Overrated Outcast

From Annapalooza to Murdochmania

2012-01-13T14:06:00.001+05:30

(Tweitgeist is my new weekly column for the Sunday Guardian.)

Twitter! It’s basically a direct connection to your id. No matter how much you try to dress it up with witty bon mots or parsimonious prose, you can never hide your inner a**hole. This is a good thing, because, if we wanted to read saccharine updates from horrible people, we’d stick to Facebook.

Appropriately, the last week of 2011 saw the last hurrah of pro-violence Gandhian and ineligible Bachelor of the Year, Anna Hazare. Not only were people in the real world deserting him, even Twitter’s revolutionaries were leaving his sinking ship. First he came for our alcohol, then he came for the women who couldn’t breed. People were suddenly surprised that an old man whose name literally translates to “Big Brother” had some strong opinions on how other people should live and behave. Not that most Indians mind, of course. We like our Messiahs like we like our leading men in south Indian movies – old, dystopian and rumoured to possess supernatural powers.

So, while the action at Annapalooza fizzled out, Twitter India’s hopes turned from the dear leader of Ralegan Siddhi and were soon invested in the great speeches being delivered in the Rajya Sabha, the Jogger’s Park of legislative bodies. If only history had shown us – even once, Herr Reader – that making great speeches does not necessitate good policies! This euphoria turned to abject disappointment once the bill wasn’t passed. There was righteous anger about the fact that a group of people who have benefitted from a certain system are not even pretending to attempt to change that very system.

After orchestrating the drama in the Rajya Sabha over the passage of the Lokpal bill, each political party went on a media offensive, trying to usurp the high moral ground. They tried every tired excuse in the book, at one point even accusing each other of playing politics! Gasp! A political party playing politics? That has never before happened in the history of the world!

The Congress proved how serious it was to combat corruption when it made Ajit Singh — a politician whose career, rumour has it, has been like a prolonged withdrawal from the ATM — the Civil Aviation minister. The BJP showed its resolve to eradicate corruption by inducting into its UP unit ex-BSP members who even Mayawati thought were too corrupt to be around. Being judged too corrupt by Mayawati is like being called a “fundamentalist loony” by Subramaniyam Swamy. Perhaps the BJP’s ingenious plan to deny power to corrupt politicians is to make them members of the BJP. Meanwhile, Sharad & Laloo Yadav proved once again that they’re more suited to headline the terrible Archana Puran Singh variety comedy show than determine public policy.

Maybe now we can stop pretending that the Lokpal bill would have even slightly dented corruption in this country.

The Twittersphere had an auspicious start to the New Year by outraging about British television presenter and professional troll Jeremy Clarkson. Apparently he made bad jokes about not all Indians having access to hygienic washroom facilities. How dare a foreigner make mildly amusing remarks about a stark Indian reality? Also, there is no lack of washroom facilities in India. What Clarkson doesn’t realize is that in India, if you want to take a s**t, the world is your oyster. To some of our countrymen, nature is their commode. And rivers are their bidet. Who needs to be stuck in a small enclosure when you can be one with nature whilst emptying your body of all of yesterday’s toxins? It’s practically meditative! Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it, Clarkson. Stop being such a burra sahib for once.

Also this week, real life Bond villain and voicemail enthusiast Rupert Murdoch joined Twitter, ostensibly to present his side of the story. Because if there was one thing Murdoch is lacking, it’s a platform in which to present his views. After a few hours another Twitter account appeared, purporting to be his young wife and current head of security Wendi Deng. Both accounts were verified by both Twitter and Newscorp. A day later the Wendi Deng account revealed that it was a fake. Shocking! Someone on the Internet wasn’t who they said they were! Why would anyone lie on the Internet and ruin it’s sanctity? If there was any justice in the world, the Rupert Murdoch account would have been run by a gay girl from Damascus.

Totally non-corrupt government appoints completely honest minister

2011-12-18T14:47:00.001+05:30

Self-proclaimed beacon of democracy and good governance, the UPA government, has added to it’s august ranks another great patriot who puts country first.

Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Ajit Singh was today sworn in as a Union Cabinet minister.

LOLWUT?

Is this the same Ajit Singh who has made deals with more politicians than Bhanwari Devi and been in more parties than Suhel Seth during New Year’s eve?

This will be the fourth time that Mr Singh will be sworn in as a member of the Union Cabinet. The 72-year-old Mr Singh has had one earlier association with the Congress at the Centre, as the Union Food Minister in 1995-96 when P V Narasimha Rao was the Prime Minister. He was part of the United Front government headed by VP Singh and was the Union Industries Minister in 1991-1992. He was the Union Agriculture Minister between 2001 and 2004 after he joined the National Democratic Alliance government headed by Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Not to forget his ‘alliances’ with both the SP and BSP.

One would say that it’s another dick move from the incompetent cesspool of stupidity that is the UPA government and trying to assuage allegations of corruption by hiring the man who is the human representation of all that is wrong with politics in this country is one of the dumbest things in the history of mankind, but, one shouldn’t say these things because national nanny and adult class monitor Kapil Sibal is listening. (Those eyebrows are like antennas!)

Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt for a second. Maybe they’ve hired Ajit Singh for his expertise?

Stop laughing.

He is an IIT graduate after all! Some of them are good at things other than writing crappy campus novels.

