophet. When the ironic implication of this was pointed out to them, they reportedly also issued a fatwa against irony, sarcasm, deadpan and other forms of humour. Former Uttar Pradesh minister Haji Yaqoob Qureishi meanwhile announced a bounty on the head of all the people who had drawn pictures for the Facebook page. He also added "Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia," stunning Sam Peckinpah fans.

At press time, the prophet Mohammed was reportedly turned away from a mosque in Mecca because he modestly refused to recite the kalma.

Red Dead Redemption

2010-05-19T04:37:00.001+05:30

In February-March of this year, I wrote a little paper about a then-upcoming game, analysing the trailer and appraising its prospects upon release. The focus was on what we could glean from the trailers and what we estimated the game's sales would be. Amongst other things, I said it would be a genre-defining game and could well launch a new demographic for the publishing company to exploit. That game was Rockstar's "Red Dead Redemption" and, now that the game has been released, quite a few reviews seem to agree with me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/arts/television/17dead.html?pagewanted=1

http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/109/1090125p1.html

http://www.oxm.co.uk/article.php?id=19537

Feels good to be supported by the New York Times and IGN (who even give it a 9.7/10 overall). At the time of writing that essay, Rockstar hadn't released as many trailers as they have now, so I've mentioned only the ones that were on their website then.

The sad part is, I have no money to buy a PS3 or an XBox and this delicious-looking game hasn't come out for the PC yet. So I'm like a film critic. I've reviewed a creation of somebody else but I haven't experienced the stuff myself yet.

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces

2010-05-18T16:33:00.002+05:30

Inexplicable is the fact that they cancelled this show. I was checking Cartoon Network's lineup of shows today and was deeply saddened at what they're showing kids these days. What did the children do to deserve this? "Courage, the cowardly dog" is still on, for some reason; so are "Ed, Edd n Eddy" AND "Sheep in the big city." I hated those stupid shows with all my heart, even as a kid. I am, however, glad that they have a couple of Batman shows and Iron Man and the X-Men (which is more Wolverine-centric, sadly. I mean, there's only so much you can do with an all-Adamantium body. Jean Grey looks better in the movies); I'm also glad they got rid of Tiny TV (they have, haven't they? Didn't find it in the listings). I tried watching it a couple of years ago and couldn't get through more than an episode of it. Bob the builder has nothing going for him except that theme song which Obama plagiarised. And don't get me started on Oswald the octopus and that asshole Noddy.

Cartoon Network, till about the early '00s, had great shows. The mid-'90s were especially great, with Jonny Quest, Swat Kats (second coolest theme music after Jonny Quest), the old Scooby Doo and Super Adventures. I liked Jonny quest especially because I thought, when the Matrix came out, that the movie had copied the cartoon (I didn't know then that both had been inspired by William Gibson novels).

Which brings me to the earlier gripe. Why did they cancel both these wonderful shows -- Jonny Quest and Swat Kats? Apparently, critics compared the new Jonny Quest 'unfavourably' to the original '60s show. I think this is just a case of critics hanging on to their childhood memories and imagining them as something more wonderful than they really were (something I might be doing with this post myself). I watched the '60s episodes of Jonny Quest too. The newer ones seem way better. For one, the music is much better. Also, the introduction of Questworld somehow enriched the show, adding that (pardon the long-windedness) post-modern funk to it. Although the combat scenes in the Questworld seem bad by today's standards, for a kid in the '90s, they were the epitome of cool. Who wouldn't want to escape into a psychic world and do battle there? And it was a good idea to switch focus from Dr. Quest and Race to the kids. It didn't make sense to me that the '60s show was called Jonny Quest but was more focussed on the titular hero's father and the father's friend. The updated version grew the kids up a bit, making them the right age (around 16. Hey, if you can believe the pre-teens of Enid Blyton can thwart evil kidnappers & smugglers and Harry Potter can defeat the greatest Dark Wizard of all time, then 16 year-olds can comfortably defeat an evil genius like Jeremiah Surd) so that they could participate in the adventures too, instead of just getting caught up in messes and waiting to be rescued by the adults.

My favourite episode from The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest is this one:-

Expedition to Khumbu

Something about the opening credits still gets me all excited. Look how cool it is, the canyon of green Matrix lines with the 1984-like video panels here and there. Sweet. And that episode -- if you're any fan of twist endings, you'll love this one.

The Swat Kats -- now, there was a cool show. It had every qualification to be cool. Good guys do the right thing but are dismissed for it. Then, by dint of their own ingenuity and hard work, they become, for lack of a better word, superheroes. They build a superplane from junk in a scrapyard, for God's sake! They live in a secret underground lair, something traditionally done by supervillains. And they had such cool enemies too. Dark Kat, the Pastmaster, Dr. Viper, the Red Lynx (a Red Baron parody. Loved this episode - Part 1 Part 2 Part 3). And they managed to sneak in a bit of innuendo too. T-Bone says, when Commander Feral's daughter spurns him yet another time, "You are one stubborn she-kat!"

Astonishingly good theme music. It's still cool, managing to age really well. Which is the same case with the Real Adventures of Jonny Quest theme song too. Both these themes were composed over a decade and a half ago and they still sound good. Which is more than you can say for other cartoons. The '60s Jonny Quest theme sounds so dated (probably because it is).

As to why "The Swat Kats" was cancelled...it's not quite clear. But "the show's violence, its inability to move merchandise and a general growing disinterest have been cited as reasons," apparently. Stupid bastards, cancelling a great show just because some idiotic kids wouldn't buy a toy. And what violence? It's no more violent than Tom and Jerry. And kids are more likely to copy, if they're that stupid, the actions in Tom and Jerry and Scooby Doo than the Swat Kats. Because it's next to impossible to build a plane from scrap parts when you're ten. In all, they made just 26 episodes of this phenomenon. It's quite the Firefly of the cartoon world. I still have hope that some day, someone sensible will make a movie of it. Look what Jon Favreau did with Iron Man (and not Iron Man2. Although it was a good ride, it simply wasn't as cool as Iron Man. And Rajiv Masand said it right, Robert Downey Jr. is the only superhero who is more fun outside his super suit than in it).

In summation, Cartoon Network, stop being dicks. Bring back the Swat Kats. Bring back The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest. Be blessed.

Unrelated P.S:- I watched this Tamil movie called "Tamizh PaDam" (lit: Tamil movie). If you've watched Tamil movies of the last two-three decades, you'll enjoy this spoof.

Of coincidences

2010-05-11T06:42:00.016+05:30

It might just be me, but I've noticed some similarities between songs that you wouldn't normally think would sound similar. It would not seem plausible, that is, that the composer of the latter song would be inspired by the former song. For instance, there's a great song called 'Badi dheere jali raina' sung by Rekha Bharadwaj (and composed by Vishal Bharadwaj) in Abhishek Chaubey's "Ishqiya." To me, it sounds a bit like an amazing M. RangaRao song sung brilliantly by Dr. Rajkumar in "Hosa beLaku." But that, to quote the Dude, is just, like, my opinion, man. Check it out for yourselves.

See what I mean? I'm not saying the great Vishal Bharadwaj did what Anu Malik and Anand-Milind did. It might just be the two songs being in the same raga that's swayed me. Then again, this might also be a case of Nabokovian cryptomnesia.

I never thought I'd say Nabokovian cryptomnesia. Ever.

Update:- As commenter penguin points out, "Kanneera dhaare" is an 'absolute and complete adaptation' of a Jagjit Singh ghazal from his 1979 album, "Come alive." "Hosa beLaku" was released in 1982 and 3 years is ample time to rip off a song. So, I feel a little silly for putting that up as the possible inspiration for "BaDi dheere jali." The brilliant ghazal in question:- Koi paas aaya savere savere.

Another instance that springs to mind, though even more far-fetched than the previous one, is yet another Hosa beLaku song (I was listening to all the songs from that movie. Really good soundtrack). This time, it's Malayalam composer Ravindran who's been caught by my roving, myopic eye. Particularly, his composition from 'His Highness Abdullah' called "Tu badi masha Allah kahe Abdullah":-

Again, I might be seeing similarities just because I want to. By the way, 'His Highness Abdullah' also has a killer soundtrack. Seek out the songs on Youtube if you haven't heard them already. Also, if you can get your hands on the original Malayalam cassette, you will be privileged to hear Mohanlal say "His Highness Abdullah." Believe me, it's a treat. The movie itself is good, despite the visuals of that last song.

Speaking of that movie, 'Pramadavanam veenDum' seems to have begotten Aaptamitra's "KaNa kaNadi Shaarade."

These aren't instances of plagiarism. Maybe coincidences or cases of a part of a song inspiring another, entirely different song; vague resemblances, perhaps. Let's call it 'vagiarism.' It's not how the music director of the Kannada film 'Mona Lisa' (Vallisha Sandeep?) blatantly ripped off the titular bit of "Staying alive" and added that to the film's title song. Check that shit out, it's in the first interlude. Staying alive, of all the songs. That's among the stupidest songs ever sung. It's also not how Pradeep Sarkar borrowed almost the entire plot from K Balachander's 'Arangetram' and made 'Laaga chunari mein daag' or how B R Chopra made minor changes to the plot of B R Panthulu's Kannada classic 'Schoolmaster' and produced 'Baghban.' By the way, it says five people wrote Baghban. "Hey, did you hear the one about how many writers it takes to rip off an old Kannada film...?"

No, these are just vague resemblances that trigger off dormant faultlines in my memory, I guess. I watched "Let the right one in" yesterday, after thinking of watching it for many months. The more amateur (like me) anime watchers among you will recall the amazing 'Elfenlied' series. This movie put me in mind of that anime. Here, Oskar, the normal, hapless young boy finds an incredibly powerful 'special friend' in the vampire girl Eli. In Elfenlied, Kohta is the powerless hero(?) who befriends the powerful Diclonius Nyu/Lucy. (Spoiler alert) At the end of "Let the right one in," Eli, the vampire girl, saves Oskar from the bullies after some messy bloodletting. In Elfenlied, Nyu confronts shitloads of soldiers and saves Kohta after shedding truckloads of blood. (Spoiler ends)

Come to think of it, that's kind of similar to "Akira" as well. Tetsuo goes crazy and becomes some sort of expanding organism. His best friend, Kaneda, 'saves' him from himself and -- maybe I am seeing too much into this stuff.

Iron Man 2 is good fun, though.

Update:- I really must be seeing too much into things. In the following scene, check out Dr. Rajkumar's acting and voice modulation (don't watch the whole scene, it's a bit blade. Just watch for a couple of minutes).

Doesn't it seem that Kamal Haasan does a similar job in 'Indiran Chandiran' as the evil mayor? Similar voice. Kamal might have been inspired by it, you never know.

Narasimha Yuddham 2.0

2010-04-02T10:26:00.001+05:30

You are all cordially invited to:

Alternate English version:

"Mindry.in presents"
"Arjun Sharma and Harish Kumar's"
"Nara-Simha Yuddham -- a love story"
"Directed by: Suneel Raghavendra"

By 'invited to,' we mean 'Please buy tickets and come to our play.' You may note the slightly enhanced ticket price, compared to last time. Well, we've gone a little high-end this time. There's an ace director at the helm and a good production crew. There is also a bunch of people doing publicity somewhere. Anyway, our business savvy is still at the same level as ABCL, so we're still only going to break even if we sell all the tickets. We're terrible at this.

"But we saw this last year. Why would we attend the same play, just on a different day?"

It's not the same one, for starters. Harish and I sat down, one day, and decided it wasn't good enough; so we wrote another half an hour's worth of content. And then we rearranged stuff and put strange things in and it's now become another play. So it won't be the same experience as last time, if you were there last time.

But I hate you. Why would I come to your play?

You will be glad to know that I play a very small role. We still have Harish very capably carrying out the role of Prime Minister in this new version but the role of Home Minister will be played by our very talented director Suneel Raghavendra. And he plays it a damned sight better than I did. (Wanderlust, you may note that he looks even more like an intellectual than I did. And that's even without glasses. And many thanks to you for plugging us on your blog.)

So, in summary, please be there. It will be fun. You might even end up meeting old friends whom you haven't seen in over a decade (such things happened last time).

Reap What You Saw

2010-03-10T01:24:00.009+05:30

[Update: Newer version of game available now at the same link.]

Hey, what does the title mean?

You may have noticed a link to "Death" on the blogroll on the side. That's me doing a little roleplay thing (in a non-creepy way). It's for a game I'm developing as part of a team here. Using our combined intellect and playing on the phrase "reap what you sow," we, a group of developers (and one artist), hit upon the name "Reap What You Saw" for our effort. You play as Death and you go around this little city massacring people. Don't worry, they're not nice people, they're vicious gangs. Thus, as you kill people, you are reaping their souls. You can join people's gangs or leave them. By joining a gang and killing sufficient numbers of another gang, you set off a war amongst the gangs. The goal is to be the last man (or being) standing and you may use these questionable means to achieve that.

That sounds great! Where oh where can I get it?!

Vista/Windows 7 version

XP version

Extract that zip file to some folder and run the EXE.

What do I get out of it?

Noth---a sense of having helped out someone by evaluating his work. That's good, right? Please?

OK, I've tried running it, but it gives me some stupid "side-by-side configuration" error

Er, we're trying to fix this one. But it seems to go away if you have Visual Studio 2008 installed on your machine. Try running it without VC++, but if it doesn't work, you can get it here.

Hey, wait a minute, I've seen this before...

You've seen similar stuff before. The top-down view is like the early GTA but that's all the similarity, I think.

So what're the controls? Come on, I can't wait much longer! I have a life.

OK OK, here they are:-

(W, S, A, D) for (Up, Down, Left, Right) movement
Left-click to shoot
R to reload
1 to 7 to switch between weapons (they're all guns, differing in rate of fire and range of bullets. Try them all.)
Tab to show which non-player character is following whom
T to toggle the gang-change panel.
Arrow keys (Up and Down) to navigate through the gang-change panel and Enter to join and leave gangs. Before you join a gang, you need to leave the gang you're in currently. You start off independent of gang loyalties, so you can join the first group you want to join directly.

Whoa, something doesn't work. This sucks. You suck.

Calm down, it's probably a small bug we can correct easily. If you could be kind enough to let me know what the problems are in the comments, I and my illustrious friends will remove them (the problems, not the comments).

So, in summary, please try it out and let me know what you think. Also head over to the other blog and spew venom on Death. I thank you in advance for your patience.

25

2010-02-11T23:35:00.002+05:30

It happened one night. I was born, handled roughly in the abdominal area and pressed into the hands of a mother kept unnecessarily in suspense as to the gender of her child. In the neighbourhood of the room where my mother had been put up, there was a nineteen year-old woman who had delivered a tiny girl child. This child was tiny compared to my gargantuan proportions (I weighed around 4.5 kilos at birth. They tied an iron cable to my feet and used powerful magnets to suck me out.); however, her birth was big news to her family. Her mother went swiftly mad and started screaming and kicking and scratching and nearly gouged the eyes out of the nurses. She had what is now recognised to be post-natal depression; in the purest medical terms of those days, it was called "batshit crazy." It was not so much the appearance of the child that drove her over the cliff, it was apparently the fact that she had given birth to another human being at the tender age of nineteen.

My father received the good news with equal measures of equanimity and delight. Outwardly, he needed to maintain the dignified facade of the male, the ever unruffled, the always-under-equipoise. Inwardly, he was probably saying "Holy shit, I have a son!" He was also thinking, I surmise, "Wait, this thing emits stuff, doesn't it? I'm going to have to clean all that up. That's it, I'm not having another one of these." He was not thinking ahead several years, when my sister would be born. But on that day, who could blame him for lack of foresight? His firstborn, scion, offspring, proud bearer of the admittedly dim family torch had arrived.

My paternal grandfather was informed of my entry into the world and he too was delighted. His delight did not last long, however, as he soon expired. Yes, no sooner did I step onto the stage than he exited, stage left. I think his patience lasted about 22 days after my birth. So my father was in this extremely weird situation. His forebear had ceased to be, his aftbear (so to speak) had ceased to not be.

My maternal grandparents were ecstatic as well. They were of a family which produced roughly 10000 girls for every boy, so this was quite a break from the dreary routine of shrieks, wails and periods. My maternal grandfather would spend many subsequent nights rocking me to sleep (even when I was eighteen years old and didn't particularly want to go to sleep), and many subsequent years being unfailingly on my side, no matter how wrong I was. My maternal grandmother has a difficult job. She is on the wrong side of her husband and my mother and my aunt, no matter what they're talking about. Yet she always wins, always gets her way. I envy this quality of hers.

My mother, the heroine of the hour, struggled for several months carrying this large lump around. She had checked herself into the hospital several days ago in anticipation of my arrival. Judging by the size of her belly, doctors expected a baby the size of a full-grown Marlon Brando to emerge any moment, so they admitted her. However, days passed into subsequent days and, like a good movie directed by Subhash Ghai , I refused to appear. My mother said "Fuck this, I'm going home" and actually left. She had to hurry back the next day, however, when I made threatening moves inside her. Finally, with the doctor extremely unwilling to pay an anaesthesiologist, my mother delivered a large, bigheaded baby in a fully conscious state. The baby was swiftly carted away for further examination. It was made to run around in a tiny wheel and generate electricity, swim in a small trough till it developed gills and scales and eventually bathed in boiling hot water till it screamed blue murder. This was the same water in which all the needles in the hospital were sterilised, those being pre-disposable syringe days. In all this while, my mother was ignorant of the sex of her child. Nurses kept asking her "Do you want a boy or a girl?" and she kept replying "I don't mind either. Just give me the goddamn baby." She said it was half an hour before she discovered what it was that she had had. She was delighted and put me up for adoption. Her plans were inadvertently foiled by my father when, on the outlook to switch me for another less intimidating child in the hospital, he actually took me back with him without recognising me. My mother has never forgiven him for this.

And that was 25 years ago. The ride has been good.

Index man goes on shooting spree

2010-02-02T03:59:00.002+05:30

In a shocking incident, a man who writes the index pages for all the books at a popular publishing house went on a shooting spree yesterday after a mistake of his was pointed out to him by a reader writing in. Maharajapuram Basu D., employed at Picanydor Publishing for nearly seventeen years, went on the rampage after a letter from an alert reader pointed out that he had not included simple words like 'is' and 'and' while putting things like 'isDigit' into a book about the 'C' programming language.

"Do you know how boring it is to write down the bloody index???" roared Basu D., from behind his padlocked cell. "I have to go through every bloody page and document every word that's more than two letters long. And this dude writes in that I've left out 'out' and 'and' but not 'NOT.' I can't leave out 'NOT' because the chapter was about logical NOT!!" The emotional tirade moved reporters and designers of logic gates but failed to reduce his prison sentence.

Basu D was suspected to have been suffering from depression ever since he celebrated fifteen years as an indexer. His mental state was further exacerbated when he was forced to re-index popular author Chetan Bhagat's books. He took eighteen days off, saying there was no need since there were no big words in any of the books. However, his publishers insisted that he work on the latest one, which was about people of different states marrying and had words like 'Andal,' 'Sylvester' and 'Syzygy,' and Basu D flipped out, to make the following joke:

What do you call a drummer with great magnitude of sound but no direction?
Scalars Ulrich.

The stonethrowing which followed alienated Basu further and bottled up his seething anger. He is said to have begun writing cyclic indices/indexes (On Index page 3: "isthmus, 33." On page 33, "isthmus, Index page 3"), random indexes ("vagabond, 684" in a 122-page book), contextually unhelpful hints ("zeitgeist, Dictionary") and outright lies ("halitosis, Pratibha Patil") in subsequent publications. Quietly seeking to express his anger, he would also write indexes in varying base systems, sometimes also combining number systems and base systems. For the unnecessarily popular Twilight series, he wrote an index system in Base 8 in Roman numerals, greatly confusing the series' already dimwitted following and angering hundreds of kids who erroneously thought it cool to be 'Goth' and soulfully depressed.

When alert reader and habitual writer of Letters-to-the-Editor in all major newspapers M Sharada Prasad wrote in with his comment about 'is' in the popular 'Let us once again C' series, Basu D reportedly made for the nearest gun (first looking up 'gun' in the index of the company's inventory sheets) and started shooting. However, since the gun he had picked up was a dart gun, after failing to observe that under 'gun' were listed varieties 'dart,' 'machine,' 'Uzi submachine' and 'water,' four people were inflicted with skin rashes and nine others were mildly annoyed by the rampage. Basu was soon overpowered and handed over to police, who are said to be trying to extract a confession out of him in regards to the yet unsolved Aarushi Talwar murder case, which they are now hoping to pin on somebody or the other.

Mile sur mera what the -?

2010-01-31T05:53:00.005+05:30

(After much belligerent prodding by Nisha Subramanian)

Since everyone must have (and that "must" is an order, not a supposition) read the epic, thorough, kvlt and, as he would say himself, amaklamatically awesome review by Grandmaster Krish Ashok, I'm not going to do the same. Instead, I will just pick on a few points that peeved me more than necessary.

Amitabh Bachchan: Isn't he overdoing that affected poetry narration thing? Anyway, his rendition of the iconic opening lines begins startlingly like "Neela aasmaaaaaaaan so gayaaaaaa." And the accompanying music. They've made it sound like that Bally Sagoo remix of "Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein." Not entirely but somewhat. And those glasses. My eyes hurt looking at them.

(Amitabh Bachchan -- above foreground -- peering at the core of the earth through our soul, with eyewear stolen from the Hubble telescope.)

Aishwarya Rai:- Yes, she figures on most people's list of pet peeves since she keeps saying "And-um..," "Becuz-um..," "So-um..," and "But-um." She tries to come across, in her interviews, as a female Brando (but about a thousand times lighter) who puts her heart and soul into her every performance. And it is heartwrenching to see her come up so short in these roles because all those movies suck. However, in this video, she scared me witless.

There I was, enjoying a rare good moment in this video -- a pleasant line sung by Shreya Ghoshal (Ghoshal also makes an appearance, zooming along on top of a double decker bus) -- when Rai appeared suddenly. Instantly, I was wary, watching whether her lips would form "Becuz-um" or any of those other words. However, and I don't know if it's just me, Rai's cheekbones seemed to be drifting away from her face. The sight terrified me.

OK fine, maybe you can't make out much here; but go watch the video. You'll see what I mean. Either she's trying to pull a Brando on us by speaking with a grape in her cheeks, or the Bionic Woman's cheeks have finally declared their independence after agonising years of flashing smile after plastic smile and started moving towards someone else's face. Possibly P V Narasimha Rao's.

(Above -- P V Narasimha Rao, minutes after hearing a joke. The "Before" picture looks the same too. He needs some cheeks.)

Then, Abhishek Bachchan appears and they reassure us they are still lovey-dovey by means of the powerful gesture of hand-holding. Abhishek will soon start resembling Javagal Srinath, judging by his moustache-less look.

("Why am I not in this video? I helped take our country to the World Cup finals once....How many Filmfare awards have I won? What--")

Also, in every relentless family promotion opportunity of theirs, they seem to miss out poor Jaya Bachchan. Which is a pity because she's quite a fine actress.

Deepika Padukone: Her presence isn't that bad a thing, certainly not. Since there was no one else in the video from Karnataka, you could perhaps argue that she stood in for all of us. However, she sang in Hindi and then someone sprayed rain all over her face. She replaced her father in what could be called a 'Nobility vs nubility' tradeoff. My peeve is, she has just one expression, one stock expression, where she seems to peer interestedly at the viewer and smile, as though inspecting an amusing yet distant insect, or recognising a lump of faeces.

("Hey, a turd...no wait, that's 'Love aaj kal' ")

In a strange statement, in that picture above, the scroller reads " Sur' evoked strong patriotic feelings and became a national song." Maybe Padukone is laughing about that as she imagines how this video will turn out.

Sonu Nigam:

What's wrong with this guy? Dude, give it a rest, stop doing the Hariharan "Oh look, I can sing zany alapanas randomly" thing. That's terribly annoying, when singers overdo that at concerts. Yes, we get it, you are virtuosos, you have mastery over your voice and the art form. The skill lies in how judiciously you use it. Unless you're singing to your teacher in music class, the audience is not going to appreciate one hour of precarious ups-and-downs over the octaves before you get to a bloody song. Also, there's no real need to demonstrate your l33t skills in 30 seconds. People are not dying en masse, the world is not ending in 2012 (or 2021. Or 2102. Or any combination of those digits.) and your concerts and "Classically mild" albums are a better place to do this stuff (and you did that really well in that album too).

Sonu Nigam fell prey to this disease some time back. He fell prey to two diseases, in fact. Whenever he sings a Kannada song, have you noticed how he sings as though he's either asthmatic or having a tepid orgasm? That worked in 'Mungaaru maLe' and 'GaaLipaTa' but he's gone and done it in every song he sings. With the result that now, whenever he sings a romantic song, I have to go buy an inhaler before watching porn.

His part of the video is strange. Apart from the Medusa hairdo and the awkward crescendo beginning, he's surrounded by a bunch of people who seem to have gathered there thinking he was a girl.

Look at the picture. None of the people around Nigam are happy. They've just discovered that this girl with lustrous locks and mellifluous voice is a dude and they're angry. And they've hired big guns for revenge. Behind Nigam's left shoulder, that seems to be Mangal Pandey in a blue shirt.

Salman Khan: I suppose there's no need for further explanation but Khan threatens to bite off the hands of a poor girl standing behind him in his bit. Shooting endangered animals, running over homeless people, unleashing 'Har dil jo pyar karega' and 'Hum tumhare hain sanam' and 'Partner' and related junk on an unsuspecting populace and now showing intent to dismember a speech/hearing-impaired child -- Salman, is there no end to your list of troubles?

Once, I was travelling on a bus where they played 'Partner' and 'Hum tumhare hain sanam' back to back. I crashed the bus into a tree, shot an endangered animal and literally ran over a homeless person (who slapped me in return). And then I died.

Aamir Khan: I admire this man's ability to make amazing and atrocious movies with equal ease. I respect his ability to take craptastic movies and create box office history. I often wonder how someone who was in 'Sarfarosh,' 'Lagaan' and '1947 Earth' could also make 'Mela,' 'Raja Hindustani' and the DD documentary-type 'TZP.' I am flummoxed, however, by his outing here. He does the Ghulam 'Aati kya Khandala?' thing. It seems he's metaphorically propositioning little children. Then he does the whole "Jadoo hai, tera hi jaadu" from 'Ghulam' hand thing. To quote Woody Allen, I, I -- I don't know, it doesn't make sense!

Shah Rukh Khan: You don't have cancer. She's not your best friend, ya. No kambakht is drinking to do bardaasht. Why the hell, then, are you doing the music maestro hand thing?

Assorted star kids: Whatever.

There are good bits in this video. But they are so few, and the dumps taken on all that is good are so many, that you forget them as soon as you watch them. The blink-and-you-miss-and-miss-even-if-you-don't-blink appearances by Abhinav Bindra, Vijendra Kumar, Sania Nehwal, the perfunctory representation of the Armed Forces (a sort of Token Black), the ever delightful Zakir Hussain, the strange but brilliant continuum fingerboard of A R Rahman (loved it in "Rehna tu" and like it a lot here as well. Somebody could have accompanied him on the theremin.), the band dudes who play just after the Marathi Kulkarnis and again after Shah Rukh's atrocious bit (pardon my ignorance and please tell me who they are), these are the random good bits thrown in for good measure. Just so that it seems like the previous one. I admit that even the last video did not have an even representation of the various cross-sections of India's people. I suppose no video can have that satisfactorily (although Rahman's 'Vande mataram' and other Bharatbala videos do try sincerely). But making this one a film integration video rather than a national integration video is what makes people's livers catch in their throats.

The last one had its fair share of movie people too. But there were enough random people thrown in surreally to make us feel like it was about India, not just big stars. For instance, I don't know who the heck those people with Prakash Padukone were in the tiny Kannada bit of the original (which isn't fair. As Grandmaster -- Grand to friends -- points out in his, as usual, brilliant review of the original, Balamurali went on and on with the Tamil lines and they had to cut everyone else in the South down to size. Poor Kerala got just the elephant and its abnormally satisfied mahout.). I don't know those random guys (just before Kashmiri boatman) drinking tea and eating rocks (I assume). I don't know the Telugu guy who looked like he had passed the CA exams but was unable to pay the necessary bribes to get a gavarnamentu jaabu and therefore would spend his waking hours getting verbally abused by his wife, elder brother, father, mother, father-in-law, mother-in-law, other-in-laws and getting consoled only by aged grandmother Annapoorna (whose main dialogue seemed to be the blade beginning with -- "ChooDu babu, nuvvu chaala manchivaaDivi..." etc etc) and Shankarabharanam Shankara Shastry. I don't know any of the people getting out of the Calcutta metro (except Arun Lal, who looks at the camera, no doubt 'making a room for himself'). I don't know if Narendra Hirwani is actually a human Avatar sent here by the Na'avi in a clever reverse psychology move. But that was part of the appeal. That I shared this wonderful land with all these nice, regular, well/mal-adjusted, bizarre people and that we could all get along just fine. We were insanely different but we could not let that bother us and go about our business. We could forget that we were distinct, in times of need, and come together ("....right now, over me..."). We didn't know so many people in the country but, in the end, who the fuck cares whether you know them or not as long you're nice?

So to the makers of "Phir mile sur mera tumhara," we must say ek baar phir se milne ki koshish karo. Until then, "Thu, ond video maaDak baralla, boLi makkLa!" should suffice.