Mr Singh's inclusion in the UPA is significant in that it comes ahead of the crucial Uttar Pradesh elections due in a few months. His party, the RLD, has a significant base in the western part of the state. He is likely to get the Civil Aviation portfolio.

Uh-oh. Right. Okay. Nothing to see here.

As they say, if you want something to go away you should severely indulge in it. The UPA is going to fight corruption with . . . more corruption!
Strategery ftw!

Now excuse me while I go back to drinking profusely so that I can quit one day.

[via NDTV & NDTV]

Memo to the people in the office who use the common printer

2011-10-19T22:16:00.001+05:30

Colleagues,

Thanks to our office renovation, I have been unfortunate enough to sit near the office printer for the past week. I have been told that the renovations are going to go for a few more weeks, which means that I’ll have to be at this seat for longer than expected. So to keep myself sane, and to prevent office violence, I have drawn up a few helpful guidelines:-

Here are few things which I don’t know:

The reason why the paper is jammed
The reason why the printer used blue ink instead of red
The person who cancelled your print job when it was halfway through
The person who took away your son’s class project
Your colleague’s phone extension
The phone extension for the IT team
Whether IT or ADMIN are responsible for the upkeep of the printer
What the score is or who won the match or any other variation thereof

Here are a few things which I will not do:

Vacate my workstation so that you can login to yours no matter how many successive hours you have been in the office and might miss your cab back home if you don’t hurry
Call your extension when your thousand page document has been printed
Give you a missed call when the IT guy “finally shows up” even if you haven’t had anything to eat since morning and all you want to do is grab a bite because you are feeling a little faint and/or suffer from hypoglycaemia

Here are a few things which do not fall under my job description:

To tell you that you need to use blue paper if you want to take your printed document out of the office premises
Send IT an email when the printer runs out of paper
Arbitrate between both the IT and ADMIN teams to determine who holds responsibility for the printer
Arbitrate between two people to determine who gets to use the printer first
To judge whether your wedding card looks better in black & white or colour
Lending you my seat in absentia while you wait for your print job. This transgression will force me to change my chair with yours.

Here are a few topics of conversation which do not interest me:

Any office gossip even if it so juicy that you cannot keep it a secret
To educate you about what I am “currently working on”
The fact that your previous employer had state-of-the-art laser printers and the management of your current employer is made up of “cheap bastards”
Any complaint regarding other people using the printer to print frivolous documents hence monopolizing and wasting the company’s resources
The fact that you crashed the print server by continuously hitting the print button. Also, I do not find the said action amusing.

Please follow these guidelines to ensure a peaceful working environment, failing which I cannot be held responsible for missing sheets or the appearance of extra pages in your handout to the CEO containing pictures that suspiciously resemble buttocks or other non-business ends.

Thanks in advance.

Best,

__________________

(Disclaimer: No printers were hurt during the writing of this memo.)

(with inputs from Daddy San)

Adventures in Real India: Visiting the Wagah Border

2011-03-01T12:15:00.001+05:30

Ever since Dear Leader Rahul Gandhi said something about there being two India’s, I’ve always been wondered about the second India. Was he talking metaphysically? Was he going all Philip K Dick on us and talking about an India which exists in a parallel universe, where the grass is green and even the boys are pretty? Nobody had answers to these questions. So, to solve this huge mystery, I put on my cap, stuffed a few clothes into a backpack, got into the car and started driving to an unknown destination. (Not really. I don’t wear caps, my trip was pre-planned and I took a plane. And had to pay for extra luggage. But, hey, the truth doesn’t always sound romantic).

So there I was, in the heart of Real India, (I don’t really know what is really the heart of Real India. Only Generalissimo Gandhi knows that. But this is usually how one begins such pieces, so bear with me.), Amritsar. I hadn’t been to Punjab before. but coming from Delhi, I thought I could handle Punjab. I thought I knew everything there was to know about Punjab. Butter chicken, bhangra music and Harbhajan Singh. What else is there to know? But no, there is so much more to Punjab. There is also Butter Nan, Meethi Lassi and Harbhajan Mann. I was accompanied on the trip by a Mallu friend from Bangalore. Who, for the record, couldn’t stop complaining. You know how those Madrasis are. (Yes, yes, we get it. Everyone in North India is rude and doesn’t understand rules and regulations. Pfft! Rules and regulations are for people who cannot beat other people up and buy their way out of jail!). I guess this is why the Aryans must have driven all the Madrasis down South in ancient times. Because of the constant whining! Sheesh!

Anyway, what’s with the food in Amritsar? I had lunch one day and wasn’t hungry for the next whole week. I thought Italian food was heavy, but it’s got nothing on Amritsari food. Seriously, if there is a solution to world hunger, I’m pretty sure it lies in Amritsar.

While I was in Amritsar, I was also scheduled to go to the Wagah Border. I wasn’t particularly interested in going there because patriotism bores me. If I wanted to hear people lose their shit over a worthless cause, I’d watch a match featuring the Indian cricket team. I said I would go, but only if we could get the good seats. Not the nosebleed seats with the rest of them. I was ready to embrace real India and everything, provided I didn’t have to come into contact with it’s inhabitants. I didn’t want to try too many things at the same time, like a small town resident visiting a mall in a big city for the first time.

However, my socialist Madrasi friend was feeling let down. Since he is a ~~unpretentious prick~~ man of the people, he wanted to sit among the nosebleed seats. (Abeyaar, what do they feed you down South? Do they grate the communist manifesto into your dosas? Leave the communism to the Bengalis. That’s all they’ve got anyway. The thing is, if we can’t use money to decide the importance of people, the whole world will be thrown into chaos!)

So we get ready and head towards the border. The drive is a good one. The scenery was decent, but I was expecting something more Yash Rajesque. The government should look into that. Well, even though it could not hold up to the production values of a Yash Raj movie, I was quite enjoying the scenery. Until my driver/handler (Oh yes! I had a handler. SUCK ON THAT, POOR PEOPLE!) told me that some of it was Pakistan. Now I am as tolerant as the next person, but suddenly the grass on the Pakistani side started looking evil and gave off bad vibes. Like it wanted to assassinate me or something. Typical!

When we reached our destination, we were allowed to take our car a kilometre or two closer to the border than the ~~riffraff~~ general public (Obligatory #LikeABoss). But I had to still make the supreme patriotic sacrifice and had to walk a little. Whilst we entered through the VVIP entrance, we found out that our seats had already been taken up. Apparently, some asshole minister showed up with extra members of his asshole contingent. Can you believe how entitled these people are? They think they can just waltz in with their power and government contacts and expect to be given special treatment. What kind of a sociopath does that?

To the delight of my pinko commie friend, we were then led to the semi-nosebleed section. I tried to protest, but the loud music drowned out everything I said, just like when the sage old family senior at a Punjabi wedding tries to convince all the dancing members of the groom’s party to stop dancing and come inside the wedding hall and is drowned out by the sound of the band. Finally, the Yash Raj fantasy was coming true! People were dancing, without any reason whatsoever! However, the dancing was like an episode of Glee, if Glee were choreographed by a blind guy with no legs who is also mute and cannot move his hands.

For a moment, I was lost in the fanfare. About three hundred people who didn’t know each other were “dancing” next to each other, while another ten thousand other were singing along. We sat there looking at people doing what can only be described as moving their bodies in a weird fashion, while they played every bollywood song even remotely related to patriotism. I think they use the same set of songs at concerts for NRI’s. It seemed strange for someone like me to see all these people, most of whom don’t know each other (I’m assuming. Unless of course, they were all part of a small punjabi wedding party), enjoying the moment together. It was like their differences didn’t exist and just being at the same place at the same time was enough reason to bond. This usually only happens during college fests in Delhi or at an Osho commune.

Suddenly, they played Jai Ho and my bubble burst. Of course this song got the most applause. Of course even the white people jumped in to dance with the natives. Apparently, along with the cellular network, even irony did not exist here because nobody else seemed bothered that the song of a British movie got the biggest pop at the India-Pakistan border. I could imagine the G4 freedom fighters, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel & Bose looking down from freedom fighter heaven, shaking their head and going “We did all that for these assholes?”

Anyway, unbeknownst to me, the ceremony was about to get even more ridiculous. The dancing was followed by shouting. The MC of the event made it clear that we could only shout positive slogans, as part of the new confidence building measures. But that didn’t stop him from pointing us to VIOLENTLY VOMIT OUR SLOGANS in the general direction of Pakistan.

I only briefly looked at the Pakistani side, but it had a look of sadness and despair. Kind of like a metaphor for the whole country. The men and women were sitting separately. When their MC was encouraging them to VIOLENTLY VOMIT SLOGANS in the general direction of India, he didn’t sound like he believed those slogans himself. It was really transparent that they were written by a quixotic Pakistani government bureaucrat who was serving in the army during the 1971 war. And really, those slogans were even sadder than the whole atmosphere in that place. That’s because during partition, all the best slogans representing the independence movement were taken by India. Wow, whoever our lawyer was during that time, he was one crafty sumbitch! Not only did we get the best of everything, we stuck them with Balochistan! I bet the hardest part must have been trying to make them believe that we actually wanted to keep the Frontier provinces. Jinnah was such a n00b! Governor General Smoking Skull got pwned by Prime Minister Horny McEdwinaPants!

Before all the shouting commences, they play the battle cry theme song from the Mahabharatha teevee program (I’m guessing Daft Punk wasn’t available?), because nothing signifies futile battles like the Mahabharatha. So first, the crowd shouts, then some of the soldiers pull a Shankar Mahadevan and shout the word “OH” for a really long time without taking a breather. Then the crowd applauds them and shouts some more slogans. Then some of the soldiers march towards the gate, while making their feet walk like an Egyptian. Which the crowd applauds and this continues for a while.

All the shouting and applauding presents us with really strange moments.. Like there was this group berating those of us who were mute spectators to the festivities for our lack of patriotism. They were obviously from Bombay. Then there was this group which kept shouting Inquialab Zindabad. Because, really why the fuck not? It’s been sixty three years since the British left, but, whatever, JUST IN CASE THEY LEFT SOMEONE BEHIND! Better safe than sorry!

Then, after what it seems like forever, they take down the flag, and fold it in the prim and propah gay military technique and take it to for safekeeping in the flag(?) house until it’s put back up on the flag pole again at daybreak.

And then everybody gets up to go. But first, only the white people are allowed to leave. That rule must be there to remind everybody how it must have been like before the country got independence. I almost shouted “SIMON GO BACK!”.