Despatches from Newcastle - II

2009-12-22T05:32:00.000+05:30

Dear Mother, and my dear fiancee,

Greetings once again from beyond the seas. Many events have transpired since I last wrote and it is meet that I regale you with accounts of these. Actually, I don't think you care and secretly wish that I had lost the ability to type. But wishes, horses, pigs, wings and all that.

The Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender people of Newcastle have something against fascism and they have formed a network (astonishingly called the LGBT anti-fascism network) to protest against it. Laudable sentiments indeed and they had a specific bone to pick with the BBC - allowing Nick Griffin on Question Time. Yes, people were exercising their freedom of speech to stop others from exercising theirs. Funny thing was, I saw the same guy leading this protest one week and leading another protest on behalf of the postal workers the next. He seems to be Generic Protest Guy around here and wears tight black trousers and vests. He carries no whip.

I made a trip to London last month and was given rooms by the kind Mr. Shreyas. The most interesting part of the visit was the Sherlock Holmes museum on, surprise, 221B, Baker Street. They have recreated the rooms exactly as per Conan Doyle's books and it's quite a labour of love. Then, we decided to visit the Brigade Road of London, Leicester square, when, horror of horrors, my phone went missing. It apparently escaped my pocket like pus escaping a wound and fell into the gap between seats on a public bus, and I got off oblivious. Several frantic calls to my phone later, the good driver answered and said yes, he would bring it around to the same stop if we would wait there. Actually, he had a heavy accent and I'm sort of making up most of what he said, but that seemed to be the gist (he might well have been singing something by Penaz Masani). But he did, he did bring my phone safely back to me. In London, where people are lost, a phone is found.

It was on the way back that I saw the other end of the human spectrum, that I beheld the bared-toothed-evil face of humanity. A crying infant. I was on an overnight bus back to Newcastle. I should have noticed the portentous omens when I encountered not one, not two but three fully grown Gulti men, and we had the secret conversation that would let a stranger into the fold:- "Vachchara? Poyara? Guevara." But my defenses were down after a pleasant trip and I sought to sleep instead of being on constant guard. That is when this creature began bawling. And it was no ordinary cry but one so bloodcurdling that it would curdle blood: "AWAAWAAWAAWAAWA!!!"

I reasoned with the child.

'Spawn of Satan, shut up.'

'AWAAWAAWAAWAAWA!!!'

Sensing defeat, I oxymoronically issued a stern plea to its mother.

'Bride of Beelzebub, I beseech you, besmother this blasted baby by means of thine breast.'

The damned woman could care no less, it seemed. All around, people were writhing in their seats due to this miserable wailing wastrel but it and its apathetic progenitor ignored it all and went about their business. I gave up trying to sleep and stared at the road intensely with bloodshot eyes.

Some projects have been completed now while others remain to be done next semester. As a child, I had expected, at the age of nearly-25, to be ruling my galactic empire and, by the click of a button on the armrest of my chair/throne, obtaining Icecream-On-Demand. Instead, I will still be shamelessly writing exams next month. So it goes.

No other exciting news from here, unless you count my ignominious slippage and fall on snow yesterday (no matter how many times you see it, it still is funny).

I hope you're taking of yourselves, despite my stern eye not hovering over you.

Yours,
Arjun

Slacker fired

2009-10-28T20:48:00.000+05:30

In an age where hard work and honesty are paying increasingly greater dividends, 26-year old software consultant Tukaram Namdeo was fired yesterday from his cushy job after he was found slacking off during working hours for over three days. The Mumbai-based engineer was severely reprimanded by his manager after he was found doing nothing and yet occupying his seat idly. The reason for Namdeo's behaviour is learned to be death.

"Inexcusable, really" muttered manager Vineet Goudapad, attracting many Google searches to this article with one fell stroke of a surname. "He was here on Tuesday and he just died on us that evening. And it was a Friday yesterday too and everyone's mood got spoiled because of this. Plus, it's not easy firing someone on a Friday. You think managers have fun doing this? Leaves a bad taste in the mouth."

"You don't know how hard it is," he added movingly.

Sources say Tukaram suffered death silently for three whole days before people found out he had left the land of the living. Close friend and colleague Madan Valgrind, with an even more improbable surname, said that he had often seen Tukaram in that final posture of his and therefore did not worry too much when the latter did not get up from his chair even once, not even to get a glass of water or pass urine (not into the same glass).

"He was a quiet sort of person," clarified Valgrind. "He was known to go days without saying a word. He'd be working on something and didn't like to be disturbed. He wore disposable diapers to the office too. Thought the long walk to the toilet was a waste of time."

Police said it was indeed surprising that Namdeo's fellow employees did not notice the odd smell emanating from his body after his death but admitted that Thursday's "Pizza night," when some management official arrived from the US and ordered pizzas for everybody and delighted them all with his ready wit and Texan drawl and unexpected attacks against Third World countries, may have had something to do with it. Meanwhile, Namdeo's in-house death seems not to be an isolated incident in industry.

"Death, affecting one in every one Indians, is a serious threat to businesses everywhere." opined management guru Prahlad. "Profit margins plummet, stocks quickly become worth nothing and there's that whole business of sadness, despair, grief and mourning leading to a crippling loss of productivity. When heads of companies die, there's also a lot of legal issues about their property and so on. This 'death thing' will ruin us. It must be tackled head on."

Added he mysteriously "I am working on it."

Tukaram will now apparently be shifted for cremation to his native Sholapur, where his house was only recently attacked by the Shiv Sena for stabbing them in the back.

Despatches from Newcastle - I

2009-09-29T19:03:00.005+05:30

Dearest Mother,

As you know by now, I have arrived here in Newcastle and settled in quite comfortably. The journey hereto was smooth, except for a few moments of extreme panic on the London flight when the flight teetered hither and thither due to turbulent weather. Or because a giant man was playing with it. Either way, those few moments were not really memorable and I spent them watching 'Fargo' intensely. Never before would William H Macy's face have been stared at quite as intently by anyone, not even by William H Macy. The immigration process, as I told you over the phone, was also hassle-free. The London-Newcastle leg was covered by two pilots with Bob Marley accents. I kid you not, Mother, they really spoke like Marley. I half-expected gentle reggae background music and all thirteen of his children to stream out of the cockpit as the pilots made their announcements.

If you'll recall Blanche DuBois' "I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers" line from 'A streetcar named desire,' Mother, that held true for me as I entered the city. Taxis being forbiddingly expensive, I opted instead to lug huge bags along behind me as I got on the Metro. A kind gentleman named Ian who often nervously licked his fingers and said 'Coom' offered to escort me to wherever I wanted to go from the West Jesmond Metro station. Then, after a while, he seemed lost himself and fetched another gentleman named Paul from a pub and Paul offered to drop me off in his car. Now, I know what you're thinking, Mother. "You could have been molested!!" All the signs were there:- Man who nervously licks his fingers and calls out to strange men, another man who offers lifts to strangers, idiotic stranger in a strange land. An explosive mix indeed. But my general molestability is so low, Mother, that I needn't have worried. Neither of them stole even a cursory lascivious glance at me. After a while in Paul's car, I began to feel a little offended, actually. Was I not worth even a perfunctory look, a default lewd once-over, a rudimentary salacious perusal? If you prick me, do I not bleed? (I do, so don't.) Anyhow, the ride passed off without incident and I was touched (only metaphorically) by Paul's and Ian's kindness.

It's been uneventful after that, Mother. My flatmates are Nigerian, Chinese, Chinese and Taiwanese respectively and we have a grand time not being in each other's way. Really, I have never met a more polite bunch of people living under one roof. One of the Chinese guys is particularly interested in my culinary skills and today inspected my tomato saaru closely to see if he could glean some information out of it. Speaking of which, my cooking has passed off without incident so far too. Having no access to ghee, I used butter for the oggaraNe for the saaru. It produced rather delicious results. However, I would advise against using steel pans for preparing an omelette, Mother. It is interesting to observe the reactions between yolk and oil on a steel pan but the resultant acrid smell is not quite the connoisseur's delight. Also interesting : how well chatnipudi goes with everything. I have used it with rice, bread and omelettes and it has coalesced perfectly with its platemate each time. The Taiwanese man prepares enough food for ten people and eats it all himself over one week. His skill is great.

As for classes, Mother, we have had just two so far and the low strength of my class is a pleasant change. I will keep you posted on interesting events, if any, therein. We are thinking of names for a website and some great suggestions (by me and others) thus far have been turned down (although I cannot imagine why) :
Extreme Poverty
Flatulent Firmware
Anal Bleeding
GamePlusPlus
Gamebrosia (like ambrosia, but for games)
Hesitant Warrior
The Magnificent Seven
The Magnificent-But-Thinking-of-Retirement Seven
The Not-Quite-As-Magnificent-As-Before Seven
The Why-Aren't-We-Eight Seven
(the last four became invalid since one of our ranks came down like a mighty oak tree if a mighty oak tree could come down with chicken pox. He's out for two weeks. He will now be immortalised as the Chicken Pox Dude.)

We settled on something else but I was really keen on Extreme Poverty as a name. Has a ring to it.

All said, it's been a good time so far, Mother. Rains made their presence felt today, but none too threateningly. So you needn't worry. Further updates when I have anything to say. Do take care of yourself.

Your son,
Arjun

Foreign fraud

2009-08-10T15:45:00.005+05:30

Being defrauded is never a pleasant experience, but it's especially galling if your defrauder is unreachable. And he cheats you to buy petrol. And he does it using a credit card which you haven't used yourself in over six months. Some guy in Israel used a credit card number of mine, and those of six other colleagues, to create fake cards of his own and used them all at the illustrious Israeli establishment, Paz Yellow. Their ridiculously designed site says they are Israel's leading energy company and provide "a diverse, exact and quick response to every requirement related to energy and road services." Road services? Unless they're talking a well-mannered and well-endowed 20-shekel hooker every few miles, I don't see this company in a favourable light. They also have a convenience store chain called Yellow:-

"At Paz, we know just how important it is for you to arrive home."

That's what the creepy paedophile said. Also, Yellow proclaims this:-

"Yellow - the only one in Israel offering you a variety of solutions for meals on the road"

Meal solutions? Have services companies taken over everything?

Speaking of shekels and why I'm using that word in a seemingly sane conversation, some fuel-buying credit card charlatan swiped a fake card with my number for petrol worth 605.5 shekel. Got it rectified (which is also a funny word. Is it another way of saying 'colonoscopy' ? Or anal sex?). You may return to your financially secure lives now.

Views and reviews

2009-07-16T23:34:00.000+05:30

It's been a really long time since I watched movies and hated them and this seems as appropriate a time as any to do that. Unfortunately, however, I've rather liked the movies I've watched lately; so I'm going to try and nitpick heavily despite this fact.

'Angels and demons' was released to toned-down expectations the world over and it far exceeded them. Tom Hanks managed to look fit and not as though he's been around since the Pleistocene era, the dialogues were audible unlike in 'The Da Vinci code' and the story was paced well. Despite Ewan MacGregor's annoyingly, ingratiatingly and fakely pious turn as the Camerlengo (either a deputy priest or a deputy camel), you don't quietly slip into a coma while watching this movie. Which you would do if you watched 'Sri Lanka vs Bangladesh : The complete Test Matches collection.'

'Gulaal' turned out to be a surprisingly depressing movie. It's good, no doubt; but its slow devolvement towards a bleak, pessimistic denouement can get you down before you can say "Ye duniya agar mil bhi jaye to kya hai?" Anurag Kashyap is a great director and should make more and more films. But films like Gulaal will have success only in small, niche crowds and my house and I doubt the commercial success from these sources would sustain the artistic endeavours of this highly talented man. There should be a government order of sorts that people should go watch movies like Gulaal, so that people like Kashyap are not forced out of circulation and people like the Chopra clan don't become incredibly successful.

I also watched 'Star trek : The future begins' and 'New York' and 'Doubt' and 'Milk' and 'The Angrez.' Good fun.

I hope everyone's reassured that I'm not dead. Yet.

Keeping options open

2009-05-18T16:57:00.000+05:30

After campaigning tirelessly for the Samajwadi Party in Karnataka, and tasting defeat at an early stage, I am back. I had kept all my options open till the numbers came in. However, nothing came in and I abandoned my hopes for a Cabinet berth.

So, Rahul baba is a hero now. The heir-apparent to the throne of India (who was described by Shobhaa De, in what can only be described as an attempt at minor rape, as "The Dimpled Darling") gambled on going it alone in UP and it paid off handsomely for the Congress. They swept large parts of India (on account of him and his 87000-km coverage during campaign season, if you believe Congress assessments) and now, a young cabinet is on its way to being formed (Harish N Kumar is trying, with as much success as H D Devegowda, to secure a berth for himself on the basis of the sole qualification that he too is young). Maybe without the Left, a dynastic government at the Centre won't be so bad, after all. Since LKA is now well on his way to becoming LKB, after deciding to continue to stay on as Leader of Opposition, the Congress has a great opportunity to consolidate this mandate and continue till 2019 (what? Next time will be Rahul baba's first shot at the PM's job. You think he's going to lose? Besides, the NDA has no leader now, with the sobering discovery that Modi doesn't have a pan-Indian appeal and Rajnath Singh doesn't appeal to the average H Javaregowda in Mandya). Maybe it will go well.

We remain eternally hopeful. However, I will keep my options open till 2014 now.

Mindry.in -- a year of unparalleled excellence

2009-04-26T22:23:00.001+05:30

More trumpeting of our own, well, trumpets. On this Monday, the 27th of April, our fledgling group will turn one. Starting off humbly, with just a Youtube channel to our name, we swiftly climbed up the ranks of prosperity and procured our own website. (Which now has a functional blog, nothing more, I guess. Harish?)

Anyway, in keeping with our tradition of taking ourselves far too seriously, we will commemorate this occasion by speaking in short bursts of five minutes each, for about an hour and a half. There will be felicitations of people unconnected to the event, unveiling of documents crucially important to the nation's future, songs, violent orgies and what-have-you.

In summary, Mindry.in's anniversary will be observed with full decorum and decency at the Seva Sadana auditorium in Malleshwaram on May 2nd at 6 PM. You are cordially invited. With your family. Make one if you don't have it already and bring them along. Ooh, free entry, so it's a win-win situation.

What goes up must go to sleep

2009-04-14T10:42:00.002+05:30

This is quite the WTF news of the day, as Amit Varma would put it. The best part is this:-

"It is felt during this period" -- when the pilots fell asleep -- "safety of aircraft and its occupants was compromised."

Oh.

Social studies exhibition mooted

2009-04-13T19:19:00.002+05:30

Angry at being treated in a step-motherly fashion by students and parents, social studies teachers across the royal state of Karnataka have mooted an exhibition to promote awareness of the subject's importance and to compete on an equal footing with ~~more important~~ other subjects like mathematics, science and the languages. The idea cropped up in a Kekule-esque manner when noted history-and-geography teacher M Nagappa dozed away while explaining the climate of Tanzania to his class of 120 students. Continuing to talk in his sleep, Nagappa devised the entire scheme and had even calculated the revenues such an exhibition might generate, by the time he awoke.

"We will actually the charge the 5 rupees for the entry. We will not give receipts. We will call it the Humanities Club and force students to enter. Then, we will decamp with this money to sunny Acapulco. Ha ha ha ha ha!!!" he said, revealing a scam highly unlikely to succeed. The Humanities Club will conduct the exhibition in Bangalore's famous Palace Grounds, where stalls of the various branches of the social sciences will be put up. The History stalls will depict important events in history, with children providing re-enactments wherever necessary. Key events include the Gandhi assassination, the 1965 Indo-Pak war and the Bhopal gas tragedy which, Nagappa said, the kids will re-enact authentically. The Geography stalls will place polystyrene and plastic models of the world's physical features and hope somebody walks by and passes so much as a glance at them. Innocent and hungry-looking kids will be placed in these stalls and will dispatch imploring looks at passing crowds, guilt-tripping grown-ups to fake interest in the dumb models and listen to the pre-written speech (filled with bad grammar) that the kids read out, in lieu of an explanation about their models. The Civics stalls seem the most challenging part, with no great ideas readily forthcoming. So far, Nagappa said, the only thing they have thought of is placing large copies of our Constitution in these stalls and keeping them clean by regular sweeping. But this has not met with student approval.

"Who the fuck wants to study civics??" bellowed noted school rowdy, Rudresha. "Who the fuck?? Bring him in front of me, I will cut his head with my bare hands. This is not a hand," he added, relapsing into Varun-esque rhetoric. "This is a lotus."

"This is a hibiscus" he continued, swiftly destroying whatever Hindutva votebank support he had built up but quietly ensnaring the naturalists. Meanwhile, Vijaya High School alumni everywhere discreetly jizzed in their pants at the gratuitous references made to their alma mater and brought this post to an abrupt halt.

Three

2009-04-06T13:06:00.003+05:30

As of Friday, this drivel has been spewed at you for three continuous years. As of Friday, I have received no awards, no appreciation from online communities, no lucrative book deals, no nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize, nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even that fickle, fleeting mistress called "huge piles of money." Makes me question my belief system(s).

Nevertheless, I shall continue undaunted. So what if you guys don't send me money and other fine things? Should I not acknowledge that lack of generosity with an equal lack of sensitivity on my part? So yeah, this will go on. Suck it. Now, on to more fake news, from the next post. You have been warned.

There'll be less of a gap between posts henceforth. The last month, I've been trying out things like floating in water, running up and down a stage, taking off my shirt in front of 4000 people etc. I'm not doing any of these in the near future, so I'll be more devoted to this unquestioning mistress of mine.

The Andhra wedding game

2009-03-06T10:57:00.000+05:30

Here is a new board game I think ought to be made. I wish I had the mojo to make pictures to explain it better. But I don't, and this is the result. Imagination is more important than knowledge anyway.

Start --> If you pass this square, collect four hundred rupees and two laddoos.

Mill --> Dowry time! Your prospective father-in-law gifts you one rice mill and two flour mills. And a sawdust mill, just for the heck of it. Collect as many mills as you can as you go along. Every little thing counts towards the victory points!

Factory --> More dowry time! The girl's father must now give you a granite factory, preferably on the banks of the Godavari, in exchange for a small token of gratitude from you. You can trade him Medak district for this, if you so wish. Nobody wants Medak anyway.

Unleash violence --> Players landing on this square have the opportunity to unleash waves of death and destruction upon the families of their opponents, at random. Real violence, not just knocking their playing tokens down. Hack at them with a machete, blow their jeeps up, set fire to their houses, push their women and children into deep wells. The objective is to achieve a bloodfest unlike anything seen before.

Incursion --> The evil Vennello Aadapilla Reddy has occupied three hundred acres of the most barren land in the Rayalaseema belt. Exert political pressure so that he is brought crumbling down and you can go sit there, although you can't really do anything on that land.

Caste violence --> It's casteism time! Members of the collector's caste have established their dominance over the state assembly for far too long. Break their hold, and necks, by mowing their men down with jeeps and roaring "Oreyyyy!!!!" with unrestrained rage, in the process displaying teeth reddened by betel leaves.

Real estate domination --> Take over the real estate market in the capital city of an entirely different state. Build flats, houses, malls, skyscrapers. Make so much money, you have to produce movies to get rid of it. Or sometimes, just set fire to great big piles of it. Or use it as a post-lunch hand-wiping tissue. Charge a little over the GDP of Ghana and a kidney for each house you build.

Vocabulary --> Repeatedly utter words like "rape-u chestanu" and "pumpistanu" to your fellow players. Whoever does it the longest gets a flyover in Hyderabad and a train ending at Renigunta named after him (not him/her. Women are mere commodities.).

Cyberabad:- Construct an IT hub and fill it with people submitting fake resumes. Sometimes, even fake people. Make deals between two of your own companies, one of which is radically named by reversing the letters in another's name.

Secession:- Ask for a separate state. No, in reality. Stop the game if you land on this square, get up, form a political party and start demanding a separate state for the people of a certain region. It would help if you're an ex- movie star and can hold two thumbs or middle-fingers up and grin widely.

Jail:- Game over.

The wait is over

2009-02-16T16:55:00.003+05:30

...because the play is also over. Yes, "Nara-Simha yuddham," which has nothing to do with the Hindu legend and everything to do with a political fight between one man named Simha and another unnamed man(Nara), went on stage yesterday at 6:35 PM (ten minutes late) and off it at 7:50 PM (ten minutes earlier than expected). Many Indians attended this show, nearly 400 of them. Which number is, apparently, a very enviable one indeed because these days, no one watches plays. Arun tells us of an admission by C R Simha wherein the veteran actor says it's hard to get fifty people together for watching a show. Managing to blackmail 400 people into watching us is, therefore, no mean feat. The hours and hours of spying, threatening, pleading, cajoling, making death-threat calls have paid off well.

Harish delivered a virtuoso performance, slipping effortlessly into the role of a farcical Prime Minister who has a musician and a jester in his office and has no desire except to remain in power. The mannerisms, the emotions, the costume, everything fell into place perfectly. He really did steal the show with consummate ease, the idiot. Arun, as noted former Ranji cricketer Simha, was pretty hilarious too. His speech-making abilities are quite startlingly good. He would make a good politician, though he'd have a hard time competing with Harish. Pooja, as noted news anchor Megha Shenoy (a poorly veiled lampoon of a reporter who had reviewed us badly last time), spoke impeccable Kannada and spoke confidently and loudly and actually put us in mind of famous and famously annoying news anchors like Barkha Dutt and Sagarika Ghose.

OK, enough trumpeting about ourselves. I can get pretty annoying when I do this, I know. We had an unexpectedly large audience, as noted earlier, and they were very cultured, emitting a slight laugh when we made a joke about Ziggy Stardust and Vince Taylor and not even snickering when we mentioned Modi and his US visa application getting refused and the Ram Sethu thing. They were so cultured that they have, each of them, their own petri dish.

In a remarkable idea, Harish has suggested renaming major roads already named after famous people by using their full official titles. Rashtrapita Mahatma Gandhi Road, Prathama Pradhana Mantri Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Road, Dwiteeya Pradhana Mantri Lal Bahadur Shastri Road would now be found in cities across the nation, referred to for convenience as RMG Road, PPMPJN Road and DPMLBS Road respectively. This is actually quite lame and the primary reason he is still as single as a penis.

Narasimha yuddham

2009-02-02T14:36:00.006+05:30

In much the same vein as our last attempt at shameless whoring, here is my pitch for our next play.

Not quite close on the heels of our last, well-received, play, "Vichitramanjari," we at Mindry.in decided enough was not enough and went ahead with writing the next one. Harish, in particular, was obsessed with writing something political and since the rest of us are rather indulgent of him (for reasons yet unclear), there was born "Narasimha yuddham."

< fanfare with trumpets and klaxons blaring here >

It is our sincere hope that you will grace the auditorium with your august presence. Please do. This play has quotable quotes. It doesn't have any of us in drag, unlike the last one. And, it has Arun in it. Anyone who knows this man knows he is a good man. What you will come to know by means of this performance of his is, he is also hilarious.

So this play entertains and educates you (mainly about what not to be, but that's useful too). Isn't that what theatre's all about?

Actually, no. It's also about full frontal nudity, but we're not there yet.

Gently nudged back to publicity-seeking, I request you to call any of the three numbers in the poster above for tickets. Mine's the third one and I'm possibly the best-looking of the lot, so call me. But calling the first one (Harish) will make a shattered soul happy. So, you choose.

I'm very bendy, by the way. Just thought you'd like to know.

Climate change explained

2009-01-29T12:28:00.002+05:30

Overheard in office, a Mallu colleague berating a TamBram.

"It's because of you people only."
"What did we do?"
"See, why is there no rain in Tamil Nadu or...Bihar or Rajasthan?"
"How are we related to that?"
"You vegetarians, you cut down all the trees and eat them. Whereas in Kerala, we eat meat all the time, and that is why there are so many trees and so much greenery and rainfall. We are saving the environment."

Tree-eating vegetarians, shame on you for destroying the environment.

Happy New Year

2009-01-20T16:53:00.000+05:30

...and some more of the same old stuff!

What have I been doing? Where have I disappeared to? Is everything all right??

These are some of the questions whose answers no one gives a shit about, I'm sure. Undaunted, however, I shall supply you with the same. In order to show I care, but mainly because I have the sensitivity of a bullock.

Just when we didn't want politicians to hide behind the cliche of the 'spirit of Mumbai' and not do anything about the Nov. 26th attacks, along comes Slumdog Millionaire and reaffirms the same thing. And the movie goes on to make millions and win awards galore when better movies about and from India have failed to even make a mark. 'Lagaan' was a much superior rags-to-riches tale than this. 'Swades' was a riches-to-rags sort of story. And Rahman had definitely scored better music in those movies. I suppose the Danny Boyle tag carries more weight in the US than the Ashutosh Gowariker one. It's not a bad movie, Slumdog. But it's not great either. A meh-vie, if you will (meh movie = meh-vie).

Since I have become a me-myself-and-I sort of person, having nothing worth talking about apart from myself, with the notable exception of the occasion when the honourable Harish N Kumar usurped the throne of prize idiot of our group from me after an incident involving his computer keyboard and the resulting deletion of several lines of text from the script of our next play, I shall talk about our next play. I hesitate to call our previous play, Vichitramanjari, staged on the 30th of last year's November, an instantly resounding success because it played out to packed audiences of just about 80 people in each show (we staged two shows on the same day and the aquditorium capacity per show was 80 human beings). Although all 160 people enjoyed the show (I assume), it isn't exactly the audience Metallica gets. But it was a successful play, with everybody we knew and lots of people we didn't know at all saying they liked the show. Subsequently, as Sharath cut out bits from the play and put them up on our channel, people said 'Hey, this is nice. Damn, we should have been there. When's your next show? Book tickets for me, bitch!' Of course, there were people who also said 'Why are you putting in canned laughter? Remove it, it's not nice,' but we politely explained this was real laughter from a live show and we hadn't faked it and couldn't remove it now.

Emboldened by this dual dose of live-and-reactive and eventual appreciation, we decided on staging a second play. It's happening, little ones. February 15th, at the JSS auditorium in Jayanagar 8th block. I'll have more details as and when authorisation comes through for revealing those. You know, things like posters and names and timings and tickets (yeah, pappa needs to eat) and trivia.

Additionally, complaints have been submitted that I'm not as witty as I was in late 2006. This is an odd sort of grievance to have and I'll disregard it.

Is it me or are several news items recently beginning to resemble fake news headlines? Man sells daughter for beer, girl sends a message every two minutes for a month, Advani gets voted youth icon.

To round up this mish-mash excuse for a post, watch the following video:-
Randall Munroe at Google

I'm the Terminator

2008-12-18T11:54:00.000+05:30

Apparently, I can move through time and do things. As attested by this picture:-

Look closer:-

I don't know how I do it myself.

Youth wins cowardice award

2008-12-12T13:42:00.000+05:30

J B W S N G HS Venkateswarlu, a resident of Cuddapah district of Andhra Pradesh, has won the prestigious National Cowardice Award for this year for his act of getting the hell out of the way of a speeding truck as it bore down upon him and gallantly letting an infant take the blow. Venkateswarlu ("Venky" to people in the colony, "Abbaayi!" to his grandmother and "Orey!!" to his parents)achieved this memorable feat while walking his three year-old niece, Baby Chitti, on the 14th of June. The 26-year old, preceded by his commanding set of initials (which stand for "Jai Bharath Water Supply Natesulu Ganesulu HanSolu) and closely followed by his sister's daughter, was traipsing happily along the street opposite his house when, all of sudden, a behemoth of a truck swerved around the corner and made its way furiously towards him.

"I was frozen by fear," admits Venkateswarlu. "I didn't know what to do. The sight of that mechanical monstrosity tearing down the highway towards me made my legs incapable of moving."

As images of the truck flattening him and preparing what he now sardonically calls 'Venkateswarlu pesarattu' for rats and crows flashed across his eyes, Venkateswarlu recognised he had a choice to make. "I remembered this child I had with me. This innocent baby with a dimple in her cheek, fear in her eyes and hope in her voice," he recalls. "I knew it had to be either her or me. Only one of us would make it out of this. It was a grim decision for me to make, but I had to make it."

"Like Sophie's choice," he added, stopping everyone in their tracks for a moment with his awareness of that movie. At that crucial moment, footage shot by random passerby Harish reveals, Baby Chitti (Chitra, according to her birth certificate) began wailing at the top of her voice. The kind of fearful, bestial cry that only babies and a particularly belligerent Anu Malik can emit, and can drive anyone insane within a couple of seconds. The cry that starts off abruptly and quickly makes its way across several octaves and reaches a shrill crescendo. It was this that drove Venkateswarlu to his fateful, and award-winning, decision.

"I left the stupid child there and dove out of the way" admits he, candidly and a bit too remorselessly. He escaped with minor scratches sustained as a result of his clumsy dive into a clump of grass on the side of the road, but the child, struck down by the bumper of the truck, sustained grievous injuries and is currently recuperating at a low-speciality hospital in Secunderabad.

The award has generated great cheer in the Venkateswarlu family. His father, a former recipient himself for courageously fleeing the scene when a small dog growled menacingly and made its way towards him and young Venkateswarlu, could not speak, so choked with happiness was he. The Andhra Pradesh government has announced a monetary award of twenty-five lakh rupees and one rice mill for Venkateswarlu, in recognition of the achievement of one of the state's sons. Noted film actor Mohan Babu, pausing for breath between court cases involving groping allegations flung at him by young actresses, said this had made every son of Telugu immensely happy. He also added "Ariste karusta, kariste arusta!!" ("If you shout, I shall bite. If you bite, I shall shout") at this juncture.