Damn, patriotism can be so infectious!

What’s Hot: Your guide to a festive weekend!

2011-02-18T17:53:00.001+05:30

Did you miss valentines day because you were working and your asshole boss would not let you take the day off and even made you work late? Or is that what you told your partner even though you could have easily taken the day off and when you said “late” you meant you were canoodling with you office sexytime partner? Well, in case you want to make it up or even if you didn’t screw up a made up hallmark holiday and want a weekend out on the town, we are here to help you! We go everywhere and taste everything so that you don’t have to! So here are the most happening events taking place this weekend. Enjoy!

Books

Talk about intellectual stimulation! On Friday, in preparation for World Cup 2011, Roli Books presents a special coffee table book,1983: A Circle Jerk, a pictorial essay of the most glorious day of Indian cricket which did not involve either Sachin Tendulkar or beating Pakistan. The book is the brainchild of India’s only world cup winning captain, Kapil Dev. He has also chosen the title, written the foreword and selected the pictures that were included in this historic book! The MC for the event is another member of the historic team, Kirti Azad. We are glad that both of them took time out from their busy schedule appearing on various news channels to attend this event. Unfortunately, no other members of the historic team will be at the release ceremony as they had something better to do and/or are dead. After the book release, a few select guests will be taken to a small concert hall where international superstar Bryan Adams will perform along with world famous music composer, Biddu.

Movies

This week is all about politics!

Whose speech is it anyway?

Mistaken Identity! International Espionage! People who have no idea how to do their job! From the makers of 27 Dresses: The Shivraj Patil Story comes the most awaited comedy of the year, Whose speech is it anyway? The movie opens with a minister of the Indian government reading a wrong speech at an international conference. He then catches the wrong flight and is then kidnapped by pirates, who think he is someone else! Hijinks ensues, and one hilarious misstep after another almost starts world war 3. Starring Paresh Rawal as the minister, Tom Alter as generic white guy who talks in accented hindi and Rajpal Yadav in blackface as an incompetent Somali pirate.

Prime Minister Slow Motion

This political thriller set in contemporary times is about a geriatric politician who is prime minister in name only. He stands by and watches chaos reign all around him. He is happy to rest on his past laurels and all he wants to do is hold on to power long enough so that his rival, the leader of the opposition, is never able to fulfil his ambition of holding the second most powerful office in the country, (the first being the host of Times Newshour). All this ends when a young, dynamic leader, a scion of the most powerful political family in the country uses his influence to challenge the status quo and then becomes Prime Minister. He then starts solving problems from overpopulation to climate change. He falls in love with a village belle after eating a meal at her house. She is then kidnapped by his political foes, who are aided in this mission by foreign powers. Will the leader be forced to choose between his country and his lover? Will the foreign powers succeed in dividing the country? Starring thespian Dilip Kumar as Prime Minister Major Slow Motion, AK Hangal as the leader of the opposition and the evergreen Dev Anand as the young, dynamic and charismatic leader who saves the day. Katrina Kaif plays his mother. Anushka Sharma plays the village belle he falls in love with. The movie also contains a sultry item number performed by the demure Dolly Bindra.(The makers of this movie insist that none of the characters in this movie are based on anyone in real life. In fact, the story of the movie is a modern interpretation of the err…umm…. Mahabharatha. Yeah, that sounds about right.)

Exhibition

This week, an exhibition of the photographs of budding photographer Sunanda Pushkar, is being held at Lalit Kala Academy. The model for all the pictures is the photographers muse and husband, former Union minister, Shashi Tharoor. The exhibition includes many haunting images like “Shashi Tharoor staring thoughtfully into the future” and “Shashi Tharoor standing next to the parliament building and staring thoughtfully into the future”. There is also a humour section which displays playful images like the one in which Shashi Tharoor pretends blowing a trumpet which is also called Shashi Tharoor. Unfortunately, the controversial image “Shashi Tharoor riding a holy cow” was removed after lawful protest by members of the Hindu Janajaguriti Samiti. Light music and entertainment will be provided by visiting international superstar, Bryan Adams who will be accompanied by the Prince dance group, winners of the first season of India’s Got Talent.

Theatre

The India Habitat Centre has a special treat for all it’s members this weekend. A special performance of the one man show “My Struggle for India”, written & directed by noted playwright and part-time politician Amar Singh. It is a touching story about a man who just wants to do right by his country and is betrayed at every stage of his life by the people closest to him. He loses everything, including his pants, but still keeps carrying on, refusing to ride into the sunset. Starring award winning Hollywood actor Danny DeVito, this touching story will have you crying harder than a small child who just found out that his dad killed Santa Claus!

Food

Opening this weekend, in the heart of the capital, is a new fusion restaurant, The Berlusconi Plaza. That’s right! Placed right between the CWG games construction site and Palika Bazar, this new “concept” restaurant is just what the city needed! You thought Chicken Manchurian was a big fucking deal? Wait till you let your tastebuds satiate on such signature delicacies like Mutter Meatballs and Sag Spaghetti! Come for the great food, stay for the awesome dessert! You can choose between “The Italian Senator”, in which a leggy Italian blonde hooker blows you while you eat your favourite ice cream or “The ND Tiwari”, in which an underage girl-child from Bangladesh feeds you crushed strawberries and cream while another rubs ben-gay all over your aching limbs! On the opening night, dance to appetizing tunes from the 90s, courtesy of guest DJ and international superstar, Bryan Adams.

India & America to continue to make love to each other, despite having insignificant others

2011-01-22T19:17:00.001+05:30

While all of you were busy trying to drink away the cold weather (or was that just me), something important was brewing in a land, far, far away.

The White House is to throw a lavish reception for the Chinese leader, Hu Jintao, on Wednesday in an effort to patch up relations after a difficult year dominated by tensions over currency rates, jobs, North Korea and other international issues. President Hu is due in Washington tomorrow for the start of a four-day visit, the highlight of which is to be a state dinner at the White House on Wednesday evening.

WHAT?

Isn’t that cheating?

How can America make relations with China, behind our backs? Wasn’t it just last November when President Barry America swept us off our feet by uttering those magic words “Permanent Member of the Security Council”. Whenever our other diplomatic initiatives were rebuked by other countries, we took solace in the fact that maybe one day, we would take our rightful place, right next to America, and both of us together would heal the world and make it a better place for you and for me and the entire human race!

Is this why we gave you billions of dollars of our hard earned money, Barry? Is this how you repay us? How can you do that to us, Barry? What about all the nice things you said to us in the backseat of your plush limo? Were those a lie too? Did you think we would never find out? This is a slap in the face of the awesome future we had planned together. How can you do that to us, Barry? HOW CAN YOU SLAP?

Tell us that it’s not true, Barry. Tell us you’re only doing it because you owe China some money.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh got a state dinner when he came here in 2009 as President Barack Obama's first state guest. Chinese President Hu Jintao is getting one too, but commentators are discussing it as if it was completely unexpected.

This and other comparisons are being drawn between India and China in a triangular relationship with the US, going right up to the White House itself, unsolicited and unprompted. Shortly before Hu arrived on Tuesday, Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters not to expect deliverables to match those of the India visit.

See? Barry could never do that to us. His mouth may say Kung Pao Chicken, but in his heart there is only place for Chicken Malai Tikka.

It’s okay with us, Barry. We understand your relationship with China is just fiscal! We can’t always be together. We’re not jealous. In fact, we have a confession to make. It seems like we might have had a short fling with France (it’s how you say “hello” in France), a one night stand with ~~the poor man’s Canada~~ Britain (but that was basically pity sex. We feel bad for the fella. Nobody even asks him out anymore. Even his neighbours ignore him all the time), and we even fondly remember the time when Russia date raped us (Bygones. Can’t blame him, though. He was in Delhi). What we want you to know Barry is that we were thinking about you all the time!

Both of us may stray, Barry, but we know that each of us will come back home! At the end of the day, our relationship is the winner!

That’s what everybody else seems to be thinking too:

Even the think tanks seem a little under-enthused. Though papers are being presented and talks are being hosted, the buzz is missing. "The bottom line is that no one expects dramatic breakthroughs with the Hu visit," said Richard Fontaine of the Centre for New American Security. Though corporate deals worth billions are expected to be announced over the next two days, the high-voltage success of Obama's visit to India in November might have raised the bar for visits of this kind.
"This is a little different from our trip to India. The economic relationship that we have with the Chinese is different on a scale with what we do with India," Gibbs told reporters.

ZOMG! In this relationship, we are the Betty Cooper to America’s Archie Andrews. And China is mean ol’ Veronica Lodge, with all her money and charm and her scandalous short skirts. Archie may take Veronica dancing every Saturday night, but he always spends Sunday afternoon making cookies with Betty. Betty might have to do all the work while Archie just sits there watching teevee, but, still, Betty loves to make cookies. In fact, Betty lives for all those Sundays she can make cookies for Archie. If Betty could spend the rest of her life making cookies for Archie, she would consider it a life well spent.

In fact, we have so much trust in Barry’s love that we even wrote a song* for him:

Barry, can you hear me?
Barry, can you see me?
Barry can you find me in the night?
Barry are you near me?
Barry, can you hear me?
Barry, can you help me not be frightened?
Looking at the skies I seem to see
A million eyes which ones are yours?
Where are you now that yesterday
Has waved goodbye
And closed its doors?
The night is so much darker;
The wind is so much colder;
The world I see is so much bigger
Now that I'm alone.
Barry, please forgive me.
Try to understand me;
Barry, don’t you know I had no choice?
Anything I'm saying
Even though the night is filled with voices?
I remember everything you taught me
Every book I've ever read...
Can all the words in all the books
Help me to face what lies ahead?
The trees are so much taller
And I feel so much smaller;
The moon is twice as lonely
And the stars are half as bright...
Barry, how I love you...
Barry, how I need you.
Barry, how I miss you
Kissing me good night...

No 'Hu' and cry over Chinese Prez visit, US prefers India [HT]
* Original song by Barbra Streisand from the film Yenti [Wikipedia]

This is an year end post

2011-01-01T21:58:00.001+05:30

There is something about December that turns everybody contemplative. December is like the child nobody cares about because he neither gets good marks nor can he play any sports. The “best of the year” lists start from the first week. Suddenly, everyone is overtaken by an incessant need to quantify everything they did in the past eleven months and there are lists spewing out of every corner (Top 10 things I could have done instead of watching everything put out by HBO, Five lies I told myself to convince my subconscious that anyone who unfollowed me on twitter was losing out on awesomeness even though I knew the opposite to be true, Three things my grandmother said that were racist but I pretended were adorable, Thirty Thousand things I wanted to tell my boss but couldn’t because he’s a raving asshole and is the reason I die a little, everyday, etc.)