VP Singh dies, no one cares

2008-12-10T11:40:00.008+05:30

In an unsurprising yet long awaited event, former prime minister VP Singh died two weeks back of renal failure, cancer and intense dislike of a large section of people across the country. He was 163. Singh, who rose to national infamy in the '90s with his controversial implementation of the Mandal Commission's recommendations, successfully overshadowed his own achievements of the previous decade by changing social structures and caste equations across the nation forever and permanently alienating all those who tried to get through life by dint of effort and had a firm belief in good sense.

However, Singh's death, coming as it did on the 27th of November, 2008, was vastly ignored by national media in the wake of larger events. Curiously, most news channels seemed to think that a human tragedy on a massive scale that saw the nation attacked and subsequently united like very rarely before was more important than the death of a former prime minister who had managed to divide the country like possibly no other. Prominent 'political editors' and 'defense correspondents' seemed more preoccupied in revealing key commando moves and asking the relatives of hostages questions like 'So how do you feel?' than barging into Singh's house with cameras and asking his family the same question, much as they did in the case of slain engineer K Suryanarayana.

Even regular Singh-lovers like Mahesh Bhatt seemed to have become oblivious to his demise. "This is a slap on the face of the nation, and we have brought it upon ourselves." said Bhatt in a hastily organised press conference, in response to questions about Singh's death. When the baffled, and lone, reporter asked how, Bhatt clarified he was referring to the Mumbai attacks, adding "Who died?" when reminded about Singh.

Mood across the nation was sombre on the day of Singh's departure for his otherwordly abode, though, and even during the subsequent week. Parties and gatherings were cancelled and festival celebrations, if any, were low-key (with one notable exception). However, closer investigation revealed that none of this sobriety and sadness was due to Singh's death.

Singh was also an avid painter and painted many weird things (some of his paintings are here). We note his passing.

Vichitramanjari - namma Kannada naataka

2008-11-20T00:46:00.000+05:30

Today's fortune: The guy who reads your fortune disappeared and our boss is furious. We hope you have a lucky day.

I do feel lucky. And in the mood for some publicity-seeking. So here it is.

Remember Mindry.in? Well, here's a quick refresher course. Mindry.in was formed in end-April 2008 when three itinerant youth(s), Harish, Sharath and I, decided to film ourselves doing strange things and put these videos up on Youtube. We quickly registered that domain and bought ourselves some hosting space. Over the next few months, we shot small comedy sketches, as it were, and put them up on our channel on Youtube and on our site. These achieved reasonable appreciation, acclaim and viewership, though it was suspected, at one point, that Harish had secretly contributed to half this viewership by sitting up all night and clicking continuously on each video's link.

And so, our ambitions grew. And we decided to stage a play. And it is to advertise that play that I wrote all that bullshit preamble till now. We're staging our play, entitled 'Vichitramanjari,' on the 30th of November at the Nani Arena on Miller's Road, Bangalore. Here's the funky poster, made by the talented Guru Anandh.

Yes, it has a girl in it. Too bad we didn't put up a picture of hers instead of our ugly faces. We couldn't get one in time for printing the poster. Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, this significant event is occurring the Sunday after this one and, on behalf of the team at Mindry.in and the other guys (and girl) in the play, I invite all of you to it. It's a one hour show, a showcase of some of the finest unknown comedy talent in Kannada.

OK fine, we might not be the finest, but we're pretty good. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Unless you're determined not to.

Of course, to minimise our losses, there are tickets for entry. But here are telling facts:- even if we sell all the tickets, we'll still be making a loss. To break even, we'd have to price them at a 100 bucks and no one would pay that much for a one hour play by amateurs. So tickets are selling for an economical 49 INR only. Call the second number you see in the poster(me) for tickets. We deliver. And no, we haven't put the girl's number up there, so don't bother trying the other two. Frankly, I don't have it myself. No, the point is, we aren't ripping you off.

Unnecessary rambling apart, please make yourselves free either at 3:30 in the afternoon or 7 in the evening on November 30th and come and watch our play. You can meet me. This isn't an incentive, so you can meet my funnier, more intelligent and, objectively speaking, more attractive friends. And you can catch a pretty good show. We'd all be very happy if you could grace the occasion with your ticket-holding presence.

The address:- Nani Arena, 5th Floor, Sona Towers, 71, Miller's Road, Bangalore(tagline:- Find your own PIN code).

Route map will be put up soon, if you need it.

< /narcissistic publicity >

D and NH demands continenthood

2008-11-15T02:23:00.002+05:30

Stung by persistent neglect and mismanagement of its affairs by a belligerent Central government, diminutive union territory Dadra and Nagar Haveli has demanded separate continent status for itself, proclaiming its secessionist intentions clearly. Speaking to Indian reporters at a hastily organised, and poorly attended, press conference in Bhopal, Ram Manohar of the Dadra and Nagar Haveli Unnata Pradhikar(DNHUP) today said he and his people have had enough.

"We have had enough!" thundered Manohar. When pressed for further details, he said "The government has ignored us for far too long. Other neglected territories have demanded statehood. We decided to go one step further." When a reporter pointed out that this was actually two steps further viz., Statehood to Nationhood, Nationhood to Continenthood, Mr. Manohar shot him dead, but continued. "We now demand this recognition from the other seven continents of the world. Also, we would like to inform them that we will begin drifting at a rate of 15 cms per year from tomorrow."

Asked what infrastructure projects this new continent would take up, Mr. Manohar was not clear on the details, but deftly drew a few vague, broad outlines. "Mountain ranges will be our top priority. Every continent must have one. We will have three. Also, we will begin demarcating the countries that will form our new tiny little continent. I want to have atleast forty countries here. With huge waterfalls."

Officials were baffled by Nagar Haveli's unexpected secession and transformation into a new, unauthorised geographical feature. "We mildly disapprove of the union territory's demand to form their own continent," beseeched Home Minister Shivraj Patil. "We ourselves are only a sub-continent still. Where do they think they're going?"

"We will not go soft on terror," he added needlessly, bowing to what has become second nature to him:- unconvincing, pointless rhetoric. But fears that the mighty Indian Army might be sent in to quell this continental uprising if things get out of hand have started doing the rounds in this part of the world. Already, major Tamil Nadu and Bihar ministers are preparing their post-dated resignations, just in case Tamils/North Indians happen to be caught in any conflict here. The hurriedly thrown open Dadra Stock Exchange crashed eight hundred points today, taking it to a historic, and first ever, low of negative fourteen hundred points(scrips rallied later in the day, however, to surge up to a gallant negative four eighty-six - almost as much as the opening day).

"Hurray! This means we will no longer have to study about that stupid place in 6th standard geography! What joy!" exclaimed noted wicketkeeper Vijay Dahiya, in a completely unnecessary press conference.
"Hurray! This means we will no longer have to teach about that stupid place in 6th standard geography! What joy!" exclaimed noted geography teacher Mrs. Radha Eshwar, from the comfort of her home.
"Hurray! This means I will no longer have to cover stupid stories like this! And why the hell are 6th standard kids studying geography anyway? They're idiots, the whole bunch of them. Anyway, that's that. What joy!" exclaimed known anti-social Rohini Ranatunga.

At press time, the demand for continenthood had been rejected, but a brand new marriage hall was being constructed in Silvassa.

Chandrayaan

2008-10-23T01:29:00.000+05:30

Congratulations, India. We're up there, we're out there, the sky is no longer the limit. A great effort(set in motion, as Harish likes to aver repeatedly, by Mr. Vajpayee - Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan, Jai Vigyan.) culminating in a successful launch. It was really heartening to see usually solemn scientists break into spontaneous gestures of joy and affection(and hugging. Aww.) when the PSLV blasted off and escaped without a hitch. We have poked gentle fun at them before, but it was only in their support and no one can deny that they have done us proud on occasion after occasion. This is yet another feather in their already illustrious cap.

By the way, the audio in that one is deadly. Be warned.

Interesting thing. When DSP Joginder Sharma took some wickets in the T20 World Cup, he was awarded Rs. 21 lakh by the Haryana state government. Although undoubtedly, "it was be a great pride to have such an outstanding international cricketer in Haryana Police," shouldn't someone do the same for the scientists and engineers who worked on Chandrayaan? Or any of the successful missions we've launched so far? I don't recall Dr. R Chidambaram, Mr. Mylswamy Annadurai, Prof. U R Rao, Dr. Kasturirangan or Mr. Madhavan Nair ever being publicly awarded anything more than congratulations(and perhaps, the odd coconut, turmeric, vermillion and a blouse piece, in accordance with Hindu custom) by any state or central government. If I am wrong, I'd be glad to be corrected. Let's not mention the Padma awards here. Sania Mirza got one.

Speaking of which, I checked the ISRO site for news about Chandrayaan. What's up with the ridiculously small pictures on this page? I wrote to the webmaster asking him/her to increase the size of these things, along the way making a tepid joke about how my resolution was not as good as that of the TMC(Terrain Mapping Camera) on Chandrayaan. I think they realised I was nitpicking. Everywhere else, they have giant images of the satellite, its orbit, its journey, my underwear, everything.

Additionally, I think I have a man-crush on ISRO for naming their marketing wing Antrix. Yeah, it takes balls to call your marketing wing something which sounds like an evil genetics empire which habitually keeps making viruses that can destroy the world(and worse, can't even be destroyed by that most hallowed of chemicals, NaCl!). Carry on, good sirs. May the Force be with you.

How to conduct a debate

2008-10-02T12:50:00.004+05:30

Civilised discourse, discussion and debate lie at the heart of a democracy. When issues arise that bring to the fore differing viewpoints, the differing parties get together, offer their respective ideas and opinions and hammer out a solution. Failing this, one just calls the other an asshole and hammers him out. But the very institution of such a group debate is essential, indeed vital, for the health and proper functioning of the democratic process. And this is nowhere more important than in India. Amartya Sen may be right(one of the rare instances since he wisely refrained from thanking 'that rich, snobbish whoreson, Nobel' during his acceptance speech) when he said "Prolixity is not alien to us as Indians." Lots of people didn't know what that meant, but they agreed with him anyway.

But how shall the ideal debate be conducted? How effectively can issues be chosen, questions be put, panelists be selected, audiences members be allowed in and advertisements be inserted so that the full benefit of a public head-to-head of concerned members, affected individuals and passerby intellectuals can be had? How can that guy in the third row be stopped from asking those embarrassing questions he asks every single time? And what's with that gothic chick in the fourth row anyway? What, she's so cool because she's non-conformist and has that bored look on her face? She's probably stupid and doesn't understand a word anyway. Stupid nosering. I hate those things. Only cows and other animals should wear them...so, democracy. If you're a television channel looking to expand on your viewership, here's how the debate should be conducted.

First, choose an issue that has mass appeal and effect. Pick from among money, religion, cricket, sex and movies. These are the issues that will garner the most eyeballs. It would be unwise to choose depressing and/or unimportant/trivial stuff like farmer suicides or gay rights or growing disparity between the rich and the poor or the plummeting standards of our media and crap like that. The "growing intolerance of Urban India" is not nice. But it's certainly better than the "growing head of Rajdeep Sardesai." Honestly, how big is his head? He could double for one of Godzilla's balls the next time they make a movie about that thing. The left one. Get it? Get it, huh, huh, get it, get it? Anyway, combinations of issues might be used. 'Religious misappropriation of wealth' and 'boldness and censorship in the movies' are good. But if your issue is "How about that rich priest/maulvi/bishop who got videotaped doing it with a female commentator?" you win!

Second, frame your questions well beforehand. You need to guide the 'debate' and show it where to go. If you let those people talking about it have their way, that shit could go on for hours. God knows, there are a lot of windbags around and they really like to talk. And they have opinions, to boot. So you need to have these handy pointers or signs that will guide the discussion along, without seeming like abrupt interruptions. You can write these questions down on handy cards that can be printed out. It will give you something to scribble on just before(just to seem important and well-prepared), during(when all that 'talking' is going on, so you show you're thinking on your feet) and even after(so you can make people feel less busy and thereby stupid) the debate. Key phrases that can be used to good effect are:- 'the impact on society,' 'the secular fabric of the nation,' 'the effect on children,' 'liberal ethos,' 'zeitgeist,' 'poltergeist,' 'Mrityungeist,' 'the Bachchan family,' 'minority alienation,' 'Hindutva,' 'polarisation,' and 'stupid bastard stole my girlfriend.'

OK, maybe not all of those. 'Mrityungeist' was overdoing it a bit.

Third, you need to choose the right people to have on your panel. You can't have everybody. I mean, there's all sorts of riffraff out there. You should have the correct balance of spunk and wisdom, youth and age, fire and ice, Yin and Yang, pride and prejudice. Here's a handy chart for you, showing the 'dream-team' for debate panels:-

Fourth, the audience. You need to allow time for audience members to ask questions every now and then of the panelists. But be careful:- those buggers can ask uncomfortable questions that might conflict with the stated agenda of your channel's owner's friend in the government, whose support is absolutely vital for you. You may also lose the respect of your colleagues and peers. Oh no! Look around your studios for a few hours before the show. If you spot people reading Paulo Coelho, Franz Kafka, Praveen Togadia, Solzhenitsyn, the Times of India, the Sunday Times of India, Bangalore Times, Delhi Times, Mumbai Times, The Statesman, Bongo Shomachar, Kerala Chronicle, the complete works of Shilpa Shetty and 'Autobiography of a well-known Indian' by Kapil Sibal, pull them in! Before the taping starts, educate them abut the sort of questions they should ask. Writing the questions down for them will make your show seem like Soviet Russia, so you want to avoid that. But nobody said anything about putting them up on a teleprompter. And cutting them off should be done smoothly and politely. The moment you see them making your favourite panelist uncomfortable, swoop in. I mean, swoop like you've never swooped before. You will have earned the unending gratitude of your benefactor. Give the audience sweets as they go out, but try not to poison them.

Lastly, advertisements, or commercial breaks. The timing of these is crucial, to have your television audience glued in. You can't just go into a break when everything's going well and everyone's agreeing. When two people are going at each other, fire and brimstone, and are throwing facts about the other person that you and your audience never even knew, then you need to cut in and go out for a short one. Leaves everyone on tenterhooks and has them begging for more. Additionally, when your favourite guy/gal seems to be 'losing' to that idiot you've always hated, like we said before, swoop. Swoop like an eagle with its wings on fire who's just spotted a rat on the floor. Cut the idiot off, say things like "Mr...Mr....Mr....Mr...that's enough. We are trying to have a civilised discussion here. A CIVILISED one! Please. PLEASE!! We'll come back to you. Time for a short break. Do stay with us. Gentlemen, please!!"

After the show's done, you should thank everybody on the panel and the audience. Politeness always pays.

Be sure to name your show after something violent. "An enlightened discussion," "A civilised rendezvous," "A cultured, knowledgeable tete-a-tete," "Issues first," "Smooth talk" are all gay and will not do. "Bloody fight," "Violent skirmish," "Vultures' meet," "I'm going to bash your face in if you don't agree with me" are good.

So there it is. A simple formula to conducting an effective debate. It ensures your guests and your audience come back for more. And your ratings go up. Everybody wins.

At the movies

2008-09-30T00:20:00.003+05:30

The movies are a magical place where you settle down in a dark hall and lose yourself in the magic unfolding on screen. The movies can also be the hellish, infernal place where you find yourself inextricably entrenched between a fat man who passes wind quietly but powerfully and a bawling infant with a bladder problem, as an awful story is told to you.

Featuring amazingly bad photo-editing skills, I present to you, the magic....of the movies(click on the pictures to enlarge):-

Union territory imposes sanctions on state

2008-09-22T14:21:00.000+05:30

In an unprecedented, and certainly unconstitutional move, the great Union Territory of Daman and Diu has imposed economic sanctions on its neighbour, the great state of Maharashtra. The surprise decision, which sent news channels into a tizzy with its avant garde-ness and boldness, was taken after Maharashtra decided not to export 10 MW of power to the little union territory. "Our economic end electrical needs are not being met by our neighbour, Maharashtra. Therefore, we are forced to make this decision" announced shri Amit Agarwal, Chief Electoral Officer of UT of Daman & Diu, which is known to have no significant economic relationship with Maharashtra. Maharashtra, unperturbed by this decision, is said to have simply issued the following statement in protest:- "What the fuck do they need 10 megawatts for??"

"Snatched back from the Portuguese in 1961, Daman and Diu were clumped together with Goa till 1987, when Goa was granted statehood," remarked ace former Karnataka Ranji cricketer Somashekhar Shiraguppi, surprising many with his acute perusal of Wikipedia and also his unexpected appearance in news items. Though this observation had nothing to do with recent events, it stirred memories of the Emergency in aspiring prime minister L K Advani, as usual. "In 19...75, Mrs. Gandhi imposed the Emergency. So, in 1961, she was still fourteen years away from imposing the Emergency," he mused, tearfully, while preparing for a "Just-A-Minute" competition with former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. The competition, to be held in November, is expected to take a really long time to complete, significantly more than a minute. In the pause taken by Mr. Advani between his utterances of "19" and "75," four people died of tense expectation and bated breath, while three others were injured in riots.

Shri Agarwal can be reached at:- amit_123@WeLoveManmohan.net

Anantamurthy renews vow not to shut up

2008-09-15T16:22:00.001+05:30

Noted litterateur and Jnanapeeth award winner U R Anantamurthy yesterday renewed his vow not to shut up about issues he knows nothing about and should not be interfering in or talking about. At a conference held at Hubli's Karnatak University campus, Dr. Anantamurthy pledged to keep his outspokenness intact and never give in to communal forces, divisive sectarianism and fascist hooliganism. The statement comes close on the heels of widespread criticism following his remarks on the Orissa communal clashes and the slaying of VHP saint Lakshmanananda Saraswati and the 'forced conversion' accusations flung at Christian missionaries. In a touching ceremony, Anantamurthy and longtime friend(and possibly part-time lover), Rajdeep Sardesai, renewed their vows of non-silence, non-objectivity and non-partisanship regarding contentious issues. Rings were bartered, garlands were put around necks and nappies were flung at dissidents.

In retaliation, long-standing Anantamurthy-baiter and journalist Pratap Simha unleashed his fury over the statements, in a rival press conference in the neighbouring city of Dharwad. Addressing a large gathering of peda-makers, Mr. Simha emphatically declaimed the "treacherous" remarks made by the author and said this was indicative of a "serious delusion of self-importance" on the part of the famous writer. "Mr. Anantamurthy...has already damaged the reputation of Kannada writers by relentlessly expressing himself even when not particularly necessary or advisable," Simha thundered furiously, mildly dampening the entire first row of the seated audience. "Should he really be allowed to speak any further about anything? Especially a sensitive issue like this. He has always been one of these pseudo-intellectuals who wear FabIndia jubbas and grow beards. If he were a true Kannadiga, he would wear a jubba made from Khadi Bhandar, Lansdown building, Mysore. But he doesn't. I think he should be declared a world heritage site and fenced." More popular author and fellow Murthy-baiter S L Bhyrappa was unavailable for comment, but is said to have smiled mysteriously and contentedly in his sleep.

The Orissa clashes have already drawn reactions from completely unrelated personalities from all over the country, with former Speaker of the Lok Sabha Purno Asafoetida Sangma, former chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh Gegong Apang, former minister for water resources Sis Ram Ola, former wildly defecting politician V C Shukla, former spoon manufacturer and closet frock-wearer V P Singh and former farmer Amitabh Bachchan all expressing their regrets over the turn of events in the already ravaged state. Noted left-wing blogger Harish N Kumar was dismissive of Anantamurthy's statements, but expressed grave regrets over the events in the cyclonic state and nearby Karnataka, where churches were attacked by right-wing Hindu fundamentalists. "I condemn Anantamurthy. I also condemn these fascists. I most recently condemn my maid, who just poured hot coffee all over my feet. In fact, I condemn anybody who comes within five feet of me." He was subdued later by a free copy of E M S Namboodiripad's autobiography. Ardent right-winger and numerologist Malaveeka(earlier 'Malavieka') Chakravarthy raged against the Orissa government's decision to disallow Togadia's rally, but later withdrew her statement when it was revealed that he was not an Iyengar.

There is a malevolence in the air

2008-09-15T16:06:00.004+05:30

There isn't. It's just been a while since I've said 'malevolence.' Some words are good to say every now and then, in that they help keep different parts of your mouth and throat active. 'Flummoxed,' for instance, and 'egad.' The last one, I have only read Hiram Lodge, father of Veronica Lodge, say. But it gives you a good feeling. Of course, you shouldn't be saying these things in public. People around will stop, administer a beating and leave you about as effective as a freshly neutered man in a brothel.

But in other news, I'm back. I have returned from foreign shores and been welcomed as one among the natives here. Much progress on the Metro front on MG Road. Actual pillars have manifested and work is proceeding pretty swiftly. As a rival project, China is building the Three Gorges dam and dam-and-mass-transit-system-watchers say this will be a close race. The government reiterates its stand to complete the Metro project by 2011. But this is beginning to sound as convincing as Helen keller at an audition for 'The sound of music.'

Ouch.

The unbearable eagerness for spitting

2008-09-05T01:34:00.006+05:30

Have you ever had that feeling(as a healthy male standing in front of a urinal), that overwhelming need, that you had to pause in the midst of your ejection of acids and various other complex compounds from your body and spit into it?

No, right? Because it's totally unnecessary. You don't need to spit while you're taking a leak. Are your salivary glands so inextricably linked to your urinary ones(these are also referred to in various scientific journals as kidneys) that it becomes inevitable to release an expectorate from your mouth? Hint:- they are not. It's just a weird, psychological, altogether disgusting thing. Yet a lot of people do it.

I don't spit around. I retain my spittle. It helps my body in some way, I'm sure. Otherwise, I reason, my body wouldn't produce it, especially in my mouth. After brushing in the morning, you will practically never catch me emitting anything from my mouth. Now, you might make a bad joke here and say, "Ah, so you're a swallower, then." You're just an idiot, then.

But on the rare occasions that I do spit, I make sure it counts. When the ocean enters my body via my mouth, for example, I spit back furiously. I become Captain Ahab. I even put on this bad Ricardo Montalban voice and utter Melville's immortal lines:-
"From hell's heart, I stab at thee. For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee."

It looks silly, watching me rail ineffectually against the mighty ocean. But you have to remember, "The wrath of Khan" had Kirstie Alley playing Lieutenant Saavik, possibly the hottest alien around in the '80s(these days, she looks like a little planet herself. In fact, she's now supposed to be bigger than Venus and smaller than Marlon Brando. God rest his soul.). You may argue that this is because the other famous aliens from the '80s looked like this:- Alien 1 and Alien 2

This, of course, has nothing to do with anything. But yeah, spitting while peeing is disgusting. You can do other things, so why restrict yourself to spitting? Entertain your fellow man too, instead of disgusting him. Eat biscuits, whistle a jaunty tune, juggle, perform complicated surgical procedures, do your taxes, hack into the Pepsi website and order thousands of bottles of the dreaded liquid sent to the house of someone you don't like. I once took such a long leak, I watched the entire opening battle sequence of 'Saving Private Ryan' and I was still not done. I had to watch a few minutes of some Meg Ryan movie to make it stop in fright.

Innovation

2008-09-03T14:44:00.003+05:30

The place:-

A colleague's room.

The situation:-

Very few days and excess alcohol left.

The solution:-

Drink up.

Monday was a day of some innovation on the parts of two software engineers. My colleague, Rishi, had some Old Smuggler whisky left over. I had two cans of Heineken(yes, judge me) in the fridge and he had Sam Adams in his. We consulted a website called www.getdrunker.com for help. Seeing that we had Old Smuggler, Heineken/Sam Adams and some lemons, the site suggested we make Owen's Grandmother's revenge. While this may seem funny, it's actually a heady little cocktail. In fact, calling it a cocktail seems to take away from the essential masculinity of it. It's a potent drink. Then, Rishi had his brainwave and suggested adding salt to the rim of the glass as we drank it. The results were highly satisfying.

Now on to the innovation in food. Over the past two days, we have come up with highly original and satisfying recipes involving highly unhealthy ingredients. Take notes, this might help.

Fajita a la random:-

Take a large number of these things I had never seen before called fajitas. I discovered they're papad wannabes. Crush these pretenders to the poppadum throne mercilessly and mix them with crushed Lay's potato chips(the classic salted will work fine). Chop half an onion(one full, if your onions are small. He he...) lengthwise and add those slender pieces to the crushed mixture. To this amalgam, add salt('to taste,' I will add mysteriously) and chilli powder(not too generously). Mix well. Squeezing a small portion of a lemon to this will not hurt in any way. If you had have shredded carrots, add a bit of those as well.

That's it, one random preparation is done. It goes well any time of the day. But goes down especially well in the mornings. If you know what I mean. Huh? Did I nail that? I did.

Mac and cheese puliyogare:-

Yes, although the name conjures up images of something sticky resulting because of a culinary experiment gone horribly wrong and going against me(making me sound like a sort of kitchen Rotwang), it is actually quite a palatable and filling meal. The preparation is ridiculously easy if you can get a packet of macaroni and cheese. Get that, put it into a vessel/pan/utensil with 6 cups(average tea-cup size) of water. Boil the bloody water and drain it after it emits a copious number of bubbles and some steam. Don't rinse the drained, residual mac and cheese. Add 1/4 cup of milk(yes, you read that right) and 2 or 3 spoons of butter(don't, if you're afraid of the fat) and mix well.

To this, add salt(again, "to taste") and cayenne hot pepper sauce(vinegar will do just as fine). Don't add too much of the sauce, it'll get really sour. If it's not sour enough, you can always add more later. Mix this junk well. Then, when all this is done, take any respectable puliyogare mix(must be a little oily for best results) and mix it with the mess you've prepared earlier. Serve hot. It's an unexpectedly delicious and satisfying meal.

So this is what we've been up to this last week. This, and testing Google Chrome unpaid. As also the leaked new album from Metallica on Youtube. The beginning of the end of the journey is promising.

The last few days

2008-09-02T16:11:00.001+05:30

And so it has come to pass that we are in our last week here in these United States of America. I leave next Sunday evening, with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it will be hard to leave behind these friends of mine that I have met over the past three months. People who've come here to study with every intention of coming back, but will probably not. On the other hand, there is the happiness of going back home. To family, most importantly, and friends there. Especially the gentlemen here.

Speaking of whom, it seems that when Papa's away, the kids come out to play and are vigourous and angry. This can be seen in the responses given by my esteemed colleagues, compatriots and comrades-in-arms at Mindry.in to angry, racist comments posted by random strangers, many with numerals in their usernames. The course of events is as follows:-

1. Long months ago, my friends and I sat down in a park and made this video and uploaded it. It commanded a none-too-impressive viewership.

2. Last week, however, it made a surprise entry on the Youtube "Featured videos" list and the viewership increased quite dramatically for this one. It's still in the thousands, but that's a lot for us. We're poor and easily satisfied.

3. Several people, after watching the video, decided they were going to be offended and left angry, caustic, vituperative and even racist comments. This perplexed us a good deal. There was nothing offensive in the thing, and no cause for such a knee-jerk reaction from anyone. More perplexing was a comment about our skin colour from a man who called himself rajjesh27982. Not only does this gentleman have an extra bloody alphabet in his username, he also has numerals tacked on to it.

Along with this frightening specimen of humanity, several others(with usernames like kuttappa321 and DETOP29 -- which actually sounds like a cool band name) left angry, aggressive messages.

4. I responded to these comments in my trademark non-aggressive fashion. Harish said this was wrong and my comments made us seem vicious, violent and vitriolic. Rather than an informed critique of my statements, this was more of an exercise in alliteration.

5. I go away for the weekend and leave the Internet unguarded. Big mistake.

6. Harish responds with unbridled aggression and unprecedented belligerence to newer, more vicious comments.

7. Japanese prime minister Yasuo Fukuda resigns.

While Kamal Haasan may link the first six events with the seventh in his next movie("kay-yoss theory"), I unilaterally condemn these double standards being followed by the venerable Mr. N Kumar. He needs to clean up his act if he wishes to pursue his childhood ambition of being the spokesperson of the Election Commission.

Be that as it may, we are now into our last week here on American soil. This Sunday, we shall head back to our rain-drenched homes. Three months have passed us by in a geological wink. The long weekend that just went by was a nice conclusion to it. I watched a stand-up show in Times Square and, thankfully, it was good.

This is an abrupt ending.

India's got talent

2008-08-21T01:41:00.003+05:30

The following video was discovered by my colleague yesterday when he was trawling lazily in the muddy waters of Orkut. It could, nay, it should be the video in the Indian version of Rickrolling. The stupid tune is addictive too.

You're welcome.

Monosyllabic quiz idea mooted

2008-08-15T22:36:00.003+05:30

Related news:- Henry Blofeld shot down

In an effort to improve representation of poorer and less educated classes of society in top quiz programmes across the country, Union Minister for nothing Somnath Chatterjee yesterday mooted the idea of a country-wide monosyllabic quiz contest in English, saying those who had been denied higher education could participate in this quiz and make do with whatever limited English vocabulary they had. Termed "Quiz" by famous advertising firm McCann-Ericsson, the competition will be held in centres spread nationwide and will be open for lower-primary to middle-school children. Kids will be expected to crack tough, ambivalent questions such as "What?" "Who?" "Why?" "Where?" and "When?" and provide the correct answers. Topics as wide-ranging as geography, French literature, early German Expressionism in film, the poems of Allasani Peddana and the best field hockey goals by Ric Charlesworth will be hurled at the contestants in the form of these seemingly simple questions and they will be given little time to come up with the right replies. The contest has garnered interest everywhere and even television channels are reported to be vying with each other for telecast rights.