There is something about December that turns everybody sincere. Maybe it’s the realisation that they achieved nothing that whole year around or the fact that they’re getting closer to death. But even the most cynical of people turn out emphatic, and surprisingly genuine prose. It’s like everyone is going through the existential angst that you usually hear about in a Coldplay album.

There is something about December which makes people overestimate their capacity for self-improvement. Suddenly, everyone thinks that they’ll rise above their own mediocrity to start losing weight/quit smoking/stop making rape jokes. It’s as if someone will spray some magic dust and they will wake up in the new year and become a better version of themselves. The odds of that happening are lesser than the odds of Sarah Palin understanding the science explaining global warming.

There is something about December which makes everyone nostalgic. Suddenly, every old memory is drudged out and even people in their early twenties remember their childhood with a loud sigh and a fond head tilt. Really? Let’s face it. Everything seems better in hindsight. In reality, your childhood sucked (except of course, if you were catholic. Then, probably, you would have been the one doing the sucking).What’s so great about being a child anyway? Everyone tells you what to do, you have to pretend to feel guilty while blowing away your parents money on useless shit like textbooks & tuition and you have to bribe your driver to make sure he doesn’t talk about all your recreational trips to your neighbourhood “Wine & Beer” shop. If I wanted someone else to make rules for my own life, I’d join a religion.

There is something about December that makes people want to share it’s end with the whole world. Everyone wants to bring in the new year in a room full of strangers, eating cold food and drinking watered down alcohol, while being “entertained” by out of work performers. Sounds as exciting as a hernia operation!

Having said that, there is something I would like to add to all the new year related material out there.

Now usually, I don’t blog about personal things (mostly because this blog doesn’t have either “random” or “confessions” in it’s title), and I don’t blog about blogging because so much meta makes my head explode. However, here’s “hoping” for new jokes (Sarah Palin, Jairam Ramesh and Chetan Bhagat walk into a bar. . . ), new stereotypes to mock (Ethiopians are worse at spelling than Shahid Kapoor!), new things to say (Narendra Modi for BCCI chairman!), and new targets to focus on (Mommy bloggers are like Hitler, without the ‘tache).

Have a great new year! Probably going to be just like the last one, but, whatever!

Real men don’t write hackey articles*

2010-12-06T04:01:00.001+05:30

There comes a time in every country’s existence when a lot of it’s low grade writers try to rehash the whole “where have all the real men” gone meme. This meme has travelled far and wide, has clocked a lot of frequent flier miles visiting almost every country, and has been groped at airports around the world (except Afghanistan of course, because in that country even real men get killed), and has now finally arrived in India.

The first to get it off ground is none other than India’s #1 non-TOI newspaper, the venerable Hindustan Times.

In this season of celebrating 'manhood' — November 19 has been the International Man's Day for some years now — I wondered why no sociologist is discussing the greatest danger that today's men face: the virtual obliteration of their gender identity.

It’s a good start. The writer establishes from the get-go that this article is going to dedicated to nostalgia about a simpler time when men were allowed to be men, and not these strange mutant creatures they are today, having been brainwashed by the feminist movement and self-help books.

While I watch younger generation of women going for breast implants and thongs, their "laddish" enthusiasm for pornography and striptease, I find increasing numbers of men dyeing or highlighting their hair, getting an earring or getting rid of excess body hair, or simply dressing in typical girly colours — hot pinks, fluorescent greens, purples, yellows and vermilions — sometimes to look like wimps. Frankly, this breed of the effete and narcissistic dandies obsessed with softening everything about themselves tickles me no end.

Exactly. Breast implants are manly! Women want to be “laddish” (whatever that means) and watch pornography, which is strange because the only reason God gave women vaginas was to enable them to provide pleasure to men and not derive any of it for themselves. What’s next? These double-breasted porn watching creatures asking to talk on the phone, or daring to choose their own career or *GASP* deciding not to have children? BLASPHEMY! SACRILEGIOUS! This is a slippery slope!

Anyway, what is up with men getting their hair coloured these days? Didn’t these daisies get the memo? Gender is a very delicate thing. The minute you get your hair coloured, your balls will recede and no one will be able to make out that under all that small amount of streaked hair, lies a masculine lump of a man. In fact, everyone will be so confused that older gentlemen will get up when you enter a room and hold a door open for you while younger men will grope you the minute you cross that door and enter a bus. And if you get your body hair waxed, you will turn into a sappy wimp as various kinds of emotions will start oozing from your skin’s pores. That’s why God gave you body hair, to keep your emotions where they belong. .

Machismo seems to be out of fashion these days. In fact, the idea of the alpha male who is the leader of the pack, eats first, gets his pick of the females (a typical example of which was Frank Sinatra, who headed a bunch of sycophantic drunks rightly known as the Rat Pack, who knocked around his wife Mia Farrow), considered as real tough guy behaviour, is now passé.

Oh, machismo. We miss you so much. Why, when you were in fashion, “seducing” a woman was considered a sport and men employed all kinds of tactics to get some putang pie. So much has changed since then.

Why just reminiscence about the sixties and seventies? Why not go back to the stone age? That was a glorious time to be a man. At that time, men were gruffy, hairy emotionless neanderthals who had the fashion sense of Tarzaan and the wit and charm of the great Khali, and they ate anything they wanted to without even cooking it or washing it in boiled water (or as we call it in India “Chinese food”). Meanwhile, the women stayed home in the cave combing their armpit hair while watching a young Larry King on their slate shaped teevee and sending tweets to each other through large parrots. Wasn’t it such an awesome time?

These sort of articles boil down to the same basic argument: WHY ARE HUMANS EVOLVING?

We must strive to preserve gender roles forever, because it makes it easier to determine whom to discriminate against!

Now, since this writer made some assumptions and generalisations about other people, I’m going to do the same thing and make assumptions about him.

Dear Hackey HT writer,

Did you have a terrible childhood? Was your father mean and distant? Did he never show you any emotion? Did he always ask your mother to shut her trap hole whenever she was trying to make a point? When you were five and you fell down while playing and bruised yourself and you ran back home crying only to be punished more for “acting like a girl”? Did your father get all his parenting advice from hindi movies? Are you still waiting for his approval because he wanted you to do something manly like cleaning shark teeth or making hip-hop videos with half-naked ladies and instead you ended up in an effete and pansy career like writing?

Seriously, all you do is sit down and hit the buttons on your typewriter.

How manly is that?

A requiem for the alpha male [HT]

(*Except on this blog. Almost everything written here is quite hackey, to say the least)

How Twitter changed my life!

2010-11-11T21:23:00.001+05:30

On a fateful night two years ago I have absolutely no recollection of, I joined the “microblogging” site popularly referred to as Twitter. Little did I know that when I filled in that form with my details and clicked on “Create my Account”, my life would be changed forever.

Before I joined twitter, I was just like you. I foolishly thought that I had my life all figured out, thanks to the secret of life revealed to me in the book, The Secret. If all I had to do to make things happen was to WISH for them, I could do that all day long. So I quit my job and spent my days wishing for things. When after a few months nothing happened, I began to question my worldview. One particularly tough night, after spending hours wishing for a measly glass of Rum & Coke, I realized that the Universe wasn’t really listening to me. It was probably spending it’s time paying attention to some malnutritioned African kid and serving him MY rum & Coke. It dawned on me that the universe was a socialist with a bleeding heart and an NPR tote bag!

So it was up to me to look after myself. I bought a bootleg copy of The Fountainhead (free markets FTW!), and spent the next month reading it (have you seen the size of that damn book?).One day, the ghost of Ayn Rand appeared in my dreams and asked me to sign up for twitter. The ghost also asked me to lend it some money, because apparently, the shops in hell are a little expensive, being monopolistic enterprises and all. I realized that Ayn was testing me and refused to lend her ghost any money. In fact, I told Ayn’s ghost the same thing Ayn would tell a bearded 90 year old man who just lost his life savings in the stock market, “Get a job, whiskers!”.

Now, unbeknownst to me, Twitter was a treasure trove of wordly knowledge. It had the wisdom of Socrates, the catchiness of Confucius, the gimmickry of Yoda and the cultural relevance of Lady Gaga. So when my life changed for the better, I thought I had to share the secret with the rest of the world, as all enlightened beings are supposed to.

Here’s a gist of all the knowledge I was able to amass:

1. The art of listening: The first thing that surprised me about twitter was that in order for people to pretend to care about what I have to say, I had to accord them the same courtesy. Being a blowhard IRL (i.e. In Real Life for all you n00bs out there!), this was hard for me to understand at first. Did other people expect me to listen to them? Why would I listen to anyone when I already know what they want to say, based on how they look? Is this what being social was all about? I know that now, because of twitter. Another thing I learnt was that all I have to do to make people feel “special” is to feign interest in what they’re saying! Who’da thunk it?

2. The art of letting go: On twitter, once you write a tweet, you need to let it go.Though, be warned, It’s not that easy. In the beginning, when you see the vowels from your tweets being plucked out as harshly as a catholic priest plucks the virginity of a choir boy, all you would want to do is physically punch the culprit. You tire of the constant need to bang your head against the wall when you see someone appending a word to your tweet and totally changing it’s context. You also learn to not care about the dozens of people who will simply copy your tweets and tweet them as their own. Once you put something out there, it isn’t yours anymore. So let it go. Set it in the wild. And, if it loves you as much as you love it, it will come back to you in the form of a text message.

3. The art of sounding exotic: Thanks to twitter, I was able to learn how I can get people from other countries to pay attention to mundane events in my life like waking up or raindrops. All you have to do is romanticize everything, sprinkle a bit of melancholy, and voila before you can say “Jai Ho”, you have thousands of followers! For example, my room isn’t filthy, it’s “proof that I live a full life because each millimetre of dust contains millions of memories!” (Sadly, that doesn’t work on my Mom!). Similarly, politicians aren’t just corrupt, they “feed off the carcasses of hungry children, remaining oblivious to their plight, all the while trying to fill their insatiable greed and rotund bellies”.