In an avant-garde advertising campaign, McCann-Ericsson has unleashed a series of dull, taciturn posters and plastered them on walls across the country with the hope of reaching a wider audience. The posters are emblazoned with monosyllabic words exhorting students and their parents to join the contestant. Typical examples include "Join," "Win" and the rather suggestive and widely condemned "Come."

Top quizmasters and mistresses across the quizzing circuit are said to baffled by the government's move and are questioning its usefulness and efficacy. "Quizzing is already becoming highly specialised," said leading Chaucerian-literature-plus-Shakespearean-allusions-to-racism-plus-twentieth-century-Urdu-
poetry-plus-etymology-of-Bangalore-roads quiz mastermind Arul Mani. "We don't need the government creating these even more narrow-focused, one-word quizsmiths, who're just going to confuse the hell out of everybody. Plus, they will soon drain the prize corpus of our quizzing organisation. We cannot suddenly increase the first prize amount from the Rs. 18 we currently hand out to Rs. 26. That's daylight robbery!" Meanwhile, his quizzing comrade and fellow quizmaster Avinash "The Bash" Mudaliar was also quick to condemn the government's move. "Please, I can't go back to middle school quizzing. They're idiots out there. I left as soon as one guy said the composer of the Moonlight Sonata was Thiruvalluvar and the home of Tchaikovsky was Saravana Bhavan. Those twits must be dealt with by someone with an iron-hand."

"Ooh let's call Robert Downey Jr.," he quipped and chuckled, only to be quickly subdued, tackled and handcuffed by a man who would identify himself only as Pickbrain.

Meanwhile, former Indian cricket captain Mohammed Azharuddin is said to be extremely enthusiastic about the contest and is said to have hired a team of crack lawyers to find a loophole which would enable him to participate in the contest. "Azharuddin's famed staccato speaking style would serve him well in this quiz," remarked renowned cricket commentator Henry Blofeld, who is now so rarely seen he was mistaken for a panda at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International(IGI) airport and shot on sight. (The above was his last remark. We mourn his passing.) When questioned about the competition, Azhar, flanked by wife Sangeeta and a muscular man with a gun who mysteriously kept murmuring "The boys played well" into Azhar's ear, said "No comment," making this longest sentence ever conceived independently by the cricketer.

Mindry.in -- a pitch

2008-08-07T11:57:00.003+05:30

In lieu of a post, I will now put up something far more worth your while. I think.

Despite being practically unknown, the following post by me reads like a chapter from the memoirs of famous persons.

April is the cruellest month, averred T. S. Eliot. Apart from being grammatically wrong, this is also wholly untrue. April is a fine month. So we have now established that Eliot was a liar and poor at grammar. That being as it is, April 2008 was a good month when three of us, Sharath, Harish and I, decided to peg our wavering bottoms down to the ground and pursue our ambitions of being on the Internet. Yes, so that we could tell our parents proudly, "Look, ma, I'm on teh interwebs! Lolz!!!1" With this fierce ambition burning in our minds and loins, we shot our first video, a fake news broadcast consisting of the following headlines:-

"ISRO abandons plan to launch satellites in the future; to host children's parties instead."
"Army drops bullets for biscuits -- new oatmeal-flavoured cookies is forces' secret weapon. Old soldiers complain of discrimination."
"Star footballer caught in yet another sex scandal. This time, with a particularly luscious football."
"A new movie, The second sense, sweeps the box office. It's tagline 'I see deaf people' becomes the nation's catchphrase."
"Plus, an in-depth interview with the director of The second sense, Girish Kasaravalli. We ask him why he felt the torrid item number by Mallika Sherawat was necessary."

We did almost all of these(the Kasaravalli interview and the trailer of The Second Sense, we couldn't do. It would have been a funky trailer, though. Set to the music of Jonny Quest. With things like "One man decides he has had enough." "With an unexpected guest appearance by Ben Kingsley." "He commits the unspeakable crime. Again. Will someone please stop this idiot?" said in that deep, movie-trailer voice.) and put the videos up online.

Nothing happened.

So we decided to organise the videos into a channel. Inspired by Queen Elizabeth II("Dinku" to her friends), who has her own Youtube channel, we created one for ourselves too. When deciding on names for the channel, we argued much as parents of a newborn argue over their offspring's nomenclature. Finally, superior persuasive logic(you know whose it was) won and we had a channel:-

The Mindry.In channel

Days and weeks rolled by and we put up some more videos. Being organised in one place had its benefits. But we grew selfish. We wanted our own website. We were going to link back to Youtube for the videos, of course, but the website would be out of our pockets. Inexpensive domain registration and hosting sites were found, contacted and paid. Finally, we had a website.

All right. High five. No? OK.

Now all that was left was to decorate the site and make it all messed up with "Content Management Software." Despite all resources available for wrecking the site, Messrs. Harish N Kumar and Sharath Kowligi managed to make it a rather nice-looking one. Much hard work was put into it by them, and solely by them, and an organisation of content was achieved. PHPMelody was used to good effect by these gentlemen and, despite no assistance from technical and astrological wizards like Arvind SV, Karthik Dwarakanath, Swaroop Ramachandra and myself, they sorted the site and the subsequent issues out. As a result, we have our very own website, atleast for the next two years:-

http://mindry.in

Despite the name being the Kannada word for a commercial sex worker(or an illegitimate child, we're not sure), the content is mainly PG-13, with the PG requirement due to a happy lack of awareness in children of U R Anantamurthy, Pratap Simha, Bhutan's altruistic king and Robert Mugabe's electoral 'win.' These are some of the things we've touched upon in some of the sketches we've done. We have also spoofed Ravi Belagere's "Crime diary" and S K Jain's random predictions in one of our videos entitled "Yamana solu." There are very good impressions of L K Advani in some other videos, performed ably by Harish. Most of the videos are in Kannada. Some are in English. Don't be pretentious, watch everything.

In a heartfelt plea, I now implore you, the reader, to go and watch the videos on the site and the Youtube channel. Let us know what you think on the blog:-

http://mindry.in/blog

The blog initially tracked the development of the site, but gave up soon and moved on to fake news. We will provide updates there about interesting developments in our lives, however. These have been few and far between, but we'll let you keep track of those.

Thank you.

Atlantic City

2008-07-22T22:32:00.002+05:30

Long overdue(or undue?) update. In light of recent turbulent events in the life of the nation, such as an incessantly crashing Sensex, the spurt of farmer suicides/shootings in Karnataka and the all-encompassing Trust Vote in Parliament, I was left quite swamped with news updates and reacting to them with my usual slow speed took some time. Due to these things, it is perhaps tasteless to write in detail about something as cheap, trivial, fleeting and pointless as wealth and the gaining of it through spurious means. Therefore, I'll just let you know that I had been to Atlantic City last weekend and, sitting at a roulette table consistently for four hours, won 575 dollars.

Yes, for putting no effort and skill into any task other than hoping, I was rewarded by Him. In this case, He was named David and He was the guy who spun the ball around the roulette wheel and announced the number it landed on. But God works in mysterious ways and I'm happy that giving money easily to rather lazy software engineers is one of them.

And as to what happened to me that I would write those disastrous, dismal posts named "The diary of an unfortunate man," well, I thought it was funny and I was taking a shot at some of these Amway/Quickstar operatives who accosted me here(and from whose clutches I escaped by simply not meeting them). Evidently, I was wrong.

The diary of an unfortunate man - II

2008-07-16T02:03:00.011+05:30

October 18th:-

My good wife has just left after her second visit in some months. Although I was initially taken aback at how fast she was coping with the imprisonment of a husband, especially one who loved her so despite her complaints of my being "passive-aggressive," whatever that means, and lazy and negligent and uncaring, I now realise she has to live her life too and cannot wait for me like Penelope(she of the legend of Troy). She must move on, though it pains me that it is so. She said she is making every effort to get me out, in close consultation with judicial authorities and the police, and cannot wait to get back together with me and start afresh. But this is just her kindness and I know that so much time spent apart will certainly have its effect on the marriage. Long distance relationships rarely work, especially when one of the parties involved is imprisoned.

In what seems to be a pattern emerging, another of my limbs has gone missing, this time a foot. An inexplicable thing has happened and a ferocious dog is now my new cellmate. While I welcomed the companionship after many weeks of solitary confinement(although the cell is rather luxurious when lived in alone. You get the cot to yourself, as also the commode/toilet bowl, and the other prisoners look at you enviously. I cannot deny this gives me a certain sense of pleasure, although I know this is wrong.), I had not, even in some of my wilder and more dashing dreams, envisioned a canine cellmate. We didn't take to each other at all and I expressed my displeasure at this arrangement vehemently to the warden, who then expressed his displeasure back by spitting in my face. The warden is a kind man, though, and treats my wife most respectfully, escorting her to my cell, standing a close distance away for guarding her from the envious glances of, and other things thrown at her by, the other prisoners, and seeing her off safely outside. For my wife is a very attractive woman and the world is an evil place. We need good men like him.

The dog, however, is a creature of evil. They have somehow arrested it and sent it to jail, although under what pretext or charge, no one knows. Shoo, sit, heel, down, sleep, drop dead, don't pee there and other regular canine commands do not seem to work on this hellish creature and it routinely ignores them and does as it would. I have lost days of sleep because of this...thing and have napped slightly only when it shut its ghoulish eye. Suffice it to say that yesterday, as I was sleeping on account of extreme and uncontrollable exhaustion and had therefore let down my guard, the hellhound carefully chalked out its plan to destroy me and bit off my right foot. Although I was deeply apologetic about summoning the doctor and the medical staff all the way from Wing D again, I did point out that I was justified this time and that this was the second limb I had lost in my stay here and I really could not afford to lose any more. The doctor seemed to soften at this and reduced the expression of his irritation to just injecting me without an alcohol swab.

January 1st:-

It is the new year. I have spent over six months here and have come to know a lot of people in the prison. Wing B houses perhaps the most dangerous, and therefore interesting, inmates of all the wings. Wing A and C are for female criminals and therefore has the most traffic moving in and out of it. I shall not delve into details here but they are rather adventurous and good-looking and the men love it.

New developments, new developments. One of my kidneys has gone missing too and the doctor tells me it is my lawyer who has sold it on eBay. Although I am stunned at this betrayal by my lawyer, I am more stunned there is an online market for used kidneys and amazed at the reach and application of the Internet. After months of searching, which has cost him a lot of money, apparently, my lawyer(former lawyer, I should say.) has come upon nothing. Not an iota of proof in my support. And he has used my credit card for all his transactions, so the bill payment happens from my wealth. I really hate the man now. Also, I don't know how I'm going to get out of here. The warden doesn't like me, so I'm not going to be allowed to call for another lawyer too.

January 21st:-

It's all over now. My lawyer has apparently escaped with my wife. The warden informs me they were seen yesterday catching a plane for Mauritius and the words "second honeymoon" were overheard. Now, considering my wife and I have ourselves not had a second honeymoon, this clandestine affair has possibly been going on for quite some time. I am not depressed, I am not angry, I understand. The warden could have done a better job of hiding his glee, though.

The dog has died. Never have I been more gleeful at any animal's death. In fact, never have I actually been gleeful at an animal's death. But vengeance is mine. Yesterday, I was attempting to write something in here but this ridiculously dull and stupid animal kept snapping at me with its sharp teeth and I had to keep pushing it away with my one good arm, the other having been bitten off by its much more docile, although only slightly more talkative, predecessor in the cell. So I couldn't write and that angered me greatly, for this is the only good thing happening in my life now. Finally, I could not take it any more and fought back, pouncing on the animal in a bestial rage I did not at all know I possessed within me. The animal too seemed surprised at this sudden counterattack and retreated to a corner, tail between its legs, but I would not let go. I bit off one of its feet and when the medical attendants were taking the animal away to the super-speciality veterinary hospital close by, the good doctor in the prison came up to me and said I had to be put down and he was sorry, but there was nothing he could do about it. But I did receive the good news that the animal had perished, and I emitted a fiendish laughter.

Things seemed to be going well so far, I don't know what went wrong. I guess this is a lesson not to get trapped in one of those scams where you need to sell useless products to people who don't need it. I have only learnt it the hard way.

The hardest way.

The diary of an unfortunate man - I

2008-07-16T00:03:00.012+05:30

May 5th:-

They have shut the doors now and taken away the key. Which is fair enough because there are other dangerous criminals here. Just dangerous criminals, not other, not other.

I am in jail now. And have been here for a week. They have finally consented to give me pen and paper, most of which my companion in the cell ate. I have been put in here for the crime of money embezzlement. It's surprising how this happened, considering I had only invested in failsafe schemes involving healthcare products. Perhaps the name "Scamway" should have given me a clue. This nice gentleman introduced me to several others who were also doing the same thing and had done well for themselves. And how they spoke! This particular chap told us how we needed to have a separate source of income for ourselves apart from our regular jobs and how e-commerce was the way to go and how selling expensive creams and lotions online would help me. I swear, you should have been there to see how well he spoke.

Shoot, my neighbour has woken up now. He snores really loudly and steps on my food if I don't move the plate away from the floor. Also, he hits me if I don't sing a welcoming song as soon as he wakes up. I had better get cracking.

June 13th:-

Bad news. I had put in some good stuff about how to avoid financial scams yesterday over many pages; but my cellmate used that as toilet paper, so I have to do this secretly while he sleeps. He seems a nice person, though he's in here for beating a puppy on its head while simultaneously performing a complex dance routine standing on the neck of a man who was having an affair with his wife. The man survived. Yesterday, in a jocular mood, he bit my arm and, though it pained when one of his sharp molar teeth cut into a vein, the scars are healing nicely now. The stitching up had to be done without any painkillers or sterilised needles, so that was a bit unexpected. But the warden rapped me sharply on the mouth whenever I let out a cry, so I learnt how to deal with pain.

My wife was here yesterday, along with my lawyer, and both of them think I should be out within the week. Admittedly, this is unbridled optimism on their part, since entire families have collapsed on account of my supposed embezzlement and suicides have occurred and no judge is likely to look kindly upon that. But I am touched to see their hope and do fervently wish they are right. My lawyer assures me it can be proved beyond doubt I had nothing to do with the embezzlement and that it was the same man who introduced me to the healthcare product group initially that is responsible for this. Although the technical term he used for this theory was "wild conjecture," he said the proof was mere technicality and that the "impression of the truth" was more vital. He added that he was working on this impression and then proceeded to do an impression of me, much to my wife's amusement. I must say that though I thought it was a terrible impression, my wife's happiness made my heart swell with joy. She deserves to be happy after all I've been through.

August 4th:-

One of my arms appears to disappeared. As a result, I am scribbling this with my other, good arm. My cell is also empty of companions today, which depresses me in a way. For despite his stoic silences(which will be explained away by cynics as being solely due to his lacking major speech organs like the tongue, but not by me. He was reticent, is what I shall choose to say.), his occasional tendency to use my head as a footrest and his ability to bend objects and test them out on me, I had grown rather fond of him and his company.

(The evening of August, the 4th) An update is meet now. The doctor informs me that my erstwhile companion chomped off my arm yesterday morning and had to be taken away and swiftly hanged, in order to prevent the spread of some disease in the prison. Apparently, I "screamed like a girl and lay bleeding like a four-year old" on the floor instead of doing something about it and they had to stop attending to this virulent outbreak of tennis elbow that had occurred in Wing D and come all the way to Wing B, where I am housed, to sew up what was "merely a flesh wound." Additionally, I was unconscious all day yesterday, which would explain why I feel like I have lost a lot of time. Of course, inside the jail walls, time stands still and your only reference points are sundown and sunrise. But the body does not lie.

I will miss that fellow. May he rest in peace now, wherever he is. I dread joining him, certainly, but I do wish him happiness.

Fireworks and follicles

2008-07-10T22:37:00.004+05:30

Or how I find that I'm not at all photogenic, but strangely enough, am a little "videogenic."

Be it known that the author was in Boston last weekend to observe festivities and fireworks commissioned by the city elders for the American Independence Day. Furthermore be it known that the author, shirking off the last vestiges of blatant masculinity on his face, cut off his moustache and is now looking, in his own words, youngish. Yes, I did it. Finally. But more on that later.

By the kind offices of one Akhil Kuduvalli Ramesh, currently studying in Cornell university(although to what end is a mystery), I was able to obtain entry into one of the buildings of MIT, though it was closed for the holiday. From the terrace of this building, we had an astounding view of the Charles river from the Cambridge side, over which the fireworks were scheduled to start exploding. Since I'd arrived there a good four hours early(which is how a lot of the Americans I've met like their guests. Really early. I don't know what they achieve by this, but they do like time.), we had to walk around Boston a bit to find where the hell time was and kill it. With Akhil were his coursemates(he had taken a weird, three-week course in MIT about 'complex systems.' Yes, my first thoughts were the same as yours, exactly:- what a pretentious-sounding thing. But apparently, it's very interesting and very complex, true to its name.), Sven Dietz and Xenib Tufekci. That's a real name, you can't make this stuff up. Sven is Swiss, while Xenib(the 'b' is pronounced as a 'p' since the Turks like aspirated sounds at the end of their names. Those were the exact words employed by her as she explained how it was pronounced.) is Turkish. He's from some place called ETH(I'm guessing "Ecole Tourist Home," but I could be wrong. It's not like Sree Kumaran's Children's Home. That's pronounced Coomruns, by the way. Just so you don't get laughed at when you meet somebody from that school and accidentally pronounce it right.) and does stuff in biology while she's a professor of sociology. Akhil, being a mechanical engineer, was totally out of place in this group and it was only natural that the three of them should take a course together. Fine, be it so.

I had Guinness in a real Irish pub, served by a real Irish waitress with a real Irish accent. It's an astounding accent, not as rough and impregnable as the Scottish brogue and not as gay and affected as the English. Last week, I had a gaggle of three Irish girls splitting a cab with me(with money, not with an axe and some blowtorches and someone saying "Quick, the cops'll be here any minute!") and the driver said the same thing:- you've got to love that accent. So anyway, Guinness is great. One of my colleagues has a pin-up saying "Guinness for strength." I have to agree.

You know, when you stare at a methi paratha long enough, in the same way that you stare at one of those 3-D pictures where there's something hidden, I swear the colour changes.

Some snatches of conversation before the fireworks:-
"So what constitutes life?"
"Anything which can reproduce by itself." "By that measure, Akhil is..?" "That's not funny."
"I'm trying to find the minimum number of enzymes necessary to sustain life. I think it's around nine hundred."
"That hat makes you look like a pimp." "He is a pimp." "It makes you look like you."
"Can we leave now?" "No, the pimp wants to watch."
"I want to buy cowboy boots."
"I'm not just a pretty face, you know."
"So is Kannada a language? I've never heard of it."

The last one? From an Indian girl who was born in Gujarat and spent a lot of time in India. Thank you.

We went in to the building at around 8:30 at night and the Boston Symphony Orchestra was playing somewhere near the edge of the river. They were on Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture when we started listening and swiftly moved on to the theme from 'Rocky.' Not 'Eye of the tiger,' the other one. Akhil and I discussed the advantages of being the only two people who knew Kannada and swore to glory about everything, even when we liked something. Kannada is a highly malleable language in this regard. It is beautiful when used by a poet, and guttural when used by a pervert. I haven't seen such flexibility in most other languages. Even the most romantic poem in Tamil sounds like a war cry, although the words themselves might be beautiful beyond description(ref:- the amazing poem recited by Prakash Rai to Tabu in 'Iruvar.' Unnodu naan vaazhntha ovvoru maNitthuLiyum maraNappaDukkayilum marakkaathu, kaNmaNiye...take a bow, Vairamuthu.). Telugu doesn't have the strength factor going for it. Efforts are underway in this regard in some dialects, but the effect is not pleasant. But I digress.

The fireworks show began at 10:30 PM and it was brilliant. Exploding rocket after exploding rocket shot out of a floating platform erected in the middle of the river and soared to dazzling beauty in the sky. They burst brilliantly with such sound and light that it was like witnessing the birth of a galaxy. The emergence of the miniatures stars on earth went on for half an hour and we watched it stunned, muted by awe at the magnificence.

To give you a brief, very bad, idea of how good it was, here:-

It was a great show. You really should have been there. I don't take very good pictures, nor do I appear well in them. So I don't venture into that adventure. Besides, it's very irritating nowadays when every idiot with a powerful camera stops every five seconds to take a picture of something or the other. A bug, a bee, a flower petal, a distant bird, an outstretched hand silhouetted against a light, a child about to take flight and land in a puddle of muddy water, feet, hands, cups of tea, wine glasses, ashtrays, cigarettes, books lying strewn about, Fabindia kurtas, those communist/journalist bags, glasses on a coffee table. We made a bad decision, moving from those 36-photograph rolls to cheap digital memory cards. Whoever made semiconductors cheap made a huge mistake.

Additionally, I got a haircut(for 16 dollars, no less) and cut off my moustache. I look younger now, thank you. I even fixed the printer of the hair salon. I was on a roll that day. I'll be sending a short video of how I look now to some of you who asked for a picture of it. I'm terribly un-photogenic. Or, terribly bad at taking pictures of myself. I like the second one. It shows I'm humble.

Harvard

2008-07-03T05:26:00.002+05:30

Or, Hah-vahd.

This weekend was one of little activity, apart from watching "Wall-E" on Saturday and a visit to the famed, aforenamed university on Sunday. 'Wall-E,' at the risk of sounding amasculine, is a very cute movie. It is, really. As with all Pixar movies, the animation is brilliant, as is the feature they play before the actual movie. The story is more sober than their previous adventures, 'The Incredibles' and 'Cars.' Earth is a huge wasteland, with humans having left for a better life in another galaxy and only the robots remaining on the dead planet. The last robot left by the time the movie begins is Wall-E(Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class), a trash compacting robot. He builds mammoth structures with the blocks of trash he compacts, collecting interesting objects he finds along the way, his only companion being an unnamed cockroach. This idyllic life is interrupted by the appearance of a giant spaceship which deposits a sleek, sophisticated, white probe named EVA(Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evalautor) and leaves. Wall-E is amazed by EVA and soon enough, a sort of romance develops between the robots. This is abruptly ended when Wall-E gifts EVA a plant which he has found in the course of his garbage collection. The story changes from here and you'll have to watch it to find out what happens next because I don't want to type any more about it. But it's very good and very funny too. And, it has a message, although some might call it preachy.

Harvard university was established in 1636, said our guide on the Harvard Unofficial Tour. Purandara Dasa was established in 1484, said I, beaming. This had little impact on our good guide and the process continued. The Unofficial Tours are a good way of getting around the Harvard campus and getting to know it reasonably well and learning about the history associated with each significant piece of the sprawling area. Established by students as a more fun and interesting way of going around the place, as opposed to the dull, official tour, it has grown in popularity so as to thoroughly rout the official one. Conducted by current students, it's great and you should take it when you're there. It's up to you to pay them or not, at the end of the tour of about one hour, but most people do. We were shown around by the good-looking third-year Jordan(female, 1 nos.) and the rather short first-year-who-resembled-Forest-Whitaker Tourelle(Turell? Not sure. Male, 1 nos.). They did a good job, keeping it lively and interesting. The four themes of the tour were Harvard life and lingo, the infamous Harvard-Cambridge(town where Harvard is, not the English university) rivalry, Something Else and correlating American history with the growth of Harvard. It's a walking tour, so if you can't walk for one hour, don't go, lazy ass.

A visit to MIT also happened and it was discovered that the famed university is a disappointing clutch of ugly buildings. With weeds growing in front of it and not the good kind. The computer science department has a facade in which no two walls intersect at 90 degrees. What a way to show how cool you are. The amazing thing is, some of the most brilliant people in the world live, study and work in these poorly built structures and still manage to emerge unscathed and give to the world of their extraordinary intellectual largesse. There's a corridor in the university called the Infinite Corridor. It ends, after a while. A really short while. I'd say it's only about a hundred feet or so.

I have discovered an obsession with ‘Kabhi kabhi Aditi zindagi mein’ from ‘Jaane tu ya jaane naa.’ It’s become the theme for my visit to the US. When I sit in my room at night, typing at this thing, by the window and the light casting a, well, light on the highway outside the hotel, the scene is like many of those Indians-in-the-US-about-to-leave-for-home-but-remembering-all-the-pleasant-and-
bittersweet-things-that-happened-to-them-during-their-stay-here movies. What a poorly dramatic image.

Last week, there was a power cut in Chelmsford. A lady in our office said this was the first time this had happened since she started living here (about ten years), that this wasn’t normal. Sure, when we bring it, we bring it.

I ordered this extraordinary collection of books called "The Griffin and Sabine trilogy." I'd never heard about till recently, though it's been around for seventeen years. It's wonderful. I can see where all those "people who fall in love only by writing letters to each other" came from. Look it up.

Dosas complain of discrimination towards idlis

2008-07-01T02:50:00.001+05:30

Jun 30(Reuters) - Dosas all over the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu have dashed off a strongly worded letter of protest to the chairman of the Food Corporation of India complaining of discrimination against them, in favour of idlis. The discrimination, they say, is because idlis are small, fair and round and the all-too-common-and-well-known Indian fascination with white skin is leading to them taking precedence over the browner-skinned dosas as the South Indian breakfast item of choice.

The elderly spokesperson of the Agila Indhiya Dosai Sangham(AIDS), Plain dosa, yesterday expressed his displeasure over the dietary habits of South Indians across the world by revealing these telling facts. Despite their evident crunchiness, their abilities to host a larger number of vegetables within their ample person and their ready accord with sambar, chutney, pudi/podi, rasam, various vegetable palyas/poriyals/curries and other gastronomical side-dish commonalities, more and more people were ignoring them and moving on to the easier-to-eat idlis, which went well only with sambar, chutney, pudi/podi and ghee-plus-sugar. Plain suspected this was mainly because of a numbers-game psychology among consumers wherein they felt happier by eating ten idlis rather than two dosas. The superiority of the quantity of idlis eaten, he added, gave people a false high and they would go out to the world with unreal estimates of their own strengths and capabilities, only to be brutally cut down to size later by real life. Dosas helped keep a perspective of reality, he further postulated. Hakuna matata, he strangely concluded.

Masala, agreeing with close friend Rava, said the idlis would destroy what standing and benefits dosas had in average South Indian society. Demanding safeguards for the rights of the dosa community at large, Masala said reservations needed to be introduced in hotels for dosas and the lion's share of the menu devoted to the idlis(a mammoth two lines) be cut down. Fringe groups like Paper Masala, Rava masala, (the Telugu faction of)Pesarattu, Butter masala and splinter groups within these fringe groups, like Paper Butter masala, Rava Paper masala, Open Butter masala, Rava Open masala, Rava Paper Butter Open masala and Total Family Damage dosa, have echoed these sentiments.

However, Set, disagreeing with them, joined hands with the venerable Onion ootthappam in saying the idlis had marketed themselves successfully as good, non-fattening and easy-to-digest and no one could fault them for their success. They have drawn much flak from the dosa community for these controversial observations. Major hotels and roadside shacks across the majority dosa consuming belt in Tamil Nadu, consisting of Madurai, Vizhuppuram and Tirunelveli, organised a public burning of Set's latest book, 'Batter Pan - the dosa which refused to grow up.' Death threats have been issued against major idlis in the state and security has been beefed up especially in the city of Thanjavur, home of the Thanjavur idli. Matters came to a head last Saturday in Salem when, at a conference organised by the AIDS and presided over by Plain dosa, a thorough denouncement of the white/rice idli was carried out and an effigy of the idli was dragged through the streets of the city, beaten with slippers and set on fire. Former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee expressed sadness over the incident, saying the sentiments of millions of idli eaters all over the country had been hurt by this act of wanton disregard and callousness in Salem.

The vada, a close compatriot of the idli and star of death ceremonies all over South India, refused to comment excessively on the issue but sided with the extremist Idli Brothers, Akki and Rava, in demanding restraining orders on the activities of the AIDS. Adopting an unusually belligerent stance, the vada said that the dosas(dose -- pronounced though-say -- in Karnataka, dosais or thosais in Tamil Nadu, pancakes in the Western world) were trying to usurp the position earned and enjoyed justifiably by the humble idlis.

As of press time, the issue had refused to die down despite new statistics revealing that youngsters, the most powerful and targeted demographic, actually preferred avalakki(beaten rice) and diet coke to anything else. Media analysts believe that Rajdeep Sardesai is somehow to blame for all this.

Apple releases iYawn

2008-06-26T23:40:00.003+05:30

Apple Inc., the American multi-billion dollar computer, phone and multimediaware giant, today announced the release of its landmark iYawn software. This software will enable users to greet releases of new software and/or devices by rival manufacturers and companies with a stylish, sophisticated yawn. Apple's new wunderkind was unveiled today at a press conference organised today by Steve Ballmer, with Apple chief Steve Jobs in attendance. The unintended release of iYawn happened when Ballmer began extolling the virtues of the new and improved Zune and how it compared to the iPod. Jobs, sitting in the front row, unleashed a mammoth, yet crystal clear and unmuffled, yawn. Media representatives present were surprised at this information leak perpetrated by the very top management of Apple and were quick to grope around for a name for it, before Steve Wozniak, who was also present in what seemed to be a gathering of all the aged druids of the world, came up with the name 'iYawn.' Glad to accept anything beginning with small-letter-i, reviewers were quick to give the new, albeit unproven, software a good 9.5 on 10 rating.

Gadgetwatchers are now waiting for next month's release of Apple's iAnything, a device which will do anything, go anywhere and be available anytime. Late author Douglas Adams was not available for comment.

New York, New York

2008-06-26T07:09:00.015+05:30

A week have we spent in the United States and it has already been packed with hectic activity. We have visited two great metropolitan cities of the Western hemisphere -- Boston and New York – and been much impressed. Though this isn't anything compared to the amount of work, say, a worker ant gets done in a day, for average Indian men like us, it's a lot. We didn’t get any cheap places to stay in in the Big Apple, so we did the only logical thing:- panicked. Then someone with a level head called up cheap places in New Jersey and we stayed in this slightly nominal place in the outskirts of that city. It was being managed by this dragon-like Indian woman who looked down on us because we were from her home country. She kept giving us this look, like a bad smell, a perfidious malodour, was emanating from the floor near her somewhere.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. We haven't even left Chelmsford, this charming, rich little village, yet. We took possibly the most economical, if not the most inconvenient, way of getting to New York. First, getting to the train station in Lowell. Then, a commuter train to Boston(North Station, please. They're too pompous to have everything in one place. They have to have two-to-three stations.). Then, via Boston subway(the fellow operated like an orangutan performing brain surgery. Not well, to make myself clearer.) to Boston South station. Then, the Chinese came along.

Till a few years ago, Greyhound had been the primary and unchallenged bus service operator across America. You would see Greyhound buses crisscrossing the country (insofar as large buses can or have the need to crisscross across a sparsely populated country), virtually unopposed. They had the right to set what prices they would, offer what services they deigned to and smash to bits the skulls of what deer they came across as they sped ruthlessly across the great American landscape.

That all changed. The Chinese came along and said they would be happy to lug people between major cities for just fifteen dollars. Compare this to the fifty-five which Greyhound used to charge passengers for the same distance(Boston-New York). After some quick calculation, most people decided 'Screw luxury, I'm taking the cheap bus.' A wise choice. After all, the buses were good, there were no frills attached but that didn't matter since it wasn't a mammoth journey anyway and the guy stopped in between for ten minutes, and the entire transportation service was efficient. Though the service was named funny, going by the moniker Fung Wah, and the female conductors almost always screamed at you("No no NO! No getting off the bus. We gotta leave now. You sit down, please!" As though I was suddenly going to fill up with helium and sit up, stuck to the ceiling.), there was no complaining about the to-the-point nature of their operation. If you drive fast and fancy cars, it takes you three and a half hours to get to New York from Boston, apparently. But the price of fuel being what it is, fifteen dollars seems a very good bargain, despite the bus taking four-and-a-half hours for the journey.

That's that. We got to New York late at night, since we could leave Chelmsford only after office on Friday night last. Despite exciting events along the way(this woman kept sitting up excitedly and her top kept falling off. She didn't seem too perturbed and neither were we. In other news, an Indian girl was sitting in the last seat with two guys, wearing only a shirt. The girl, not the guys. She was ugly, though.), we slept through most of the journey. As we pulled into the rain-sloshed streets of New York close to midnight, visions of jazz and DeNiro-and-Cybill Shepherd-with-Bernard-Herrmann-playing-sax-in-the-background and Woody Allen filled my head, with the soft lights from the buildings streaming into the bus kaleidoscopically through the raindrops on the windows and making the drops shimmer like fairies' wings.

New York is where you should live if you’re here(unless you’re living in Chelmsford, which is quite the opposite). Shit like California should be banned (or, at the very least, scratched off the map). This magnificent city – the streets, the people, the atmosphere - bewitches you instantly. They call it beauty capital of the world and it truly is. Nowhere have I seen such a huge congregation of stunningly beautiful women as I have in New York. Of course, there is the possibility that they may be visitors but I will leave that cynical speculation to atheists and people with piles.

We followed the first-time-tourists routine strictly. We got on the hop on-hop off New York City tour buses at Port Authority Bus Terminal(PABT) and this British ex-soldier named Keith told us a lot of things about New York. He said he'd been to India twenty-one times and to Bangalore about five times. We wished him well but didn't pay him any money. We're like that:- all heart, no money. He did tell us fascinating stories about New York, though. Showed us Katz's Deli, where the salad scene from "When Harry met Sally" was shot. Also showed us Fiddlesticks, the pub/inn where Jimi Hendrix and his band would mess around in his formative years before he hit big time and time hit back. Bob Dylan was also there for a while, apparently.

The Statue of Liberty. It's nice. A bit old, but still nice. We should ship it to India. How come no one gave us a gift for any anniversary of our Independence? Maybe Italy will on our centenary. Anyway, I bought a bookmark for someone on Liberty Island. You know who you are. We also went up to the top of the Empire State building just before sunset and it offered us a magnificent view. Yes, the night view is even more spectacular but we didn't have the time. Because at night, we were at...

Times Square – the centre of the world. This amazing junction of roads is possibly the greatest place on earth to while away your time. Yes, I know, "you're just saying that because this is your first time abroad and what about MG Road and Brigade road, huh? Bloody, come to Malleshwaram and we'll show you hangout places. Times ante, Square ante. Hogo lo, nin a***n!" But Times Square truly is amazing. There are simply too many places to see/visit/checkout. Most importantly, there's a Hard Rock Cafe and it has very nice seating and good music was heard as I went in for an inspection with a friend. We couldn't find any seating, though, so we walked out, disappointed. But we're going back there again; no worries, children. They light up the place like no place else and you feel so happy for human progress, one of the few times you feel so. Yes, a bunch of bright lights can delight me. I'm like a low-end child or a high-end ape.

Here's a low-res video of Times Square made by one of my colleagues. It makes you wish you had been there, but in better quality.

I occur occasionally in this video, making as video of my own. The other smiling sheepishly at the camera are my colleagues. You will notice:- not one female. We are very angry about that.

Madame Tussaud’s was where we were at the next day(Sunday). Many among us posed ridiculously with wax models of famous people. I can be seen in various bad pictures with Woody Allen, Julia Roberts, Vince and Jules from 'Pulp fiction,' Jennifer Lopez, Jennifer Aniston, Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin. A large man with a sheepish smile can also be seen in some pictures with Angelina Jolie, Elle Macpherson, Beyonce Knowles, Salma Hayek, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Abraham Lincoln. This is our colleague.

We ate at reasonably small Italian places. It's been easy for some of us vegetarians to survive in the US, if we're not too particular about taste. But we can cook, so that's ok.

Chinatown in New York sucks. Worse than the spaces below the KR Market(Sirsi circle) flyover. And there's nothing that's so great or awesome that it merits a journey to this little world-unto-itself. Skip it, we should have been told. Amusing incident from Chinatown for next post, since this has already become too long. And so, I will end abruptly.

Baby escapes from crib, police concoct cock-and-bull story

2008-06-18T23:15:00.001+05:30

In a bizarre story, a baby was found missing from a hospital in Bangalore today, only to be found in the back of a truck a few miles away an hour later. Police, however, have refused to accept that hospital security was lax and have come up with an insane cock-and-bull story. The baby, police said, climbed over the walls of the crib, overpowered three male nurses, fought through a posse of armed guards and policemen using only a bib and finally vaulted over the hospital walls using a eucalyptus tree growing in the compound.

Top neonatal surgeons and paediatricians have clashed with the police over this story, saying it was highly unlikely a baby only a few hours old could have developed the necessary limb functions to even walk, let alone vault walls and expertly manoeuvre its way through a tightly guarded hospital. The presence of so many armed guards and policemen was not explained by the police or the hospital authorities, leading to a constitutional crisis when the minister for health complained of oppression by the government in his operations. Exactly why anyone would want to oppress the minister of health, especially since he was from the same party as the government, was not made clear by the honourable minister.

The baby was found later by an alert squirrel, who then wound through havoc and traffic to warn the hospital staff. The baby was then safely delivered to its rich businesspeople parents, who were disappointed because it was a girl.

Boston

2008-06-16T05:42:00.003+05:30

Of course, being Indians, we can't resist going on the mandatory 'sightseeing' tour of a new city we invade. Additionally, we cannot also resist ogling everything(and everybody) and not buying anything(and anybody). We did that today, the nine of us here, with Boston. Poor Boston.

I need to go back there again. Probably by myself. Nine conflicting interests does not for a good tourist experience make. The good gentleman from Boston Helpdesk, Tom SomethingIrish, took us to Faneuil Hall market place. I found two places there I want to go visit:- Ned Devine's Irish Pub and Sam's Cafe at Cheers. Apparently, being in Boston and not visiting an Irish Pub is like...being in Ireland and not visiting and Irish pub? Or something as ghastly as that.

There was a gay pride parade on today. To commemorate this, we did nothing. But the Boston police were marking their territory by pissing on the Bostonian landscape with their cars and towtrucks. Cop-spoor.

Speaking of armed people, we also unnecessarily went on board an old ship. This marine(I'm guessing) took us around on a tour of the ship, which was quite nice. The best part was a 75 millimetre anti-aircraft gun they have on board. They don't have a large, wooden steering wheel, though. That would really have made my day.

Also a lot of churches here. A very religious people seem to occupy the housings and residences of the city. Roads in old Boston are like those in Shivajinagar in Bangalore, or Mambalam in Madras, or NR Mohalla in Mysore, or Hauz Khas in Delhi(I can't give any more city analogies, sorry. I'm out.). But you come out of these largely Italian neighbourhoods and the roads are fine.

So what's my point? Nothing. I'm going to watch the Daily Show online now. Internet's pretty fast here in the hotel and I intend to use it. I cooked rice today, by the way. It was smooth as a baby's cheek, as I said to someone. Also, I called some people who'd asked me to call. What's with asking me to call and not being home? Or being busy for well over twenty minutes?

Here

2008-06-15T08:25:00.007+05:30

I are here. I has arrived.

After a journey of a mammoth 13000 km in under 24 hours(not counting waiting times at airports for the connecting flight and various security measures which, if taken into account, easily edge out the Jurassic period in length), I am in friendly Chelmsford. Voted the 21st best place to live in the United States, according to a poll conducted on the Internet(haven of all that is credible and authentic), Chelmsford is a little, quiet, rather green town that nestles snugly in the shadow of its more illustrious neighbour, Boston. There's stuff to eat, drink, gaze curiously at. It's a proper little town.

Never mind that. Charles DeGaulles airport in Paris(Aeroportes de paris) is HUGE. I mean, if you thought a dinosaur was huge, this place could walk up to a dinosaur and make it wish for a quiet story with grandma. It's as big as a city and, walking into it from the plane and driving around in a bus to get to a different terminal, you are reminded of a lot of scenes from Francois Truffaut's 'Fahrenheit 451.' I love the way the recorded woman's voice says Terminal 2C, Terminal 2E and Terminal 2A. "Deux see, deux uh, deux aah..." Women should speak French; men shouldn't.

The journey to Paris was flagged off at the new BIAL. It's good, our new Bangalore airport. Except for the exorbitant "User Development Fee"(I paid a thousand bucks. I didn't feel any more developed than I already was.). The Bangalore-Paris flight, courtesy Air France, was wholly unremarkable. What strikes one the most about CDG(Charles DeGaulles airport. They call it that. Apparently, abbreviation is not a cool enough fad for the French.) is how expensive it is. Everything is expensive there. Perfumes(Givenchy, Hugo Boss, Nina Ricci, Whatever etc.), food, calls to India, everything. The Paris-Boston flight was livened up by two empty seats next to me and a baby who woke up at regular intervals, checked his place in the universe and emitted experimental, rudimentary wails, before going back to sleep. Also, never select your meal preference beforehand. I did that, selected the dourly named Asian vegetarian meal. Turns out, Air France have never met an Asian Vegetarian and have got his/her menu off a website somewhere. So the meal I got on the Paris-Boston flight consisted of a dish containing potatoes, spinach, tomatoes and curds and tasted strongly like toothpaste. But they had also made the best peas pulao I have tasted to date, so they're forgiven for the former transgression. If I hadn't selected my stupid food preference, I could have had pasta. It's vegetarian too. Speaking of which, never select your meal preference beforehand. Ask for a vegetarian meal when they serve you and you can get what you want.

Speaking of food, they really do supersize everything here, atleast in Chelmsford.

Kinship was also identified at Charles DeGaulles. Apparently, one of the men at the security checkpoint had the same brand of watch that I did(Swatch. We are gourment school.); he got right excited about it and told me he had purchased it not many years ago. I told him it was really expensive, being 5000 bucks and all. He was startled at this massive fluctuation of prices in the watch economy(he had bought it for a 100 Euros.) and refused to talk to me after that, as though it was all my fault somehow. I was sad, for this was a friendship of 'what was and shall never be' quality.

So now I sit in this lovely room they have allotted me, typing away at a little keyboard on a table in the corner. It will be three months before I see home again. I shall live out of a suitcase until then. I will not see my mother, and my father and my sister, whenever I want. Nor some of the more nefarious of my friends. I'm not homesick the first evening out of town. But it's a change that'll need some getting used to.

There's a place called Chili's in Chelmsford that serves huge glasses of rather delicious margaritas. Which is way better than the whisky and champagne they served on board Air France. One glass of very minute measures of each was enough for me to judge them all. Especially after the movies they had. I watched most of "PS. I love you." That was the only watchable movie. Everything else was like, "There will be blood" or "Harry Potter" or something. I hate crap.

We are leaving for America

2008-06-13T19:04:00.001+05:30

Leaving for the US tonight, my friends. I will be back in Bangalore on September 8th. Miss me or live miserably.

It's not like they have no Internet there, of course. My presence on the web shall be felt.

Senior citizens launch protest against fuel price hike

2008-06-06T01:30:00.001+05:30

Aged, venerable senior citizens of Jayanagar 8th block, Bangalore city, have gone on an indefinite strike against the fuel price hike announced by the government yesterday. The decision was taken at a Senior Citizens' Welfare Organisation(SCWO) meet organised at Bangalore's KrishnaRao park, after the government decided to up petrol and diesel prices. The meet had actually been scheduled for last Monday, but most members could get here only yesterday.

The raise in petrol prices by Rs. 5 a litre and diesel prices by Rs. 3 a litre has dealt a severe blow to the common man, opined senior Senior citizen KrishRao, who has existed since the days of the Raj. Rao, 88, standing up at a rate that would have alarmed most infants, condemned unilaterally the sudden and substantial increase and demanded that the government do a thorough review of this move. He was subsequently warmly applauded by his peers as he sat down all by himself.

Veteran and former employee of the AG's office A.S.RamaRao joined hands with KrishRao in berating the government. The government has let down the people, he said, and it must step down since it has lost all moral authority to rule. RamaRao then walked slowly to a nearby branch of the State Bank of Mysore to yell at the rude tellers and exclaim "Clarks! Clarks! I want some fussdivision clarks. Where are the clarks? In my thirtyfive years of association with the banking industry, this is the worsssst bank I have ever seen."

"Worst, I tell you" he added, after finally letting go of KrishRao's hands, which he had held in the previous paragraph. Both the Raos also reminisced at this juncture about how Rs. 5 was their first salary when they joined their first jobs and Rs. 3 was a grand increment and relapsed into a lengthy silence, accompanied by a lot of staring into the distance.

The protest came as some surprise to the government, who wondered what the ulterior motives of the geriatrics were. Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi reacted with caution when questioned about the event. We are observing the situation carefully, he said. When it starts getting out of hand, we will hose them down and lob tear gas shells at them and run away, he warned. The government's stand on this issue is one of guarded optimism, he added, mystifying everybody present at this totally unnecessary press conference.

The senior citizens are also now planning a hunger strike beginning tomorrow, as a strong symbolic gesture. Sceptics say this will affect nothing, since they eat so less anyway. Undaunted, however, KrishRao and RamaRao have urged fellow senior citizens to join them in this protest. 'I have given up my breakfast of one idli, as KrishRao has given up his customary morning meal of two grapes,' said RamaRao. 'We urge our quaint brothers and sisters to support us and give up their paltry meals as well. Rice is also very expensive nowadays. In our days, we used to get four hundred kilos of rice for just two rupees. Now, everything is costly.' KrishRao and RamaRao have telephoned their sons in New York and Chicago respectively about this strike, and their children have wished them well, but asked not to be disturbed as they were in meetings. One friend of KrishRao's, Govindsamy, is reported to be alive, pleasantly surprising Rao, and is said to have informed Rao that he has just started from his home in Basavanagudi and would be arriving next week. Both the Raos here are thrilled with the news and have shed copious tears of joy, which they have started to shed at any sort of news nowadays.

KrishRao and RamaRao have been contacted by Rajkumar Hirani to be cast in roles where they can easily be insulted or disrespected by younger characters in his next film, so that audiences can be emotionally manipulated into tears.

Randomly tagged

2008-06-04T02:14:00.003+05:30

In a random display of conceit, I will now answer various self-chosen tags, even though no one has tagged me. This is democracy.

Last movie seen in a theatre:-
Vantage point. This movie sucked. It's stupid. We've all seen 'Rashomon.' They've just raised the number of points of view from six to eight. And Dennis Quaid was dead! Why did they have to dig up his corpse and make it act?

I might have watched some other movie, but this is the last one I remember.

Favourite magazine(s):-
"The Insider's Look at NUclear Missiles(TILNUM)" -- edited by Abdul Kalam.
There should be one.

"Easy cures for fistula" -- edited by U R Anantamurthy.
There should be one.

Favourite fast food place:-
Dr. Gangadhar's. This little cart outside Foodworld in Jayanagar 7th block. Ghati? Yes. Health hazard? Yes. Great taste? Yes. Worth the risk of life and limb? Oh God, definitely.

What is the first thing you think of when you wake up?
'Good, I'm not dead yet. Now what was that dream all about?'

Name all the different cities/towns you have lived in:
Bangalore, Mysore, Hosur(at the end of Hosur road, yes), Madras.

Future child’s name:-
Dindigul

I pass this tag on to:-
No one. No one has to wait for people to tag them. Do it yourself. Or don't, actually.

In continuing speculation that I am a girl, the latest revealed fact that I like "Grey's anatomy" a lot and have been heard humming the theme to myself occasionally has come as a bolstering shot in the arm for members of the speculating faction. That is SO not true!

Local news -- murder roundup

2008-05-30T20:38:00.002+05:30

Something of an in-joke, both of these. Not very funny, unfortunately. So they're just 'in-'s.

Software engineer calls the Beatles gay; gets killed

Sripati Sharma, a Bangalore-based software engineer temporarily posted in Scotland, was killed yesterday after calling The Beatles' music 'gay' and 'old.' The incident occurred when he was having a heated argument with a friend at a local Barista outlet and began badmouthing the iconic rock-and-roll group, angering his companion. The stabbing was perpetrated at the moment when he said 'If they hadn't done it, someone else would've,' leading to a penetration of his chest by a sharp knife, without much of a protest from him. The companion, identified only as 'M,' is reportedly a great fan of the greatest musical band in human history and is said to have ripped out Sripati's heart, stomped on it and thrown it away after the stabbing and danced around to the notes of 'A day in the life,' even though that is a highly un-danceable song.

The incident shocked onlookers, who were peacefully sipping expensive, tasteless beverages on a placid evening. "Poor guy," said Sarala Mukherjee, 18, "he looked so cute. Despite the crooked nose. Did he have orbital cellulitis? Does anyone know? His dress sense was impeccable, though."
"I will always remember him for having taken money away from me and never giving it back. He was a good friend." said Naveen Menezes, a noted Christian scholar who used to be at the receiving end of some of Sripati's more racist jokes. Dr. Menezes was interrupted at this point by Samsheer Ahmed, his roommate, to watch 'Ramayan.'

Friends, of which he had two, said they were profoundly disturbed by Sripati's death. Badly-dressed locally-placed engineer Akshay Sukravadhanee said this was highly unexpected of M, especially since Sripati had just gifted her a moderately-priced watch bought in London.

Baldy reads 'Raghuvamsha' to impress ex; gets killed nevertheless

Although love might make the world go round, it did nothing pleasant to bald local Sharath Kodandapani on Tuesday when he was hit over the head by a large copy of Kalidasa's 'Raghuvamsha.' Angered by his insistence upon reading the Sanskrit epic at the behest of an ex-girlfriend of his, Sharath's current girlfriend, whom no one has seen and is therefore reported to be a Yeti, or M S Swaminathan, snatched the bulky copy out of his hands and slammed him over the head with it. The head of Kodandapani, which housed a weak skull owing to his unwarranted baldness(onset at age 15), cracked quickly and Kalidasa's famous work now lies decorated with cerebrospinal fluid.

Kodandapani, a member of the hit comic group Mindry.in and a veteran of several comedy sketches, was beloved by his friends and co-workers, both professionally and in comedy, and has left a great legacy behind, along with a void that will be hard to fill. His comedic talents were always at the fore, whether he was playing irreverent interviewers (evidenced by his performances in this video, or this) or minor historical characters(as in this). He was a kind, giving man, said old friend and co-performer Harish K Kamaraj(an illiterate, yet capable actor himself), and would guide youngsters selflessly.

Kodandapani is survived by his camera, two pencils and an old, used condom.

Local teenager completes hundredth book of reading last page sneakily

2008-05-29T12:08:00.002+05:30

Rajesh Sagar Reddy, a BTM Layout resident, has completed one hundred books of reading the last page sneakily before actually reading the rest of the book. The 17-year old Children of Bodom fan, "Razr" to friends, said he had achieved this feat with the seminal J R R Tolkien work, "The hobbit" and was now going to celebrate it in a big way with friends and family.

"I'm thrilled with this achievement!" said a rubicund Rajesh. "It all began with the fourth Harry Potter book, in 2002. I accidentally turned to the last page while trying to read the blurbs on the back cover. I read the last line and felt guilty, but thought nothing about it. Then it happened again, this time with Agatha Christie's 'And then there were none.' And then I discovered, this could actually be the beginning of something big. I started doing it for every book I read afterwards. It never spoiled my fun of reading the book. Plus, my girlfriend now respects me more, since I can predict what happens in a book without actually having read it and also because I'm impeccably dressed."

What started with just reading the last line soon grew into a more ambitious project for Rajesh. He started reading entire last chapters before beginning the books. He and his friends even started a book-reading club, with everyone reading the last lines or chapters aloud to everyone else. Their antics, however, have not impressed an older generation.

"They've started reading James Corbett, James Joyce and James Kutty PC!" complained BTM local Justice Venkatagiri. "And they take it to ridiculous lengths too. Just yesterday, one of them was trying to read the last page of a pamphlet." Justice, who, in his heydays, had pioneered a First-Pagers club(which met with considerably less success than Razr's group), is distressed by the reading habits of today's youngsters. "None of them reads the old way, from beginning to end. In this T20 era, they require everything to be delivered to them fast. Plus, there's all the drinking, making out, partying and wild, illegal pre-marital sex to be had. So, they really can't find time for books."

"I really miss the old days when we used to read even telephone directories and dictionaries from beginning to end" he added wistfully. He recalled, at this juncture, how he had postponed a major bypass surgery to complete a fourth reading of Wren and Martin's guide to English grammar, leading to a complete failure of his cardiovascular system as well as a low score in the Senior Citizens' Unnecessary yet Mandatory Baccalaurate Accreditation in Grammar(SCUMBAG).

Razr's father is reported to be buying him a Maybach car for his achievement and said he hoped youngsters everywhere would take heart from his son's achievement and follow their dreams.

An anthem for the ages

2008-05-24T03:28:00.001+05:30

Or "Why interspersing English words in non-English songs is the best thing since water"

In this age of rapid industrial progress and fast-paced cricket, no one has time for writing songs which reflect the sensitive nature of the poet, or the time to listen to such songs. But once in a while, along comes a composition that makes you stop all you're doing, sit up, take notice and feel, really feel, the poet's sensitivity. You connect instantly with the words, becoming engrossed in the way the writer pens a conversation between the characters in his song, and lose yourself in his magical spell of lilting verse.

"Bangari yaare nee bulbul," the title track from the hit movie "Gaja," is one such.

The lyricist...nay, it would be far too demeaning to call him a mere lyric-writer. The poet pens this song as a conversation between the hero, the protagonist of this film, the eponymous Gaja, and the heroine who, we hope, is not named Gajini. Though there is no indication in the initial few musical bars of the song about whether or not the two characters know each other, the poet clears this up soon enough.

"Bangari yaare nee bulbul?"
(Golden maiden, who are you, bulbul?)

The poet thus makes the hero make the first move, enquiring of the maiden her name. However, in fear that such a simple query might not drive the point home, he makes the lead character ask the question again:-

"Singari yaare nee bulbul?"
(Bedecked maiden, who are you, bulbul?)

The repeated references to the nightingale-like avian creature, in these lines, harks back to the old days of poetry, when poets would often resort to such repetitions of words. Perhaps influenced by yesterday greats such as Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti, Omar Khayyam and Alberuni, the poet here uses the word 'bulbul' in each line, emphasising the dulcet tones of the heroine.

Now, the young lady responds, albeit immodestly:-
"Bengali beDagi naa. Chingari hudugi naa."
(I am a Bengali beauty. I am a flaming, passionate girl.)

While this may seem self-flattering, it is, in fact, indicative of the self-confidence of today's youth, many of whom have a disproportionate amount of command over the Kannada language and wear earrings in their eyebrows. These lines also employ a clever device. Though she is a Bengali woman, by making her say these words in Kannada, the poet cleverly establishes that it is possible for 'outsiders' to be well-integrated with the local soil and language and adapt to the local customs, thus dealing a cleverly-veiled blow to Raj Thackeray's hypotheses.

Immediately after these lines, though, some words are uttered that are difficult to understand. Although it may seem this is because of this reviewer being hard of hearing, I suspect it is a smart way of indicating that once introductions have been made and eyes have met and hearts have connected, no words are necessary for lovers to express their emotions. After this line of incomprehensible ululation, though, the hero firmly establishes his identity for all to see:-
"Gee-ay-jay-ay-Gaja"

This is immediately followed by the English words(uttered by the heroine):-
"Come on, boy, let's jump in joy."

The poet moves us with this example of how the young man and woman will literally jump in joy, after expressing a very clear desire to do so. Mere words cannot express my admiration for his simplicity in this line. However, the tour de force of the song is yet to come.

"Rock, rock, rock, rock, Gaja."

By making repeated references to one of igneous, metamorphic or sedimentary formations deposited on the earth after the cooling of erupted, pre-historic lava and deftly following it up, albeit rather unexpectedly, with the hero's name, the poet....well, I don't know, but he does something(perhaps there is an inherent desire within the poet to increase geological awareness among the listening populace.). That magical something makes me want to weep with ecstasy. For, never have rocks been so exalted and extolled in song as to share the same lyrical stage as the protagonist of a big-budget movie. Never, either, have the vernacular names of elephants been so hallowed on celluloid that they have come to share the same spot in the firmament as rocks and cinema stars. The heroine, in her admiration too, I am sure, adds able chorus to this figment of genius with one of her own:-
"Let me feel your body of steel"

Such open, frank expression of sexual desire! Such a swift, brutal and efficient destruction of taboos and social mores and prudishness! Truly, this is a man of progressive, forward-thinking genius that writes such words.

The next four lines follow much the same pattern, with the heroine changing her words:-
"Gee-ay-jay-ay-gaja"
"You're the man, my Superman."
"Rock, rock, rock, rock, gaja."
"Let's go around to the brand new sound."

In just a few (erudite) lines, the poet has established a deep, lasting bond, a connection, between the hero and the heroine. What takes others entire songs or even movies to show or depict, this man has done in a few lines. These are words that hold true for possibly every love story on the planet. Kudos, sir, kudos for capturing the essence of good love. These lines may be sung by every couple in love, for ever.

Thank you for this treasure.

Going global

2008-05-23T17:50:00.000+05:30

Pramod TK winced. Ever since morning, his system had been acting up, disseminating strange sensations all over his body as early as the moment he got onto the plane at Bangalore; but he had ignored it. And then, there had been that sandwich. The kindly folk at the lounge had provided a sandwich which had been carefully prepared after being killed. For, it had certainly had life and been living, though not in very hygienic areas. Additionally, it had begun emitting a rancid smell a few minutes after its death at the hands of the owner of the Cafe Coffee Day stall in the lounge. Proudly though it bore the label "Specially crafted vegetarian sandwich," Pramod regarded it with much the same delicacy as a student of anatomy regards a cadaver he is about to dissect.

It did not move, so he took it as a sign of welcome and affection. This would prove to be a grave error of judgement. No sooner did the sandwich enter his digestive system than it began to be treated badly by the inhabitants, who spat angrily at it. It was swiftly shown the door which, in this case, happened to be Well hello, Next sentence. Like a disgruntled volcano unleashes its load, Pramod cathartically released his. With a wince. All was peace.

Along with this exciting event, the US VFS lounge provided us with other facilities as well, things which have likely scarred us for quite some time to come. On a big television in the waiting room, someone had switched to Animal Planet and refused to change it. So, we were forced to watch buffaloes being poisoned and eaten by Komodo dragons and pythons chomping at the heads of goats(or deer, I'm not sure. The python was covering it.) In addition, we also got a good glimpse of the extreme innards of a python, with some idiot with a powerful lens zooming wildly into its mouth. You could see its fangs, saliva, epiglottis, Dr. Livingston, mid-off, everything.

(Note:- The visa interview was this Tuesday, the 20th. The company is sending me on a three-month training program to the US. Hence this whole deal. Everyone's up to date now? Good. We proceed. Sadly.)

It was also a day of much celebrity spotting. First off, at the Bangalore airport, were ace multilingual actor Prakash Rai(Prakash Raj, to his non-Kannada speaking fans.) and former ace left-arm off-spinner and current crack cricket commentator Laxman Sivaramakrishnan. They'd look like Laurel and Hardy if placed next to each other. I'm guessing Prakash Rai was travelling to Chennai for the funeral of the great Kannada lyricist, R.N. Jayagopal, who underwent an untimely demise on Monday, the 19th. Siva, on the other hand, was leaving from the funeral of the Bangalore Royal Challengers' IPL campaign.

In the visa consulate itself, we had NatakireeTHi Dr. Rajendra Prasad, who is now bald but still as sarcastic as ever, which is a delight for fans. Dr. Prasad, known for his roles in movies like "Aa okkati aDakku," "April 1st viDudala" and "Ladies tailor," sported two mammoth gold bracelets on his right wrist, leading to speculation that he was a politician.

While returning to Bangalore, we had Captain Something flying us back and he operated the plane like a chimp handling an industrial robot. There was turbulence over the skies of Bangalore, with rain pouring down in sheets, and he chose to fly into the clouds about ten minutes before we landed. Not that I'm an expert at aviation route decision making, but isn't flying into storms way before you really have to a little tactless? I don't know, maybe that's a commandment or something. 'Thou shalt endanger the lives of thy passengers by first plying them with sandwiches, taunting them with very fetching but emotionally distant airhostesses and then threatening to fly them into the ground.'

I got the visa(for ten years), but not before turning into something closely resembling a dissolving wax model, in the Madras heat. What is wrong with that city? Why don't people protest and leave? Madras makes everyone its bitch by mowing them down with its heat. This has got to stop. The city must be taught a lesson. When I got back to Bangalore, there had been a gentle shower. The smell of the earth was in the air and a slight chill hung, wind blowing through my hair every now and then. I love my city.

While I was in Chennai, there was enhanced security around Karunanidhi's house. There were rumours that his health was in a dire and critical situation, but the establishment was not letting this news slip because the CBSE results were around the corner. That the health of the chief minister of the state should take a backseat to the results of a high school examination shows the people's power in Tamil Nadu. Kudos, my Tamil brethren. Though you have previously subverted constitutional procedures, you have truly proved you are further ahead in the exercise of democratic power than the rest of us ever will be.

The father who could

2008-05-15T00:55:00.000+05:30

When I was 14, there was one thought in my mind:- the '99 cricket World Cup and how conducting it in England was a travesty. Yes, fourteen though I was, I was already a shallow human being with few things of depth to occupy my mind. Conducting a major cricket tournament anywhere other than the sub-continent or Australia was a horrible thing to do, for me, because it meant less runs, more polite clapping when someone struck a four or a six and rain. Rain which was like a very tall man had suddenly decided to stop over England in his world-wide walk and take a piss.

But certain physiological matters intervened and I was left wondering at this strange, new, but not altogether unwelcome or disagreeable, sensation that would present itself and demand attention every time I saw scantily clad women on screen. It started off innocently enough, when I began enjoying watching these women engaged in selfless social service. Badly choreographed, dimly lit, or horribly set-designed songs in low-end movies produced by high-end production houses contained these women. I felt inexplicably happy while watching this (I now realise)bad television series called 'Central Park West' that used to air on the then Zee English. There was this fine lady who seemed to enjoy nothing more than taking her clothes off in front of people at the slightest pretext. A typical conversation on that show, with her involved, would be something like this:-

Lawyer:- Ms. Fairchild, this is going to be a very difficult problem.
Carrie Fairchild(Fine Lady):- What do I do? I've been dragged into this...quagmire.
Lawyer:- Hmm, I'm going to have to say it'll be a tough thing to get you out of this.
Carrie Fairchild:- Well, in that case, let's get me out of these clothes. (takes off clothes)

Things like this would thrill me to bits and I would follow that show with rapt attention. It was one of the worst things on television and I loved it. I was, as you've rightly guessed, late to catch the puberty express and was trying my best to keep up with the rest of humanity by running after the train and waving my hands frantically; but the train ignored me and busied itself discovering sex and girls. I was left out of these important discoveries of the late '90s(along with the mapping of the human genome code) and had to make do with a job as a porter, carrying other people's emotional baggage around.

Railway industry metaphors aside, I realised a growing need inside me to learn, to know, to be aware. I turned to the only man who, in my opinion, had all the knowledge in the world, about everything. The one man who had guided me in times of crisis. Had single-handedly led me through my difficult periods and whispered words of wisdom in my ears when I found myself in times of trouble.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

No, I'm talking of my father, of course, not Mr. Vajpayee, that geriatric, venerable, yet gutsy and statesmanly old man who was a bachelor. My father, my hero, the only man I respected more than former Olympian Sergei Bubka, the only man against whose name I would brook no insult. I would tear up anyone who dared talk ill about him. Atleast, I would weep angrily and tear my hair. No, anyway, I turned to this giver-of-life for help. Having watched some bad sitcoms by then, and heard the stupid phrase "the birds and the bees"(now, has anyone seen bees mate, I want to know. How did this silly turn of phrase originate?). I had hoped he would notice that I was 14 and would spin the yarn, impart the wisdom, talk the talk, lecture the lecture, discourse the discourse.

So one day, we were travelling to Rajajinagar on his bike and he began 'Today, I'm going to tell you something very important.' This is it, thought I. This is where he's going to tell me....everything. I'm going to be an adult now, right now. I could barely hide my glee. And my sense of smug superiority because I knew what he was going to say.

"You must never overtake a lorry from the left side."

Three entire seconds passed with not a word said as I took this in. Three more seconds passed and shot me slightly inquisitive looks. I couldn't reply and waved them by. A full ten seconds after his sentence, I reacted. What, I began. Oh, I continued. Er, I submitted by way of conclusion.

"You must always make way for huge vehicles. You must indicate like this when you want to make a left. Autos never signal when they're about to turn, so you must be wary, careful, when you're behind them."

This went on for about half an hour and I was totally depressed. I had accompanied him hoping to know more about clitorises and vulvas and came away knowing more about carburettors and valves(he delved into the mysteries of the motor-vehicle body, instead of the female body) instead. My respect for him had not diminished(it still has not), but I was seriously beginning to doubt his capabilities of raising an adolescent boy. I turned to other, less credible sources for answers to my less-than-holy questions. Like high school biology textbooks and the then extant Zee Movies.

He's answered some important questions("Where do dogs come from?" "From that green basket." "Will you tell me a story?" "Once, there was this gun. It went around and shot everybody. Now go to sleep.") with elan. But this critical aspect of my development was so critically ignored by him and that led to a severe crippling of my social development.

That, and Vijaya High School.

Vote 2008

2008-05-10T16:34:00.000+05:30

It begins.

Karnataka votes for some sort of government today. The first phase of polling was organised right next to my house and I went and voted and got something like gentian-violet solution dabbed on my forefinger. The man who was doing the dabbing seemed to fancy himself as some sort of Picasso and took his time with it, converting the index finger of my left hand into some sort of cuticular canvas. I came away feeling like Dorian Gray.

This thing, though, it's supposed to indelible ink. Atleast for a few days. My grandfather managed to wash it off right after he came home. He could have singlehandedly made the (~~partyName~~) win, going back repeatedly and casting his vote and washing the mark right off.

It was revealed later to me that, had I gone with a large group of unkempt people who were waiting a little way away from my house, I would have received 500 INR, sweets and other accoutrements, under the condition that I vote for a man who had been our local corporator. Damn, blast, dash it and other bloody things! Haste truly makes waste.

Currently reading(although nobody cares about this):- "Guards! Guards!" -- Terry Pratchett. He's a funny guy.

And speaking of funny guys, here's one of the funniest things I've come across in recent times:-

Tripe

2008-05-04T23:07:00.002+05:30

"Elli guru area?"
"Ille saar, Gurappan palya"

Brief shuffling of pages.
"..." Inaudible response.
"Saar, aa hesru layvut-a illa antavne"
"Nijvaglu illa ri. Nodi bekadre illi."
"En naaven mane gaaLi-li kattkondidiva?"
"Nangen gottu?"
"Yaaro loosu guru ivnu."

I barge in.
"Saar" (yes, I say saar. I am ghat. So what?) "Ee address nodi swalpa."
He checks, and my name's there. God bless. Though I doubt I'll change anything by voting, I can atleast rest satisfied that I attempted and failed. But there was one problem.

"Sir, nam taayi hesru illi Nandana anta print aagide..."
"Ayyo bidi, saar. Pakkadalli ganda anta nim father hesridiyalla, ivru hengsu anta gottagatte, bidi."

So, according to the Election Commission of India, one Nandana Sharma is married to my father, T S R Sharma. This news brought some surprise, but surprisingly little discord, within my household. My mother received the news that some strange woman is supposed to be married to her husband very coolly. 'Good for him,' I believe, is what she said.

This, and other tripe, has been going on in the past two weeks. Another interesting occurrence is the usage of the word 'tripe' even in one's innermost thoughts and feelings, since it was outlawed in 1968 after "the State of Maharashtra vs 'tripe.'" The most recent incidence of tripe was my wearing of footwear laterally inverted. Meaning, I wore my left slipper on the right foot and vice-versa.

While this may not make you stop eating whatever it is you're eating, push your child's face out of the way, administer a well-deserved punch to its left cheek, slam down the brakes and bang into the car in front of you, still not quite believing what you have just heard, in our family, that's exactly the kind of reaction you would get. It is believed, here, that if you wear your shirt or your vest('baneen' to Kannadigas and Tamilians) inside-out, your wife will run away from you. Many men, over many generations, have been zealously wearing their overgarments inside-out in the earnest hope that their wives will run away from home and leave them in peace. None more so than my grandfather. Every day, at aroiund 2:30, he goes into a room in his house and quickly takes off his shirt and puts it on again, inside-out. But no luck. My grandmother has made not one move signalling her intentions to flee as fast as feet can carry her(But my grandfather tries, nevertheless, undaunted).

So I tried, today, inadvertently, to turn my non-existent spouse away from the house. What with my grandmother and mother turning down marriage proposals, and me wearing footwear vice-versa, you may say I have been 'caught on the wrong foot.'

Somewhere, someone, I believe, is going 'oh shit! That's awful'

From behind, darling

2008-04-24T01:35:00.001+05:30

Spotted on a pack of 'Ulta' Perk:-

"Tear from behind"

This is the best sex I'm going to have all week.

Whither Kannada?

2008-04-22T20:30:00.001+05:30

The English media in India is oblivious of the fact that they have audiences in Karnataka. Either that, or they're deliberately trying to make us laugh at a very unfunny issue, even when we don't want to. Why else would they put up the following headlines?

"Munde resigns"
"Advani asks Munde to meet him"
"Munde fallout"
"Munde withdraws resignation"
"BJP gives in to Munde, replaces Chavan"
"Munde to be face of Maharashtra BJP"

Apparently, reporting the accomplishments of widowed women subjected to great humiliation gives delight to these sadistic freaks. Bastards! Soon, we'll be seeing headlines like these:-

"SooLe to head family planning division"
"KaLLi becomes top cop"
"Dummi says thin is in"
"Scrap wins beauty contest"

Unrelatedly, I found out that 'House of the rising sun' is like the famous Kannada song 'Dharani mandala madhyadolage.' Of uncertain authorship, but very famous and covered by numerous artists. I bet this is the only time anyone has ever compared those two songs.

P.S:- If you identified that the title of the post was a tribute to the first ever Monty Python episode, I love you.

Humble

2008-04-21T15:17:00.002+05:30

There are some people around you who don't do much, but give off the impression that they do a lot. They're like the wolf in the 'Three little pigs' story. They huff and they puff, but they're unable to bring the house down. On account of this, they look really tired and exhausted even though they haven't really achieved anything great. They also make sure this hard work of theirs is noticed, but do so in a very discreet way.

Whenever someone says this guy is humble, I say 'Dude, he's not humble. My penis is humble. He's just inadequate.'

Attempts to settle the life of the humble narrator

2008-04-17T01:05:00.000+05:30

"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."
-- Blanche DuBois(French for 'dumb bitch')

It has happened twice already that certain requests of a, shall we say, nuptial nature have come to my family for me. Two separate families, with two separate girls in them, have sent feelers requesting for my hand in marriage to their daughters. Now, I have not once seen their daughters, but I am sure they are very fine, fetching young women whom it would be a delight to marry. This is proved by their fine taste in men(me).

The very first of these came along last year. The girl in question was about two years younger than I. A little too young? I don't know, we will let history judge this. Dooce is ten years younger than her husband and they seem really happy. So age difference isn't a big factor in determining marital bliss; it truly seems to be just a number. That isn't the point. The point is, I read this really funny joke some time back that I must share:-

Q: How do you embarrass an archaeologist?
A: Give him a used tampon and ask him what period it came from.

Continuing, this proposal for alliance came through to the able hands of my grandmother who, like all grandmothers, had my best interests at heart.

Or so I thought.

My grandmother heard of the request and shot back one swift reply:- no.

Yes, she said I was too young for marriage and stuff and so was the girl and shouldn't she be studying a little more?

GRMMMMHMMPRRRFF!!!!! Bloody progressive mentalities!!!!!! Wrecking, ruining my life!!

The second incident happened more recently. Last month, I think. Another girl, this one closer to my age(about six months younger than me, I think). Again, my grandmother is in charge of my life. She says no yet again.

It's a bad time to be young. If this had been the '40s, or even the '60s, I'd have been married to the first one who came along, gone to Ooty for the honeymoon, had two kids by now, gone to a typing institute, bought a Rajdoot, purchased large, square-framed(black, of course) spectacles and a large number of jubbas, gone on weekend 'picnics' to Lalbagh or Nandi Hills and invested in Hindustan Lever shares.

I haven't even seen any pictures of those young women. If they turn out to be smoking hot and I've refused their extended hands of friendship without even knowing it, I'm going to kill myself. I remember this line from a Crazy Mohan play, 'Ayya, amma, ammamma':-
"Oru glance paatthu taren"

That's it, that's all I want to do when it comes to these things. I just want to have a glance at the photographs. It's a small, humble desire. I'm not being granted even that. It's like, my life is a company, but my grandmother is the CEO, my parents occupy all other important positions, some of my friends are shareholders and I'm the guy who's in a team no one knows about and sits in a small room behind the door to the basement.

"Attempts to settle the life of the humble narrator. And the successful thwarting of such attempts by the author's grandmother."

[Update : I wrote this at around 12:30 AM of the 10th of April. Later that very day, two more marriage proposals, with respect to women aged 25 and 26 respectively, arrived, and were turned down by my mother. Yes, once again, without me even looking at the photographs, people other than me are spurning offers of kindness, romance and marriage.]

This following bit didn't have the necessary steam to become a full post(thankfully). So I'm putting down where it'll hurt no one:-
Gopi, a goat from Hyderabad, has recently received a haircut, thus making history as the first goat with a coiffure. Gopi also took this opportunity to grow himself a beard, leaving leading punsters and reporters gasping with breathlessness and joy at the chance to make the pun 'goatee.'

Couple run out of silly names for each other

2008-04-10T01:46:00.006+05:30

Arvind and Chenchulakshmi, a Pune couple, have run out of silly names for each other, the PTI yesterday revealed. The two, who have been dating since 2004, have reportedly exhausted all possible infantile, affectionate names for one another and are now said to be undergoing a severe name crunch, leading to relationship problems and emotional lows.

"I don't know how this happened," said a troubled Arvind. "We were going along totally smoothly, calling each other dumdum, chweetiepie, sillygoose, fuzzy, lopey, wuvbird, woofy and sugarlips, after we started off with darling, baby and sweetie. Suddenly, it's like we have nothing to say to each other anymore."

"Some of the spark is gone," admitted an uncharacteristically candid Chenchulakshmi. "Before, he'd call and I'd answer and he'd call me some silly name and I'd argue about it and he'd fight back and we'd have such a good time, you know. Like, he'd say 'Hello, wumpy.' And I'd say 'Wumpy? You're wumpy.' And he'd say 'No no, you're wumpy.' And I'd go, 'No no no, you're wumpy.' And we'd have a total blast like this, talking till two in the morning. Now, I get the feeling we're repeating each other and hiding from the truth, living in denial."

The couple admitted they had tried various options, including having a threesome name-calling session with Chenchulakshmi's close friend, Bhargavi. "That was really weird, you know. I mean, a three-way affectionate name-calling joint was something I would never even have dreamed of contemplating, three years ago." confessed a shy Arvind, blushing furiously. "But we really had to try different things! The fire was dying out in the romance."

The session went pretty well, according to Chenchulakshmi, with Bhargavi contributing ably to the list of puerile appellations, most notably 'you're my poo-poo.' Subsequently, the couple also experimented with various categories of names by which to call each other. Fruits, vegetables, assorted food items("Hello, Jellybeans!" "You're my tamarind, baby."), airborne vehicles, inter-continental/medium-range ballistic missiles("I wuv you, Agni." "God, you're so sexy, Shaheen!"), fast-moving consumer goods("You'll be mine forever, won't you, toothpaste?" "Of course, my AA-size battery" "I love you, Rasna" "I love you too, Heinz tomato ketchup") and other broad areas were all tried out by them, but failed to produce the required results and keep alive the spark that had initially lit the fire of their relationship.

"Those two used to be so into each other, man. They could set each other off with just 'baby,' you know." confided close Arvind-Chenchulakshmi friend Paramesh. "Now, even 'you hot skunk' and 'you sexy skank' can't do anything. It's like something in them has died."

"It's like something in all of us has died," he added, after a pause.

Relationship psychologist Dr. Rudrappa Hampannavar says this is a common problem faced by a lot of young couples after three to four years of a relationship. "When you have been together that long, you have already got a measure of each other. You know his/her likes and dislikes, what turns him/her on/off, his/her needs/wants. The surprise element that marks the initial phase of a relationship is gone and needs to be reintroduced in different ways. For instance, I would suggest that these couples start playing dumb charades and enact the names they want to call their partner, instead of communicating with each other and actually saying it. That would involve both of them in a fun activity, also bringing closeness."

"Of course," he added, finger wagging warningly, "this should not be extended to involve some of the other activities that couples indulge in. That could be misinterpreted as a very rude sign!" leaving spectators bemused at how he achieved his degree.

Chenchulakshmi says they now need to pull through this, but that would require patience and some imaginative thinking.

"Well, what am I going to call her now? By her name?" asked Arvind belligerently, inadvertently hitting upon the right option.

Wailing Wall feeling better

2008-04-08T21:59:00.002+05:30

The Wailing Wall, the nearly 2500-year old wall in Jerusalem, is reportedly feeling better and is on its way to a more cheerful mood. Speaking to reporters in Tel Aviv yesterday via telephone, Yakov Ben Gadiz, Caretaker of the Wall, said efforts made by Israel and Palestine in recent years in moving towards peace had decreased some of its sorrow and led to its feeling more upbeat. The Wall was even supposed to have been heard whistling a rather jaunty tune sometime last week, Ben Gadiz said.

Supposedly built in the 6th century before Christ, the Wailing Wall was called the Slightly Morose Wall in its early days, since it was one of the few survivors of the destruction of Jerusalem, wrought by the Romans. Moods swinging like a pregnant woman undergoing PMS while on a bumpy ride through the Himalayas after paying a hefty sum for a ticket on a bad and dirty bus to a shabby fellow with unclean clothes and filthy nails, the Wall swiftly became one of the most angry walls in the Known World. Other walls spoke in hushed tones about it. The Great Wall of China, when it was just One of The Better Walls of China, has written in its diary, 'That Jerusalem wall yelled at somebody today. Such a loud yell! I could hear it all the way here. And apparently, some palace wall in India, which was in the way, went deaf because the sound hit her full blast. What a shrill bitch.'

The Wailing Wall's mood swings became legendary. The persecution of Christians and Jews across the world made it extremely angry and then sad and it began wailing sometime around the fifteenth century and didn't stop for a good five hundred years. Much angered by the Wall's persistent cries, Roger Waters is said to have written his famous song, 'Comfortably numb.'

Communist leader Jyoti Basu, who is somehow still alive and hanging on to life like grim death*, recalled his younger days, when the Wall was just being built. "I recall, those were tough times. There were no trucks or cranes to ferry materials. People had to physically carry them on their backs. Also, there were no women available on the construction site. People had to physically carry them on their backs. That is how we learned to survive, in the Communist Party. It is the secret to our long life. And tremendous scrota."

Recent rapprochements between Israel and Palestine, including Israel's gestures to open the West Bank up to the Palestinians, and reduced Hezbollah attacks, are said to have somewhat cheered up the wall. The Devastated Wall, a close friend of the Wailing Wall, confided that the Wall's nerves had been soothed by these moves by the warring factions. However, some political analysts and Middle-East experts feel that the Wailing Wall's turnaround in attitude and general affability, with it reportedly greeting its visitors, albeit greatly startling them, has been hastened by reports that the Ehud Olmert government planned to erect a new wall opposite it and call it the Ecstatic Wall, thereby adding a little more fizz to the generally glum surroundings. Tourism to Israel has taken a hit, with terrorism and suicide attacks keeping foreigners away. The erection of the Ecstatic Wall was, as a result, proposed in the Knesset by former prime minister Shimon Peres and budgetary allocation too had happened, as per Tel Aviv sources, with plans for an amusement park, a botanical garden and a multiplex cinema hall in the vicinity of the wall. This fear of losing its status as the pre-eminent wall in all of Israel has brought about the geniality in the erstwhile Wailing Wall, say the experts.

Sources now reveal that the Gol Gumbaz is going on a diet, to revamp its image, and has ambitions of being called a slim and sexy Gumbaz soon.

* Hanging on to life like grim death --> this expression may be used without prior permission, but must be duly credited to its source:- this site.

What a week!

2008-04-08T00:07:00.001+05:30

Phew, what a week of news, huh? The Shiv Sena's turn-around on Amitabh Bachchan, Rajini's "I said it-I said it not," inflation touches something like 110%, the Olympic flame goes out, India lose the second test very fast and Rahul Gandhi gets called a racist.

The Shiv Sena. Now, the fine gentlemen who write the columns and editorials for 'Saamna'(is it only Bal Thackeray or do other people also contribute? What's the readership figure like, for Saamna? I'm curious. And isn't Saamna just a misspelling away from Saaman?) have staged a remarkable turnaround of stance and lauded Amitabh Bachchan as an asset to the nation and a megastar. In the space of one day, Amitabh Bachchan has, according to them, rendered remarkable service to Maharashtra and the Marathi culture and redeemed himself in their eyes. After asking him to draw inspiration from Rajinikant and his loyalty, this surely must have been prompted by Rajini suddenly becoming a much-disliked figure in Karnataka after reportedly asking that Kannadigas be kicked.

Which, of course, Rajini promptly denied. I watched bits of his interview on Udaya TV and his Kannada is very, very decent. Much better than his Tamil. Have you heard him speak Tamil in award ceremonies and public functions? Makes you cringe a bit, especially if you've just heard Kamal Haasan speak(who has this inexplicable habit of slipping suddenly into pure Tamizh and speaking poetically, even if the event is about commemorating Kumarimuthu or Usilimani or somebody.). And he conveys the impression of someone who's just reciting lines from the latest Rajini movie..oh wait.

So Rajini denied saying Kannadigas should be kicked. Apparently, only some Kannadigas should be kicked. He also said he'd apologise if Parvathamma Rajkumar, Vishnuvardhan and Girish Karnad asked him to. Yes, pick the three Kannadiga personalities who most closely resemble the progress of man on the evolutionary chart to be the stalwarts you respect. This made Tamil commentators comment on his loyalty to Tamil and Tamildom. I don't understand this warped logic Tamil politicians follow. If A R Rahman or Ilayaraja go to Hindi movies or abroad and achieve success there, it is a matter of pride for Tamilians. And if that guy speaks up for the Tamil cause, he is a true Tamilian. This is the right thing to have done. "Tamizh panbadu." (I wanted to split that as pan-baadu, but let's not go there.) But if someone else comes from outside and does the same thing in Tamil, but chooses to not spew invectives at his/her state of origin, he deserves to be antagonised, alienated and ultimately thrown out.

Good thing they don't do that in the rest of the country, huh? Phew!

< /sarcasm>

P.S:- The rest of the news is a bit too cumbersome to follow up. The Rahul Gandhi thing is depressingly silly. Do read about it:- Maya memsaab

Note:- CNN-IBN is also depressingly silly.

Yet another note:- This post is very unnecessary. I'll come up with something better and, possibly, funny. I'm very sorry about this. Please don't leave me.

Why I write

2008-04-06T00:42:00.003+05:30

No, it's not going to be a boring self-analysis type of post. I'll tell you the reason I've only been writing fake-news kind of stuff lately and nothing personal, with lots of dirt. It's this:- there's nothing to write about.

Seriously, nothing. There have been no exciting goings-on in my humble life. Nothing worth mentioning to the outside world. Unless you count this skit thing I did for our company annual day. Calling it "annual day" makes it sound childish and silly, so I'll call it by its actual name:- Family Day. We had twenty minutes and we made fun of everything. HR, policies, annual gifts, slow motion replays, the Harbhajan-Symonds racism-obnoxious weed controversy, sexually suggestive gurus, cost cutting, malfunctioning coffee/tea/cardamom tea/tomato soup-vending machines, the dance programme which went on just before us, the movie which would play after us, the blocking policy of the company where Sys-Admins block certain 'objectionable' sites(this joke was performed by a Sys-Admin himself), not sending people onsite, complicated working-hours billing tools, evaluation policies. Everything. It sounds quite impossible to fit all that into fifteen-twenty minutes. We did.

And we kicked ass, motherfuckers.

We honestly didn't think we would, since some of the jokes were quite tepid. There were three killer scenes, everyone agreed. But people were laughing and hooting for even some of the sillier ones. Probably touched a chord with them, regarding some of the company's activities and tactics. Or maybe they're just really simple people. Who knows?

In the process, each of us got a t-shirt to wear, for the occasion. It has aeroplanes on it, fighter jets. I don't know what that's supposed to signify. That we're flying high? That we emit powerful jets of gas as we progress? That's not yet clear.

But apart from that, there's been nothing worth telling, really. So, slightly amusing fake news it'll be, for a while. Until election season here starts heating up. Perhaps then, I'll invite the honourable Harish N Kumar to do an analysis with me of what promises to be an unpredictable election for our state assembly. "Ooh, sounds exciting!!" < /sarcasm>

I didn't know what 733t was. I looked it up. Almost wrote a post titled "Youth discovers leetspeak. Uses it annoyingly." where this fellow insists on using 733t5p34k despite not being an avid gamer, much to his friends' annoyance.

"Even fools get to be young once" -- Frank Lucas, 'American gangster'

Bach to return, fuels rumours

2008-04-04T23:58:00.003+05:30

-- from our correspondents. In Colombo, quite inexplicably.

Dead composer Johannes Sebastian Bach is all set to stage a comeback after over 250 years, leaving punsters and quipsmiths everywhere scrambling all over each other in a hurry to use the phrases "He's Bach" and "Bach is back." The famed German musician, who was last seen alive in 1750, announced this decision of his through Whoopi Goldberg yesterday in Hollywood, California. Experts and modern composers are understandably baffled by this decision and many have questioned it.

"Why's he coming back now? His kind of music is so old now." observed leading music composer Anu Malik. "You can't jive to it, you know, just jive. As an expert on the subject, I'm saying, Mr. Bach should reconsider his decision. He has to age gracefully."

"Just look at how Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Kalyanji-Anandji and Shankar-Jaikishen faded away into the sunset." pointed out Malik, ignoring his own stubborn refusal to fade away into the same sunset except for reasons of his own death. Malik, whose sinking musical boat ran afoul of some unusually decent form with 'Refugee,' 'Josh,' 'Fiza' and 'Asoka,' then launched into a sudden, unsolicited rendition of 'Ek garam chai ki pyaali ho' from the Rani Mukerji-Salman Khan starrer 'Har dil jo pyar karega,' punctuated with occasional, alarming bursts of 'Dum dum CHAK! Dum dum CHAK!'

Jaffna local Thilan Dissanayake, when quizzed on the subject, proved surprisingly erudite. "Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, to which he added even in 1744, six years before his death, proves that he still had it in him. He was not a has-been like Pachelbel, who had died by then. We may well see a return to full orchestral music in films, like the halcyon days of Shankar-Jaikishen and Ilayaraja, when you could hear nothing but violins in the songs. Oh the joy!"

Legspinner Harbhajan Singh also commented on this issue, saying this would bring a breath of fresh air into the music industry(despite Bach being an exhumed corpse). He observed, at the same time, that he was an off-spinner and not a legspinner as he had been erroneously called in the previous sentence. He promised, subsequently, to stop bowling those dreadfully easy-to-read doosras which everyone could play and start bowling more off-spinners, which would greatly startle many a batsman, owing to their unpredictability in coming from him.

As of press time, the Times of India writers were wracking their brains over what puns to use in their headline for this issue, since the best ones had already been taken, and had come up with the following:-
"Bach with a bang"
"Bach to the future"
"Guess who's Bach"
"Bach in business"
"He's Bach, baby!!"
"Come-Bach kid"

and, in an open letter to Simon Cowell of 'American Idol' and adding a touch of Indian history to it,

"Simon, go Bach"

Two much fun

2008-04-04T00:11:00.002+05:30

It's been two years! Two complete, entire, wholesome years of very placid, lukewarm entertainment for...mainly myself. With a non-descript beginning, an utterly despicable middle period and a later period which has a few ones I myself am actually quite proud of, such as:-

The classics, revisited
Lagaan result upturned
Moon-like object is actually moon
Free and fair elections,

I have entertained about ten people(this includes me) and depressed four others(this also includes me) successively for twenty-four months. This is in no way an achievement. But I have undergone some interesting experiences in this period. I have drunk alcohol for the first time(September 2006 --> JK's birthday treat. My views on beer have undergone a vast change subsequently.), got drunk in Goa, been offered 'ladies massage' in the same place(I don't know why, but I declined), been embarrassed in marriage halls where I, for reasons yet unclear to me, agreed to play the flute with some mysterious 'band,' been employed gainfully, worked in the same place for the entire period(though the company has undergone a sea of changes in this interim. I've been under four different managers in nearly two years as a result of this, and will soon go to the team of a fifth. Surely, this must be some sort of a record and I will be called upon by the CEO and given various moneys and accoutrements?) and learned the value of going to work on time and leaving early, instead of getting there late and leaving late.

I have also met some nice people because of this mental-masturbation medium. Malaveeka, the Crapper, Amulya "the Thrush" Shruthi, Suhasini Rao, Tangled, the honourable Arun, Sandeep Sharma and Harish N Kumar.

Malaveeka:- I'm glad I met you. Despite the tremendous lows we keep undergoing. Let's face it, making mean jokes about people is fun and we do that very well.

Sandeep and Harish(especially):- Yes, I'm aware that we knew each other long before teh Internets hit our lives.

The other people:- These people have not always been assholes. They have been nice too, sometimes. Though they are yet to lend me money or return my books/DVDs, I think it's been a good thing, on the whole, having come to know them.

So let's leave aside curmudgeonly behaviour for the moment(but let us not also descend into the murky marshes of maudlin murmuring, or succumb to the seductive and sultry Siren of schmaltz) and state the truth:- it's been pretty nice.

Now go ahead and enjoy yourselves.

Newly discovered film uncovers Lucas' seedy past

2008-03-24T15:51:00.001+05:30

In a startling incident that has sent shockwaves rippling through the entertainment world and made hordes of fans depressed and gloomy, a piece of newly discovered footage has proved that George Lucas, the much-beloved creator of the Star Wars film series and franchise, started off in the industry by making pornographic films. The footage, discovered in a long-forgotten basement locker in Lucas' Hollywood office and entitled 'Pornstar wars : a nude hope,' is a sleazefest which may shock fans and viewers, and bring down the stock of the popular filmmaker among his peers.

The story is about a young man named Luke Streetwalker, the son of Candy Streetwalker, a 'creature of the night.' He loses his father at a very young age, when he is just over a month old, to forces beyond his control:- a storm at sea. The rest of the plot is about how Luke goes in search of his father, meets a lot of women along the way and enjoys their company.

Major elements of the Star Wars franchise can be seen in this early work of Lucas', which, many believe, is funnier and less brutal than his later works. For instance, in this movie, the father-figure, named Darth Vader, which name bears a curious semblance to that of the villain in the Star Wars movies, wears a black mask over his face, in addition to leather pants and a tight leather vest. Candy Streetwalker, apart from the pants, jacket and vest, also brandishes a sword(a surprisingly short one, admittedly) which glows at night(light saber, anyone?). And most tellingly, the Darth Vader in this film utters the following version of the later Darth Vader's immortal line:-

"Luke, I could be your father."

The full text of this line, as per the shooting script of this movie, is:-
"Luke, I could be your father. But I'm not sure."

Another key plot device seems to be a small, green man who is, quite incredibly, a pimp, with his constant refrain being "Suck on this, you will."

In addition to borrowing the idea of telling the story from the two lowest characters' point of view from Akira Kurosawa's 'The hidden fortress,' Lucas also seems to have borrowed generously from this early, 'seminal,' as some punsters would say, work. Quite inexplicably, though, the theme song of the movie is "Tu pyar ka sagar hai" from the Hindi film 'Seema.' The raison d'etre for the choice of this song becomes clearer, however, when the next line, 'Teri ek boond ke pyaase hum,' is heard. Lucas seems to have begun his habit of imbibing elements of world cinema in his movies with this definitive work.

One of the stars of the film, the woman who played Candy Streetwalker, has unexpectedly turned out to be aging actress Shirley Maclaine. Experts thought this was highly impossible, considering Maclaine was born in 1838 and had disappeared mysteriously after a public screening of 'Terms of endearment'; but x-ray analysis of the frames proved that what they initially thought was an aged, peeling wall in some of the scenes was, in fact, Maclaine's face. The scenes with Shirley Maclaine in tight-fitting clothes and a whip in hand has already sent Internet viewers into spasms of pain, with many reporting seizures and fits of blindness. "It's the most ghastly thing I've ever seen!" gasped recently-returned Scottish tourist Sandeep Sharma, of Kasavanahalli, Maddur district. "I mean, I was online searching for por--interesting Internet memes. And this thing came along."

"I may never have children because of this" he added, surprising no one.

Other viewers have reported similar reactions. Popular Internet user Naveen Menezes, a Christian, said this had disturbed him more than the sudden sight of Madhuri Dixit in 'Aaja nachle.' "That was just for a brief few moments in the promos," said Menezes from his plush Rabindranath Tagore Nagar residence. "This is far too real. I wanted to watch a horror movie with my friend Shamsher Singh. He is now in hospital with epilepsy. Maclaine should be banned. Or kept in a museum. Like that Rekha woman."

This footage's discovery has left some fans shattered, while it has brought relief to many. "Thank God!" said G. Shanmugam Iyer, an ardent World of Warcraft fan from Indiranagar. "We now know that even Lucas is just human. For a while, I was afraid he was the spirit of Xenu. What a relief. Now I can get back to my life," he said, turning back to his monitor. Meanwhile, Counterstrike fan J. Somayajulu of Gandhi Bazaar has declared a day of mourning after this revelation, stating that this was a definitive act of betrayal by one of his heroes. "I can never be sniper after this," choked a tearful Somayajulu("Jules" to his friends). "My whole belief system has collapsed." Minesweeper, Freecell and Solitaire veteran Abdul Narayan D'Souza of Cubbonpet refused to comment, stating cease-and-desist notices.

Random celebrator nabbed

2008-03-18T22:36:00.002+05:30

One P. Madaiah from Malur has been nabbed in the popular Bose Bazaar area of the city, thus bringing to an end a case which had baffled local police for months now. Madaiah, who had terrorised residents by celebrating random festivals and occasions on unrelated dates, was caught as he attempted to set off a firecracker on the fourteenth of March, claiming it was Deepavali. Madaiah, who hails from Sondur taluk of Bellary district, was known as the Celebrator and had struck terror in the hearts of everyone around, especially children, who would suddenly be made aware of a festival, and thus a holiday from school, and go home, only to find it was not actually a holiday and be punished by their teachers with canes and rods the next day, much to their chagrin. Both the children of Malur have hailed this capture and will celebrate it by declaring a holiday from school.

"This is a landmark arrest for our department," said a proud Mr. Ayyu, Chief Assistant Commissioner of Police, occupying a post which is not even existent, let alone legal, but curiously unfluttered and unquestioned about it. "With this arrest, we have brought down the crime rate of Malur to zero." Historians have noted that this is, in fact, the first arrest in Malur and the crime rate was previously nil as well, lending credibility to Mr. Ayyu's claims.

The Celebrator Madaiah began as an apprentice under one J. Bhootalingam, known as the very Fagin of Raichur. He started small, declaring Makara Sankranti on April 13th, preparing pongal, kosambari, badusha, basundi, avalakki and other delicacies on the wrong day, to confuse people. However, when this sort of crime began costing him rather than benefiting him, he questioned his very beliefs and abandoned them. He soon grew ambitious, declaring Christmas on two consecutive days in May and Gandhi Jayanti for an entire week in August. His inventiveness knew no bounds, as he made up new festivals and declared them on the 'wrong' days too(a clever trick he thought of as a legal loophole, should he get caught. Since these festivals did not even exist, he could not be called for celebrating them on the wrong days. Legal and constitutional experts say this is one tricky problem they are going to have to spend sleepless nights over.). He declared World Summer Day on December 10th and spent it by stealing the sweaters, shawls, mufflers and monkey-caps of senior citizens and turning on the fans and, if present, airconditioners of major households.

His most heinous crime happened in June, 2003, when, in a burst of impulsive frenzy, he announced Deepavali fortnight and set off fireworks at all times of the day. Noted IInd PUC student Ashwin was visibly disturbed by this and said this led to his tremendous failure in all the subjects that year, except for Sanskrit, which he didn't attend. "I couldn't study," an ashen-faced Ashwin recalls, "Every moment was filled with the dread of the next bomb, the next rocket, the next 100-wala going off. My sister also failed in her 4th standard exams. Why couldn't the police have done something earlier? We wouldn't have had to face these days."

Madaiah's ambition, as also his lack of social awareness, led to his downfall. On the 14th of March, he randomly declared both Deepavali and the coming-of-age anniversary of Marie Antoinette, surprising everyone with his acute knowledge of world history. "Mary doDDaaki aagyaLa! Mary doDDaki aagyaLa!"("Mary has become a big lady! Mary has become a big lady!") he screamed, running through the streets at midnight. Unfortunately, the wife of the venerable mayor of Malur, Dr. Zakka Jacob, was also named Mary and the mayor did not much appreciate the celebration of the anniversary of his wife's first..anyway. Dr. Jacob, occupying another illegal and unconstitutional post, immediately ordered a manhunt and Madaiah was nabbed as he was setting off a firecracker in Bose Bazaar.

Police say Madaiah will now be hanged, to set an example to others, and March 14th will be declared World Malur Day, sources said. The Central government has announced Rs. 400 compensation for Ashwin and his sister. Method actor Aamir Khan is said to have shown keen interest in making a movie about the life of Madaiah, but has requested one decade's time to prepare for the role.

Internet Kannadigas' Meet

2008-03-17T22:50:00.001+05:30

The honourable Arun issued an invite to me, this morning, to be present at a meet of Kannada bloggers. Now, since I don't write in Kannada(online. Offline, I kick ass.), I wondered what I'd do there, but went there anyway. Along with me came the honourable Harish N Kumar, who had complained of cold, cough, headache, fever, amoebic dysentery, meningitis, menstrual cramps, small pox, polio, mumps, a rare case of filaria and a remnant of the erstwhile bubonic plague just this morning, but seemed to have recovered miraculously in a very short time. The board displayed at the venue, the Indian Institute of World Culture, said "Antarjaala Kannadigara Samavesha," which translates literally to "Internet Kannadigas' Conference"(though actually, 'samavesha' might more correctly translate to 'equal angst'). Harish said this division of people into Internet Kannadigas and offline Kannadigas deeply distressed him, so he would stage a protest outside the venue. I, with my visionary foresight, foresaw a disturbingly unclothed Harish sitting outside the Institute of World Culture and holding placards. I, therefore, swiftly killed all such possibilities by steering him into the building where the meet was to occur.

It was well attended. The publicity department of PraNati(info@pranati.in), the organisation which had envisioned and setup the whole event, had done its job well. They were frank enough to admit, at the end, that they had expected only 35 people to attend. Well over a hundred people attended, I think. And thus, the meet began in earnest. It was unlike other (un)conferences I had seen/heard of/read about in that, it wasn't one. It was a rather formal event with an agenda, a list of already-fixed speakers and a limited time period. But then, the number of people who blog in Kannada is not as huge as that of those who do so in English; so this is ok. The venerable Dr. Pavanaja, one of the first people(possibly even the first person) to render Kannada fonts on the Internet(which made Kannadigas everywhere go "Ooh ooh, we is on teh Internets!"), spoke first. He spoke of his journey through the past twelve years with his efforts to provide Unicode support for Kannada, and how his attempts created a spinoff software called 'Baraha.' He also declaimed the open source community's top-down approach to Kannada content on the Net. They, he said, went for direct translations for everything, rather than work on font rendering, Unicode support etc. Next up was Hari Prasad Nadig, who was handed a list of topics to speak about and he did so rather rapidly. I'm not sure what he does, but he seemed to know a lot about font rendering on various fora(Windows, Linux, Symbian etc). He rebutted Dr. Pavanaja's remarks about the open source community and said 'top-down' approach and stuff was bull and the open source community was a free community and people would work on what they felt like.

Then, the person who was the best speaker of the evening, for me. Abdul Rasheed, formerly with All India Radio, now working with an upcoming Kannada website called Kendasampige, stepped up and spoke quite hilariously about blogs and how they were all bullshitting about feelings and cows and calves(calfs?) and the lowing of the calf and how the sound still reverberated in the writer's ears whenever he saw a cow and how it would transport him to his very childhood and all that crap. He was very critical of this sort of blogging and asked people to give up on the notion that only people who wrote stories or poems were writers. Scientific, political and technological writing was also writing and should be counted as such. Sadly, he too did not include humour among things considered serious writing, thereby furthering the bastard child treatment meted out to humour everywhere.

A break later, everyone started talking about font rendering and the issues associated with this on various platforms and how to resolve these and the fixes available and the patches released by Microsoft and the support available on Ubuntu(via Synaptec). This went on for quite a while and somehow became the main focus. I prodded Harish into somehow going up there and speaking out about this. "Everyone," he said, "is talking about font rendering and the presentation issues. But what about content? No one seems to have spoken about content." His passionate imploration caused one man to retort, "That's because I haven't spoken anything yet." This, I think, was his clever idea of a quip.

Who was this gentleman? Some aged person from www.thatskannada.com. He began speaking about the gallery of images of half-naked women on his site. Now this was a fine idea, I thought. He said this was a way to get people to visit the other, main sections of his site. Youngsters, and some middle-aged people too, apparently searched for images more, and then landed up on his site. From the gallery, he said, his company hoped they would check out the main pages. Earlier, Harish was one of the people chosen randomly to speak and he, quite sensibly, said he did not take himself or blogging too seriously and he wrote in English because he had issues with the Kannada font support available online. He said he wrote whatever he felt like and did not stick to serious topics or have an agenda.

Aged Dude now took Harish to task for this, albeit indirectly. "Saying you'll write whatever you want and will not write seriously, that's not the right attitude," he said, dismissively. When you write something, he continued, it had to be important, it had to be useful to somebody.You must write something with a sense of responsibility. Tears filled Harish's eyes at this point, though this may have been because I had trod heavily on his feet at the same time. For instance, Aged Dude plodded on relentlessly, information useful for senior citizens. This must be on your blog. Information must come searching for us, we should not be searching for it.

Unless I'm terribly mistaken, information coming searching for you unsolicited is called spam. On cellphones, strict TRAI regulations cover ambush marketing and unsolicited calls. You can't just send out information to people when they don't even ask for it. If you have it, put it up so they can find it. If you don't, good enough. There's always Google.

And since when did pictures of half-naked women become responsible blogging, or information useful for senior citizens? Just saying stuff to sound clever and intelligent and like an 'upstanding citizen' of society is silly. I wasted my time and valuable Internet bandwidth to check out some of their writing and found this:-
Body language to arouse sex instinct

This particular piece of investigative journalism, and information certain to help society, especially senior citizens, more than, say, humour and other non-agenda, nonsensical writing, has gems like this:-

"Women have more flirting body languages that they use or adopt in order to evoke sexual desires in men. Entwining her legs (men can't do this one because their hips are too narrow) draws a mans attention. However, it indicates she is very protective and closed to sexual advances from men. Her tight leg muscles are appealing to a man but are his challenge to untangle."

I'm not sure I want to meet the senior citizen who's reading this stuff. I can see where Aged Dude was going with the useful-information bit, but otherwise, this is just sexist. I can entwine my legs without drawing any man's attention. Can any woman do that? And, if a woman entangles her legs so tightly that it's an Infosys entrance test sort of challenge for a man to disentangle them, I'm not sure there's going to be much going on after that, considering he'll think she's a spider.

Oh, and our hips are too narrow? What does she want, a valley back there? Just because God didn't give us uteruses and the ability to carry stuff around in them and push them out after a while, you can't hold that against us. We have broad shoulders. Doesn't that count for anything? Hairy legs, an innate ability to burp abruptly, unwavering concentration when there's skin displayed nearby? All these aren't positives?

A little ahead is this:-
Another great preening move men enjoy watching is for a woman to do things calling attention to her mouth. Licking her lips, putting on lipstick, or eating something slowly with obvious great pleasure is stimulating to men. Just watching her mouth make men hungry for all of her. If she is clever, she exposes some bare skin in the process. This is where the guy accidentally misses his mouth and pours his drink in his lap while trying "not to look".

If she eats so slowly that I start decomposing in front of her, it isn't stimulating, it's murder. And why am I just looking at her mouth? Is it singularly unappealing? Is it the centre of the universe? Does she have fake teeth? Is her tongue forked? And what bare skin is she exposing in her mouth? Yuck, does she eat people and not even rinse?

Considerable research seems to have gone into this article, with a large number of bad Sidney Sheldon books being purchased by the author before the writing. And, of course, this is also useful for senior citizens.

There's free space available on the Internet and a person is free to write what he/she wants. I agree there must be responsibility when you're writing something serious, but asking everybody to write only serious stuff and considering anyone who writes anything else frivolous is stupid. Especially when you don't do it yourself.

All in all, Aged Dude came off looking like just that:- an aged man ranting ineffectually, but self-importantly and self-righteously. He got a basket of fruits for it, though. I'm thinking of becoming all preachy and idiotic from now on, talking down to people and needlessly judging and advising them. Maybe soon, I can start my own fruits and vegetables shop.

Harish came up with a very good idea for a serious, responsible blog after this:- informationthatisusefulforseniorcitizens.blogspot.com

This is agreed to deliver instant paralytic strokes to any senior citizen typing out this URL. By the way, one of the good ideas that emerged from the meet was a site analogous to Orkut, in Kannada. I didn't say it was particularly feasible, or would bring in revenue. It's just a good idea. Frankly, unless we start getting keyboards in Kannada, I don't see Kannada online writing matching the popularity of English websites. But that's a different issue. Also emerging from this were ideas for humour sites in Kannada(obviously, from Harish and me):- sites which satirised everything, like The Onion or Cracked. Additionally, if we could have a Kannada YouTube-like site, it would be nice. But that requires huge investment, as speakers at the meet remarked, and dedicated teams. The thought is there, the effort is pending.

And finally, one of the meanest, but funniest, articles I've read in recent times:-
Marmaduke

War means to end peace -- Rahul

2008-03-15T12:39:00.004+05:30

In yet another press conference filled with glaringly obvious statements, Indian Youth Congress president and Olympic gold medallist Rahul Gandhi has remarked that war was a means to end peace. Returning to Delhi from his two-day visit to neighbouring Nagaland, Mr. Gandhi was promptly assaulted and interrogated by a gaggle of girls about his visit, his solution to the problem of the Gorkhaland agitation led by Subash Ghising, his social life and the size of his--bank balance. The statement has sparked controversy and debate among scholars and commentators, with many terming it a 'brash, reckless and unfortunate statement by a headstrong, careless young man.'

Rahul Gandhi's statement caused outrage in veteran Telugu actor, 'NatakireeTHi' Dr. Rajendra Prasad, star of such films as 'Jambalakadipamba,' who spluttered, "This is a deliberate statement yegenistu the communistu gavarnamentu by the Youth Congress presidentu, especially since the firstu testu yegenistu South Africa will startu nextu weeku." "Ramudu, Ramabhadrudu, Ramachandrudu, hmm!" he added, mysteriously. Two hours later, however, former child artist baby Shamili was nowhere to be seen.

Reacting to Rahul Gandhi's statement, veteran veteran Dr. HanumantRao RaoHanumant, a mirror manufacturer from Dharwad, and in no way related to the Congress, said this statement was a marked departure from the earlier Congress party line. "Other Youth Congress presidents have hitherto toed the line of the Congress party president and have said nary a thing on their own. This is the first time a Youth Congress leader has spoken his mind and said something on his own." Mr. RaoHanumant was then warmly felicitated by the National Numismatics Society for using the word 'nary' and not appearing too gay, and was thrown deeply suspicious looks by security personnel for his surprisingly deep knowledge of Youth Congress president press conference statements. The discovery of a copy of Michael Bolton's "Timeless: The Classics Vol. 2" on his person, however, proved emphatically to the government that he was thumpingly gay and he was arrested, tried swiftly and promptly hanged, thus bringing to an end an otherwise humdrum life.

Mr. Gandhi, however, unfazed by the sometimes brutal criticism heaped upon him, has defended his statement stoutly, saying India needed strong, bold statements like this to send a signal to the international community. "The era of the high command has ended," he said, munching some kurkure, "A new age has begun." "The Youth Congress believes that the real big power lies at the grassroots level. In fact, here, the lower you go, the bigger you get" he said. This statement was echoed earnestly by punk rocker Tommy Lee, who said he even had the video to prove it.

Rhodes scholar Girish Karnad and popular cricket writer and historian Ramachandra Guha were conspicuous by their absence in the opinions section for this issue. Ace litterateur, one-time playwright and party animal U R Anantamurthy, though, spared no quarter in a relentless, unrelated and two hour-long tirade against popular novelist and Nobel Prize winner S L Bhyrappa. Mr. Anantamurthy was led away gently by his attendants after his show and is now safely ensconced in ward no. 32 of the NIMHANS hospital in Bangalore, in bed no. 7.

Inadequacy

2008-03-11T20:16:00.000+05:30

"Feeling short? Male improver will make you feel looooooong!"

Got this in the mail today. Apparently, taking some spurious drug will make me feel looooooong. Maybe I'll try that. Or maybe I should feed it to a worm and then set it loose among snakes, just to freak them out.

"Try this , and stimulate even the deepest of her love spots!"

OK what, does this woman resemble a volcanic mountain that she has deep love spots? Or has she been punched in the face so much for being ugly?

You decide.

Government announces nothing

2008-03-10T22:34:00.000+05:30

In a landmark press conference today, the government of India has announced nothing. At a gala luncheon organised today at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi, and simultaneously at the Taj West End by ace philanthropist, Lakshmi Mittal, and attended by over twenty reporters, thirty other press delegates, four children, five Telugu people, eight women, thirteen communists and eighteen veena and sarod maestros, the official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, Ram Swaroop, announced nothing. Facing a veritable bevy of press people with a stony silence for well over fifteen minutes, Mr. Swaroop maintained a dignified demeanour despite occasional provocation from the Left parties. At the end of it, he invited questions from the gathering, which left many guests bemused, but many others impressed.

"This is a historic event in Indian history," announced noted cricket writer, historian, gardener and boatman, Ramachandra Guha. "Never before has a government so boldly and so openly come forth and said nothing and admitted it had nothing to say."

"I must write a book about it," he added, threateningly.

Guha also congratulated this correspondent on the clever Ramayana joke in the above lines, with the reference to Guha, the boatman who ferried Rama, Mrs. Rama and Dr. Lakshman across the Ganga. This sent this correspondent into a delirious tizzy, wherefrom he emerged only two hours later. The correspondent is now being investigated by the Mumbai police for latent, innate, hidden, closet effeminateness and by the Maharashtra Navnirman Samithi/Sangh/Sadan/Segregationists/Sodomizers/Somnambulists/School for North Indian-ness.

Not to be left behind, ace auteur(of which word, subscribers of this fictional newspaper will by now have guessed, this correspondent is particularly fond) and one-time playwright, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, yanked the microphone out of Guha's hands and announced that the silence was a beautiful gesture on the part of the government and it symbolised the beauty that was in nature. "Do things of beauty which are a joy forever make a noise? Do wild flowers trumpet their blooming? Do nightingales do a sound-check before they sing? Does A R Rahman do a sound-check before he sings? Does the jacaranda herald its growth? Is Sgt. Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band perhaps the greatest album ever made? Jai Chiranjeeva." he said. He then moved on to the sumptuous buffet, where he had lamb gosht, mutton kheema, chicken 65, chicken curry, chilly chicken and a few stray herbs of basil. Burping heavily thereafter, he continued. "The silence symbolises the confusion inherent in mankind and our search for answers from above and within. It is our exasperation and our not-understanding of God's silence at mankind's suffering." Subsequently, he inhaled deeply, enlarged his nostrils and went his way.

The government's silence was greeted with much confusion and anger by the Left parties, who said this exposed the cowardice of the government and their unwillingness to speak on the nuclear deal. CPI(M) spokesperson and former India wicket-keeper Vijay Dahiya said, and he is being quoted here, "Those skank hoes ain't sayin' nothing because they ain't got nothin' to say." Mr. Dahiya also confessed that he was being used much too frequently as a joke by many correspondents and wished it would stop. Other members of the Communist parties were much more belligerent in their outrage, however, and threw various sharp objects at Mr. Ram Swaroop, which he nimbly deflected.

Due to a crunching lack of punchlines and jokes, we interrupt this broadcast to bring you this:-
Woody Allen

India to do away with free and fair elections

2008-03-09T22:03:00.003+05:30

In a surprise move, the Indian Election Commission(In.El.Com) has decided to do away with free and fair elections and introduce paid, unfair elections from the next general polls. The decision comes after complaints of widespread rigging, especially in the Hindi heartland, were reported by common people and Dr. Subramaniam Swamy of the Janata Party, who also complained of malpractices in Standard 10 examinations in Madurai. Speaking to retired reporters, part-time citizen journalists and veteran Laughter Club members in Bangalore, Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami, sporting a very becoming, trademark vertical line on his forehead and a Dolce Gabbana kurta and a sarong, said that there had been enough populist policies followed and sops given by governments through all these years by making elections free and it was time Indians learned they had to pay for their democratic privileges. This would, he assured the large gathering, ensure that only quality votes came in and quality candidates got chosen. There was no motivating force quite like competition and this would make sure that the best man, or woman, or both, or neither, won, he said. After this, he and Dr. Subramaniam Swamy went away to chat in Sendamizh, which no one understood, with occasional uses of 'kaTTappaNai,' 'kuzhaigaL,' 'kizhakku' and 'amma inge vaa, vaa, aasai muttham taa, taa' being heard.

The format for the elections will be quite simple. Much like the very popular IPL, the candidates will be auctioned off all across the country and will be bid for by small groups of eligible voters. The highest bid for a candidate will win that candidate for that constituency. This deceptively simple strategy has left many a pollster, pundit and psephologist stunned.

"What will we do after this?" pleaded noted bearded man, Yogendra Yadav. "I have lived all my life predicting elections and examination results. What will I do now, knit?" This heartfelt plea brought tears to the eyes of all gathered at the venue of the election commission announcement. Noted auteur Adoor Gopalakrishnan, aged 180, was also present on the occasion and said he hoped this would inject a dose of fresh blood into the Indian electoral system, as opposed to actual blood being injected in some locations in the Hindi heartland. Noted wicket-keeper Vijay Dahiya was also present on the occasion and said "Comment vous appelez-vous?", much to the bafflement of many political commentators. Not-quite-as-noted child artiste Varijashree, somehow present on the occasion, bowed to the demands of no one in particular and belted out immensely popular renditions of famous film and Carnatic songs, "Hum bhi paagal, tum bhi paagal" from 'Janata ki adalat' and "Baagayanayya nee maayalento" by renegade composer, Tyagaraja. Noted horse, Tootsie, was, really inexplicably, even in a bizarre world, also present on the occasion and commemorated the event by urinating profusely, but quietly, in a corner.

The introduction of paid elections is expected to bring in huge revenues for the government, with pre-poll bookings touching Rs. 100 crore on the very first day. This is higher than the box-office takings of 'Om shanti om' and way higher than those of 'Saawariya,' which was described by one critic as the bluest film since 'Deep throat.' The government, in a touching gesture, has decided to set aside a whopping ten percent of this amount for women's welfare, starting this International Women's Day.

Unexpectedly, the move has drawn flak from many quarters. "This will impede Delhi Metro work," complained Delhi Metro Rail Corporation chairman, E Sreedharan. "We were planning to extend the Delhi Metro further, to Lucknow, so that the journey time taken for a person travelling from Central Secretariat to, say, Agartala, would be reduced to a little under three days, from the present four and a half weeks. Now all that has been put paid to." Undaunted, however, drilling work has begun in earnest in that direction, surprising many, since no official requests, directives or orders were given and no clearance was sought or obtained by the DMRC. The drilling has bored huge holes all under Delhi, leading to noted rats, rabbits and gophers leaving the city in a huff, complaining that such disrespect was never proferred them before.

The going has not been all tough, though, for the election commission and the government. The move has come in for praise from Rhodes scholar, Girish Karnad. "This is a brave and honest move by the government," said Karnad, sipping coffee. "After their Bharata Ratna debacle, there was only one way they could go and that was up. This is their first move in that direction." Noted activist Medha Patkar's presence near him was not noted by reporters, leading almost to a constitutional crisis when she nearly died of suffocation due to the fumes emanating from Karnad's SUV. The move has also come in for praise from Navin Chawla, election commissioner, who promoted the move in the first place. "This is a fantastic idea mooted by me," gushed Mr. Chawla, in his usual, modest vein. "This will keep the fascists out of the elections and allow the Cong...the truly democratic(yes, that'll do) candidates to come forth and be fruitful."

The press conference and this news broadcast were abruptly interrupted when this correspondent unexpectedly decided to retire to a room to watch 'Juno.'

Theft

2008-03-07T01:28:00.002+05:30

It isn't often that an event of even the slightest importance or excitement happens in our cosy, lazy apartment and the occurrence of a theft in one of the houses here, therefore, created considerable brouhaha. Much hullabaloo later, it was revealed that the man/men with an admirable sleight of hand had decamped with mobile phones and booty amounting to about 14000 rupees. The security guard was summoned forthwith and interrogated intensely for a long while, whereupon it came to light that he had rested his eyes, blessed man, for a good many moments and the theft had occurred in that time in which he was dreaming pleasantly.

"Of what use is the security guard if not for the security of the people of he apartment and their belongings?!" one may now ask, agitatedly. A more detailed account of the proceedings that led up to the theft itself may be in order here.

The theft occurred in apartment 108 on the first floor(ours being 206 on the second floor, and this being a needless point here), wherein lived bachelors of a rather disturbing nature. Their bachelorhood was not disturbing; rather, it was a good feature since they did not have noisy, spoilt irritating children who drove their small bicycles clumsily into one's car as it was parked in the general parking area on the ground floor and caused damage worth thousands by causing minor scratches and major breakage. Said bachelors did not also have children who urinated on(or in the immediate area around) their threshold and caused the genesis of a phenomenal stench which travelled on the carrier waves of air and entered all the homes in the floors above and contaminated the kitchens where food was being prepared.

No, it was their nature which was reported to be disturbing. Of fine upbringing though they might be, they resorted to playing their music rather loudly and instilling in the homes around and above them a feeling that a swift death at the hands of an aggravated rhino at the end of an acrimonious dispute over economics would be preferable to listening to this junk. They would also play cricket, football and other physical games in their homes and the passageway outside it, in order to demonstrate their admirable physical prowess and sporting skill to an imaginary audience, which often resorted to wild cheering and sometimes even rioted and caused irreparable damage to the global economy, though this damage went vastly unnoticed.

Full of joie de vivre though they were, the young men and their actions disturbed several of their neighbours and one such decided to take the matter up with them. Her protestations were rebuffed shortly and she was informed that this current house in which they lived was theirs; and things thus being, they could act as they wished in it, without heeding or caring for the objections of others. Indeed, they might be said to have cocked a snook at the protests and complaints of others.

As they were of a jolly ilk, tired and exhausted after the struggles and labours of a full week of labour at their respective places of employment, these young men decided upon a course of action familiar to most, if not all, young men:- a recourse to the drink. A few bottles of liquor were quickly consumed by them at some friendly pub/bar/restaurant and naturally, their (ohwhatapun!)spirits were (ohherecomesanotherone!)high. Staggering home, they stumbled into bed one after the other, crucially forgetting to lock the door after them. The thus-left-half-open door provided the means of entry for the thief to subsequently enter the house and the drunk occupants of the house, and the security guard one floor below, caught a few winks. Decamping with the valuables documented earlier, he was never heard of again. He was never heard of before the incident too, for that matter; but that's beside the point.

Following in the footsteps of this master thief, a second theft took place in our apartment. Theft/thievery/deviltry seems to be a popular, and quite lucrative, profession for people in our area, otherwise populated by a large number of itinerant migrants. This time, the perpetrator was a homegrown security guard. 'Avast! Something is rotten in the state of BTM!', to paraphrase some dude from 'Hamlet.' But this man was so stupid, he took a bundle of tens and twenties, and then went downstairs and hid them in the electricity room. You know, the one with the meters for each house and the fuses and the anti-trip devices and stuff. That big room with the lock and the door where men go when there's a power problem and pretend to look interestedly at everything and make an effort to resolve the problem. It's the same when your car and bike breaks down. Especially the bike. We always stop and look down at the engine and the fuel pipe and the choke switch, as though we might discover something. Unless there's a little man in there, working the engine, and he comes out waving a big banner which says "Carburettor screwed! Piston blew! Get this bloody thing serviced!", we aren't going to fix a damned thing. But we sure look cool and knowledgeable. Fine, other men do. I just look silly.

Coming back, this security guard was soon apprehended. In flagrante delicto, as it were, and led off to the police station. Where they will apply shock therapy on him, no doubt. They've been doing this a lot, the police nearby. Must be a new technology or something. They're zapping everyone who goes there. This lady, a mother of two, went there last week and she came back looking like Albert Einstein.

They've done it!

2008-03-05T23:28:00.000+05:30

It's all over. Finally, the speculation has been put to rest.

Marriage

2008-03-04T00:53:00.002+05:30

I made up a great quote today. It's about marriage.

"Marriage is like a penis. It needs a lot of adjustment."

Remember, you read it here first.

Why'd all this come up? Mainly because a lot of marriages quite close to home are going haywire. Many of my cousins(all girls) are calling off weddings or getting out of marriages. All the cases have been because the guys have been regressive jerks(this is the side of the story we hear. And we believe it steadfastly.) and have made unreasonable demands like "You should quit your job and stay with my parents while I stay in a foreign country, looking for a job. When I get a little stabilised, I'll have you over and we can settle down."

Or "Your father doesn't stand up when we meet. Don't I deserve to be proferred that respect? After all, I'm his son-in-law."

Could you guys please move? I think you're blocking the easy flow of faeces from my anus(don't picture that).

Marriages breaking up are quite common. In the rest of the world, never in the small, self-contained ecosystem of my family. By family, I mean the expansive system of human beings including a huge number of my relatives and their parents and children and grandparents and uncles and aunts and assorted pets. We never had any failed marriages, miserable though they were. Nobody would even dream of divorce(as a rule, I hate italicising very common words just to sound impressive and intelligent. But I really wanted to say '...would even dream'.) as a solution. Probably because the women, in most cases, were not financially independent. I'm not here to pass judgement, so I won't decide on the right or wrong of that. But the point is, despite the marriages being not-altogether-blissful, people would stick together to avoid the social ostracism and stigma associated with being, GASP, a divorcee or a divorcer(like 'widower', only happy)!

Now, the dreaded plague is striking hapless victims down within the house as well. The disease is upon us. We are not sitting down quietly and taking it anymore, in our family. We are making our voices heard.

We end marriages.

So I told my mother that the only thing left to happen in our extended subspecies was infidelity and the story would be complete, and I guffawed stupidly. She was not altogether appreciative of this bland joke.

Anyway, since none of these issues affect me greatly, I didn't think about them while I was driving home today. But I did come up with that quote. And I'm happy. That's my good deed for the day.

Additional reading -- Names for movies made by and/or about sick people:-

Mackenna's cold:- a search for the lost Adams bogies.
Schindler's cyst:- a touching tale of breast cancer.
Forrest mumps
Hart's scar
We were lepers

'Already taken, damn it!' movies:-
Insomnia
Psycho
Sicko
Dementia 13
There will be blood (I don't want to explain this)

This list may be added to by the general public.

Break the rules

2008-02-28T12:02:00.000+05:30

Since cricket is a game heavily in favour of the batsmen rather than the bowlers, I think it's time a few reforms were introduced which should make it more fair, and slightly more interesting as well. Here we go(see? No small talk.):-

1. No batsman shall bat more than 10 overs in total, in an innings. Not more than three batsmen in a team shall bat this number fully, with the rest of the batsmen making up the remaining overs. It is not necessary, however, that any batsman should bat 10 overs.

2. A batsman may be withdrawn from the batting attack by the batting side's captain and another batsman may be introduced in his place, at the end of an over. The so-withdrawn batsman may be brought back into the attack later, however.

3. Should a batsman score more than twelve runs in an over, the bowler gets a free ball. This is where the batsman shall not be allowed to score any runs off the subsequent ball, but the bowler shall have every opportunity to take his wicket. That is, no matter what stroke the batsman plays, he will not get any runs to his credit, but the bowler may get him out in this ball in any legal manner.

4. If a batsman plays a stroke and the ball goes on to hit the wicket at the other end, he is out. Not the non-striker, but he, regardless of whether or not the ball touched the bowler's hand as it rolled down the pitch. This is because the batsman was responsible for the catastrophe.

5. If a batsman steps down the track more than twice in an over, the batting team(the batsman, actually) is docked five runs. By so stepping down, he is reducing the capability of the delivery, limiting the turn and the swing it might have had, thus creating unfair advantage for himself. The stepping down might be deliberate or unwitting; this is immaterial. What matters is whether or not the batsman moved past the crease by more than a new limiting distance.

6. Anything else?

'Mitty wajaan maardi' -- an underrated modern masterpiece

2008-02-26T11:52:00.000+05:30

There are films and there are great films. There are, however, films which transcend all classification and join the canon of masterpieces. Defying even the hardiest of sceptics, they rise and soar above the rest much as an eagle soars above the dusty landscape.

'Mitty wajaan maardi' is one such movie.

Starring a bearded man who wears preposterous shirts, drives around in topless cars and is a funky dude, the movie effectively captures the angst that is prevalent in the nostalgic Punjabi diaspora in the United States of America. The protagonist, named Jasbir Singh, is a fit young man who suddenly decides one day, over the lengthy course of a five-minute song during which the titles roll(quite a marvellously innovative method of showing the titles, I thought), that he has to visit his motherland. Not for him the opulent luxury and skyscraper-lined streets and highways of the States. Not for him the allure of the moolah or appeal of the veela. He decides to pay his father a visit. He seemingly drives home to Punjab(this part, admittedly, is not explained very clearly. He is driving a car in the US. Next moment, he lands up in Punjab in the same car.) and delivers a healthy surprise to his dad. A healthy lecture follows in which the virtues of the two cultures are discussed and debated at great length, to be terminated abruptly by the unexpected, but not altogether unpredictable, appearance of a plate of garma-garam pakode/pakore and closely-related fried items. These are consumed and the discussion is left to deal with its loneliness by itself.

It is then that the character of the heroine is introduced. Here we have, etched in indelible celluloid ink, one of the finest characters ever to tread the Punjabi cinematic landscape. Gurjit Kohli, the leading lady, is Gurjit, the female protagonist of the story and she is immediately made the object of affection of Jasbir, the floral-silky-shirt-wearing hero. It is in situations like these that the screenplay, penned by Mandeep Kaur(adapted from the passionate Partition-era novel 'Mitty-shotty wajaan maardi' by Jaspreet Brar), scores. He wastes no time in the lengthy rituals of courtship and romance. Right away, the hero is shown as a man of purpose and determination, a man who decides, merely upon looking at a woman, that she shall be the love of his life, society and her opinion be damned. Thereafter, he proceeds to pummel this opinion into her by following her around relentlessly and being wherever she is, whenever she's there(sanitary facilies excepted). Over the course of two or three songs, Gurjit relents. They are as one, twobodiesonesoul. This is established during a song when Jasbir sings Dera Sacha Sauda leader Gurmeet Singh's immortal, but controversial lines:-

Random Punjabi words with a lot of huNe and paavaan and jaaNa
(Translation:- You and I are one, just as Guru Gobind Singh and I are one. What the--who the hell are these people with swords?)

Widespread sectarian riots break out soon after these lines are sung by Jasbir, ignorant of their meaning. A small boy, a cousin of Gurjit's and spying on them as they stroll through a garden of roses, hears these lines and, shocked, runs to his father and other elders of Gurjit's household and renders the information. The tender romance is then nipped in the bud, as Gurjit's father, a devout man, demands an apology, which Ramandeep Khanna refuses to give since he is not even connected to the events mentioned and is just a guy who lives on the same street as Jasbir's father and happened to be the first guy Gurjit's father met as he went thundering around, randomly demanding apologies. Gurjit's father misinterprets this as an act of grave disobedience and delivers a powerful speech condemning the controversial singing. It is then that Jasbir's father spots the whole crowd and the commotion near his house. His followers, thirsting for an opportunity to unleash violence, rain down blows on Gurjit's father and his clan, killing innocent passerby Ramandeep in the process. Gurjit is taken away forcibly from the park, from Jasbir, and sold by mistake to a caravan of bedouins travelling to China. Gurjit's father soon realizes his mistake and hires an aeroplane to find her, which it soon does and blows the caravan to bits. Gurjit is nowhere to be found, even among the dead.

Griefstruck by Gurjit's disappearance and presumed death, Jasbir goes mad with agony. Giving up his preposterous shirts and sybaritic lifestyle, he dons the clothes of a simple man, preferring a kurta, jeans and a rather unnecessary jhola. He then embarks on a thrilling and adventurous trek through the Himalayan mountains, making friends with Tenzing the sherpa, before realizing he has come the wrong way. Killing Tenzing for misleading him, Jasbir turns left and heads towards Tajikistan. It is there that he comes upon Gurjit being held captive by a looting, pillaging, plundering mob of bedouins, who look rather out of place in the chilly Hindukush mountains in their thin, white costumes, losing a good twenty men annually to pneumonia and frostbite. Jasbir, amazed by the courteousness with which they treat Gurjit and all other women and also by the wide range of ammunition they possess, begins to understand them and their way of life. What is law, asks the bedouin chief, Balbir Pasha. What is goodness, what is order, what is civilization, he asks. Jasbir nods thoughtfully, appreciating the man's deep questions.

'No, I'm actually asking you. What are these things? I read them in an English book yesterday and want to know their meanings,' he says. Jasbir then teaches the bedouins the English language, kindly and sagely. Overcome by his affection for the bedouins and his love for her, considering how far he had to travel on foot, Gurjit cries out to him, expressing her undying love for him and declaiming her own doubts when he did not appear in the initial days of her captivity. In the words of avant garde Haryanvi poet, Mahavir Nikhanj, she sings:-

"Oh love mine, we shall be one as Buddha and the Lumbini gardens were one."

Widespread sectarian riots break out soon after these lines are sung by Gurjit, ignorant of their meaning. The lovers are forced to flee again. But they are encouraged by the wise words of the bedouin chief and his men, who now, armed with a knowledge of the English language, work as software engineers at a local TCS office. They part ways, the lovers and the nomads, but at heart, they are one.

It is an overwhelming experience, this movie, and though daunting in length(about 400 minutes), is worth every minute of it. The dangerous and senseless nature of communal violence is brought to the fore by the sensitive screenplay by Mandeep Kaur, who transposes the Partition novel by Jaspreet Brar(which was set in strife-torn Calcutta and dealt with the bold theme of female sexuality in a time of much conservatism) into an allegory for the bad effects of globalisation on the agrarian Indian economy and the religious polarisation taking place in the Indian state and the deep schism developing in the secular fabric of the nation. A wake-up call like this is much-needed, in these times when 'even fascists can win polls.' The plot device of having even the peaceful Buddhists taking to guns is quite stunning in its destruction of cinematic status quo. The needless killing of innocent passerby Ramandeep underscores this point. A bold, standout example in the filmic canon, this movie, helmed by Dr. Chandraprakash Dwivedi(whose previous venture, Pinjar, was greatly acclaimed critically, but, sadly, did not meet with much box office success), is a landmark in Indian movie history. Jasbir's performance is strong and consistent, with his sincerity coming through in every scene, every frame, every shot. The best performance of the movie, though, is by Gurjit Kohli. She spans the gamut of human female emotion with effortless ease, displaying shades and nuances never even dreamed possible by other heroines of today. Clearly, she is miles ahead of them all and set to be the next occupant of the throne vacated by the great Sridevi. As AIDS-afflicted bedouin chief Balbir Pasha, wicketkeeper Vijay Dahiya delivers a sensitive performance. The rest of the supporting cast is great too, with honourable mention to be made of Tinu Anand as Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Singh and a delightful guest appearance by Tabu as Jasbir's seductive and perpetually lustful neighbour. Technically too, this film stands out heads above the rest. Ravi K Chandran's ace and dynamic cinematography gives a startling, vibrant and shockingly real feel to the movie, especially during the riot scenes, harking back to the days of Ravi's other, low-budget outings such as Mani Ratnam's 'Bombay' and 'Kannatthil mutthamittal.' His sweeping capture of the unspoiled beauty of the Hindukush mountains is spectacular, letting the viewers feel, really feel, the pure, fresh air and the brilliant adrenaline rush of riding through those daunting mountains and wide, sweeping valleys. Gurdass Mann's pulsating background score easily bests most of this year's films, putting viewers in mind of A R Rahman's score for Ratnam's 'Bombay'(particularly the riot scenes). Suresh Urs' editing is slick, except for a minor glitch which reveals Jasbir's ugly chest hair when he is making love to Gurjit. Dr. Dwivedi seems to have adapted a technique from Ratnam here, when he brings in blind cinematographer P C Sreeram for the lighting and Sreeram refuses to shine any light at all on the characters in the scene described above, making for a very awkward moment when the sun rises and Jasbir is shown firmly ensconced in the arms of Gurjit's father. Clearly, this editing glitch could have been avoided. But this could be nitpicking a little, especialy considering the superb slow-motion sequence Urs creates as an homage to Puttanna Kanagal, as the bedouins are riding through the Hindukush mountains.

All said, 'Mitty wajaan maardi' is a superlative movie. The kind of movie which, at the end of six and a half hours of watching it, makes you want to stand and applaud. The director and his crew deserve the money and all the other fine things they get from it, for they have made an honest and brilliant effort here and it shows. Sensitive cineastes will certainly like this movie, with a very human emotion shining through in it. Finer films are rarely made and it would certainly be ill-advised to miss it.

Race

2008-02-21T12:47:00.000+05:30

This story appeared online, suspecting Asian-Americans were not voting for Barack Obama because he was black. That may sound silly, but might not be false altogether. Asians are a rather racist lot. While the Obama issue isn't a very important one, this reminds me of this silly incident which took place in Mysore over ten years ago.

People who have read stuff I wrote when I was actually funny and who are endowed with strong memories will remember this story, which contains a map of the street on which my grandparents then lived. The urchins therein described, Chotu, Vikram, Sujay et al., were the wretches who enlivened my childhood. Upon a time, these two cousins of Chotu's, Suraj and SomebodyElse, came to visit. Now, these two dudes, for some reason, fell out with their cousin, Chotu, and began disseminating 'hate' propaganda against him. So when I arrived, I was informed about new developments that had just taken place.

"We're not playing with Chotu anymore."

Naturally, this surprised me, since Chotu and I had known each other since age 8 and I had never known him to be anything but a very large, very strong fellow who would kill us all and eat our livers if we didn't let him play. So, I wanted to know why.

"Come come, we'll go somewhere else and play the match. We'll tell you there."

Amidst such great suspense, and trepidation at losing my liver anytime soon, I followed the lads to a different pitch from the the one described in the earlier story, with the drawing/masterful almost-authentic reproduction of the street and its surroundings. It was there that the suspense was finally broken.

"Chotu was born in Pakistan."

Immediate pandemonium ensued. Two guys gasped, three others fell down unconscious. Four more fainted and never recovered and had to be carried away and discreetly buried. Eight people were stunned into silence and had trouble speaking for about two years. Eighteen others fled the scene and were never heard of again. A small nation declared its independence from Russia and the collective global stock market collapsed. Telugu was banned from top night clubs in New Delhi and Orissa was recognised as a state.

My brain was not yet in its current highly evolved state, so I did not ask the questions which should have naturally followed this pronouncement viz., "Oh?" "So what?" "How will that make a difference to us?" Instead, my reaction was a dull "Oh." In fact, that was my reaction to most things back then. An acknowledgement, followed by going along with whatever the others did. But then, they were the days before I read the Hitchhiker's guide or Catch-22 or The catcher in the rye, so that's ok.

But the others were quite vociferous in expressing their displeasure at this dramatic turn of events. "He was born in Pakistan?! Never!" "What do you mean, never? Of course he was born there. He was born in Sindh." "No, I meant, we'll never play with him again!" "Of course!" "He's out." "But he didn't even bat." "Shut up."

So, after some deliberation, we ended up in Vikram's house, where his mother was startled by the sight of so many racist youngsters traipsing sombrely into her house and getting the floor all dirty. "What the fuck do you guys think you're doing?!" she asked. No, I don't think she used the strong language, but it was the child's equivalent of that. So, hesitantly, we told her the gist of our strong, logical argument. This time, I think she actually used strong language.

"What??!! That is so stupid! You're not going to play with the guy anymore just because he was born in Pakistan?! That's the stupidest thing I have ever heard. How does it matter where he was born? Isn't he your friend?"

This, and other lines from the last two minutes of every episode of 'Full house' followed. You know, the preachy stuff Danny or Uncle Jesse or the decently hot Becky spewed while the tinkly piano music played. We were ashamed beyond belief. No, not at watching Full house, although that too is true, but at our stupidity. So we said sorry to Vikram's mother, for some reason, and went out, beat up Suraj and that other guy and went to call Chotu out to play.

Sometimes, the greatest of journeys have the humblest of beginnings.

Dada, the Wall, out; the Sharmas, in

2008-02-19T11:48:00.000+05:30

So. Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid are out of the upcoming Pepsi campaign. Ishant and Rohit, the two new Sharmas, will be roped in to feature in the new ad of the soft drink giant, which specializes in making liquids which look bad and taste evil. This new move is part of Pepsi's long-term strategy of taking in young, promising cricketers and turning them into old, non-performing assets, so that P. Chidambaram can later come along, disinvest them and sell them off to Larsen and Toubro.

SomeDude, official spokesperson for PepsiCo, said this was not, in any sense, a replacement of the old guard. It was just giving a chance for the new spirit(that the youth bring) to shine through. PepsiCo chairwoman, Indra Nooyi, was busy featuring on Most Powerful Women lists and was unavailable for comment.

I don't understand what Pepsi has against India. Agreed, some people feel their drinks taste like shit and look like the blood of Sauron. Also, Delhi-based CSE has been snapping at their heels repeatedly, with several state governments reacting knee-jerk to the CSE findings and banning the sale of said blood-of-Sauron drinks from educational and governmental institutions. But a whole lot of easily-influenced people do buy their products, pouring in crores/billions of rupees into their coffers. Additionally, no other country in the world would be as tolerant of the environmental damage they reportedly cause as India. Being thus, it is rather ungrateful of Pepsi to embark on this iconoclastic venture. Every time a new player emerges, it seems, Pepsi has to sign them up for expensive, silly-looking ad campaigns and ruin their career. For a while, no new player emerged worth ruining. So, Pepsi made that really sad ad with Sourav Ganguly, with him saying he was trying really hard to get back into the Indian team and could he please have a chance else his mother, who was currently tied to certain drums and barrels in the hideout of the evil Molaram, would be blown to smithereens along with a brother who looks like film and television actor Sachin and sister who ties her hair in two pigtails and carries her bag to college with the long shoulder strap resting on her head oh please please please let me play!

Sehwag, Yuvraj and Kaif were denigrated in less offensive ads, leading to a swift loss of form for them. Does anyone know where Mohammed Kaif is now? I heard he was hosting his own satirical antakshari program now, with contestants having to sing songs insulting Sharad Pawar, no matter what alphabet they ended up with. Or something.

So goodbye, Ishant and Rohit Sharma. It's been nice having you with the team. You've played well, the two of you. Fine bowling spells have been the norm from Ishant while Rohit Sharma has played some solid knocks. This is the end, I'm afraid. This is as far as you go. No more purple patches for you, no more consistently match-winning performances. You're on the money train now.

John Rambo -- an unbiased, painfully detailed review -- part II

2008-02-04T09:37:00.000+05:30

(Recap:- Rambo kicks ass. Missionaries molest children.)

Rambo single-handedly kills all the evil soldiers who're making the innocent Burmese civilians run through landmine-infested paddy fields. With his beloved method of bow-and-arrow, he dispatches the missiles of death faster than the eye can see and each one unerringly hits its mark. Burmese militia - 0. John Rambo - about two dozen.

The mercenaries now wise up and are all, 'Whoa.' So Rambo comes along with them and they hatch a plan to rescue the missionaries from where they're being kept, in cages. Oddly, we think, the Sarah woman is still unharmed, though she's been tied up in a cage next to one full of pigs(and pigs, as anyone who's seen 'Snatch' knows, are dangerous). She has not yet been defiled by evil Asian men because....ta-daa, evil Asian men are paedophiles. Yes, the Burmese miltia leader, always wearing shades, is shown to be a boylover. Like Socrates, only more angry. Meanwhile, the evil militiamen are all drunk and enjoying some boring dance by lifeless women. So all this is happening when Rambo and the mercenaries hatch a plan(more likely, Rambo hatched the whole plan and these wise-asses just took credit for it and Rambo was too manly to complain.) which involves synchronization of watches. So they suddenly get into a truck somehow and go to the prison camp and sneak in, leaving British Soldier no.1 at the gate to shoot people. Then, Japanese-looking person jumps off the truck and sneaks in somewhere else. Then, Indian-looking person does the same. Then, School Boy. And finally, Rambo himself, after ensuring the safety of all the others. Everything goes like clockwork and the other guys rescue their intended targets. Rambo is about get Sarah out when stupid fate intervenes and some drunk soldier drags her off somewhere. To a hut. He's about to take his clothes off when Rambo gets hold of him and rips his throat out. It's the bloodiest Rambo killing I've seen. Burmese militia - 0, Rambo - several dozen and one throat-ripping.

Rambo then gets the woman out and they run, but the stupid woman falls and they're spotted by two soldiers. Unexpectedly, British Soldier no.1 comes to their aid and blows the heads of the soldiers off clean. The British can shoot straight. Who knew?

After this, the Burmese militia's child-abusing leader, Always-In-Shades, discovers the escape of the hostages. Enraged, he orders a search party despatched and, within a few hours, practically the whole country is looking for Rambo and his weak-kneed buddies. Rambo, Sarah and the British sharpshooter are in a group, with the others far ahead. Dogs are set after them and the canines are sniffing our heroes out. They're getting closer and closer and the situation is getting grim. What does Rambo do?!

Simple. He rips off a bit of clothing the Sarah chick is wearing and sends her and the sharpshooter away, saying he'll follow. Because he knows that he alone, and no one else, can accomplish the supreme feat of awesomeness he is about to accomplish. He selects a little leafy spot in the forest and then, ingeniously, wraps the bit of clothing around a bomb and leaves it there. Then, he runs. Yeah, he gets the hell out of there.

Unfortunately, no one told the Burmese soldiers, when Rambo runs, you'd better run.

The dogs get distracted by Rambo's clever trick and arrive promptly at the spot where the bomb is. The Burmese soldier holding the dog-leash carelessly uncovers the bomb, brushing away the leaves on top of it.

Meanwhile, Rambo is getting the hell away from the spot as fast as he can. Which actually is very fast, when you consider he's 61 years old. He's running like he's rushing to kick some humongous ass at a distant spot and time is running out. The Burmese soldier notices the piece of cloth ripped from Sarah's shirt and, additionally, a string/wire tied to it. Meanwhile, Rambo is still running, faster, faster, faster.

The Burmese soldier brushes away some more leaves and the string gets disentangled.

BLAM!!! The biggest motherfucking explosion in the history of the universe occurs and the bastards are killed all at once. The shockwaves from the blast propagate with the force of a thousand suns exploding and the whole bloody forest seems to be getting uprooted, the trees ripped out from their roots, the leaves on the ground blown away like they're so many bits of paper. The energy is so great, it even catches up with Rambo and he falls to the ground. If a wave can catch up with Rambo, it's got be some big, badass wave. And it's got to have been set off by Rambo. This blast is the biggest Rambo explosion ever. Scientists are now reconsidering their views in cosmology, saying it is now almost certain that Rambo created the universe with another similar explosion, which made the Big Bang look like only a little bang that didn't do anything, when he was kicking some ass which pissed him off. That is one awesome bomb.

Burmese militia - 0. John Rambo -- 2 million.

School Boy and the others are ahead but they get caught by another group of Burmese soldiers, stupidly. Sure enough, Always-In-Shades orders them tied up and shot. All hope is lost, our mercenaries will die, our missionaries will die(good riddance, one would have thought). Oh who shall save our heroes and the day?

Poor Rambo, he's got to look after all these people singlehandedly. Again, it's his job to save their sorry skins. He pulls a totally stunning move this time. When the mercenaries and missionaries are about to be shot(with School Boy spewing silly lines of bravado), Rambo slooooowly rises from behind one of the Burmese soldiers(a gunman), like Martin Sheen in 'Apocalypse now.' Except, Martin Sheen had mud all over him and looked a little silly, actually('Apocalypse now' is an amazing movie, though. No bad words shall be heard about it.). Rambo kills the gunman and takes control of the gun.

From then on, it is complete mayhem and a bloodbath. Rambo singlehandedly(as usual) kills everyone in sight(the enemy, of course), while the mercenaries kill whatever is left alive. Out of pity for them, you understand, not because Rambo missed. Then that Michael dude, the missionary person, rams a stone repeatedly into the skull of one of the Burmese guys. Thus establishing his fallibility and that of all fake-evangelists.

Then, Always-In-Shades tries to make a run for it. He's just realized who Rambo is. But Rambo's not having any of it. He catches the bastard and rips his stomach open and spills his intestines on the ground. Always-In-Shades collapses in one-and-a-half pieces. It's all over.

Rambo goes back home, a few days later. He enters a home with a postbox marked "R. Rambo." What a blessed father R. Rambo must have been to have a son like this. How grateful must we be to him. Ever, that's how grateful. Till we die. For, even if all is lost, even if the people of the world begin annihilating each other, civilizations crumble, nations collapse, glaciers melt, continents drift, islands coalesce and Apocalypse occurs, one man will always be there to fight for the underdog. One man will always be ready to shed the blood of the evil for the sake of justice. One man will put entire armies to shame with the body count he chalks up. One man will kick so much ass, no other man will feel at all adequate before him. Ever.

John Rambo.