4. What women want: Earlier, all my knowledge about woman was gathered from the Mel Gibson movie, What Women Want. However, since recent events have revealed that Mel Gibson clearly has no idea about women (at least not the type of women I would like to attract), I had to turn to a new source of wisdom. And I found him on twitter. My new personal love guru, Chetan Bhagat, has made me see the light with his constant tips & tricks on how to impress women. It has not worked until now, and I have ten restraining orders against me. However, I’m pretty sure I’ll find the one one of these days. If the woman on twitter are any indication, I am almost certain that woman in general think more about sex than men. That’s because statistically, if you’re a woman and you’re on twitter, you probably spend most of your time spewing more innuendo than an 80s British sitcom. Although, my guru tells me that the women on twitter aren’t the ones you take home to your parents. I wonder what he means by that?

5. How to support a cause: Before twitter, I was always in a flux whenever I wanted to do something for the world at large. You know, give back to the world and all that jazz. Now, whenever I hear about a cause that I think I can support, I always add a ribbon to my twitter profile picture (or as the cool kids call them, a twibbon!). Joining a facebook group is so 2007! In fact, thanks to twitter, I got Barack Obama elected as President, brought real democracy to Iran and helped cure breast cancer. That pretty much concludes my quota of “good deeds” for the rest of the decade. Santa better bring me loads of stuff this christmas!

6. Feeding your insanity: Whatever mental illness you suffer from, twitter can act as an enabler. If you are a masochist, you can follow “celebrities” on twitter and their banality will help mangle all your senses. This is even more painful than lying on a bed of nails. If you suffer from low self esteem, you can follow people who have poor language skills and a really delusional sense of self, which helps you feel a little bit saner about yourself. However, don’t feel that sane, you’re on twitter after all. I mean that as a good thing. In this Jersey Shore-ified world, being insane is a one-way ticket to popularity. Remember, all the insane people have the most followers.

7. Creating lazy content – Not only do the people on twitter like reading whatever’s on twitter. they are also really eager to read other people’s analysis about twitter. Even though almost every post/article on twitter says the same thing, people still like to read them and then retweet them, because this way they can pretend to laugh at themselves. Another reason why twitter posts are popular is because a post on twitter is the easiest thing to write. Start the post by making fun of a public figure you revile, throw in a few references to people tweeting about the food they eat, add some banal celebrities and rephrase what everyone else has said before along with some jokes. End the whole thing by adding a few meta references (because it’s important for the world to know that you can laugh at yourself too!) and your twitter post is ready.

Jairam Ramesh takes a brave stand against fictional wizards!

2010-11-04T18:54:00.001+05:30

Jairam Ramesh, the UPA’s most forthright comedian and India’s #1 collector of wigs designed by Susan Boyle , has finally come out against a crazy, cultish breed of human beings who believe in boy wizards and magic wands!

No, I’m not talking about the RSS, silly!

It’s fans of Harry Potter!

India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, who suggested Harry Potter may be at least partly responsible for the decline of the country's owl population. "Following Harry Potter, there seems to be a strange fascination even among the urban middle classes for presenting their children with owls," he reportedly said.

Finally, someone brave enough to stand up to those irritating and demanding human beings commonly referred to as “kids”.Toupee Gandhi will not stand by while all those helpless parents, terrorized by fear, yield to the demands of their powerful and cruel children.

Jairam always knew this would happen. How, you ask? Well, Jairam always knows. It’s among his many gifts. He’s psychic like that! They don’t call him Captain Haircut for nothing!

The report by the wildlife group Traffic, also cited the dark arts of magic as being responsible for the owls' decline but did not blame Harry Potter, instead suggesting that a number of owls were being killed, trapped and traded for traditional rituals."While the exact number of owls traded each year in the countrywide is unknown, it certainly runs into thousands... There are anecdotal reports of owls becoming rare throughout India due to loss of suitable habitat, especially old-growth forests," it said.

Ha! Screw you, “Traffic”! What do you know? You’re just a bunch of people doing comprehensive research on a particular subject. You don’t know what Jairam Ramesh knows. Not only does Jairam Ramesh think outside the box, he’s so far away from the box that the box appears as a dot to him. After all, he is, what Malcom Gladwell calls, an outlier.

"Shaman or black magic practitioners, prescribe the use of owls and their body parts such as skull, feathers, ear tufts, claws, heart, liver, kidney, blood, eyes, fat, beak, tears, eggshells, meat and bones for ceremonial rituals." The report, which is supported by WWF India and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, says that half of India's 30 species of owl can be found on sale in markets.

You better stop teaching black magic to little kids, Harry. Or Jairam Ramesh will take all the owls in the world and hide them in his hair. Why? Because he can.

The Hedwig effect: Harry Potter blamed for endangering owls [The Independent]

(via IyerDeepak)

BREAKING: Arundhati Roy arrested by fashion police!

2010-10-26T22:10:00.001+05:30

After appearing at a public event a couple of days ago, noted writer and regular user of Dabur Amla Hair Oil, Arundhati Roy, was arrested in the evening today for crimes against fashion. She has been taken into stylist custody. Tomorrow morning, she will appear before a panel headed by Justice Tim Gunn which will decide on further action to be taken. Her sentence might include watching the movie The Devil Wears Prada everyday for the next year and a free lifetime subscription to Vogue magazine.

An insider who refused to publically give his name as he wasn’t appropriately dressed said that Ms. Roy has been repeatedly warned against committing such heinous offences like wearing a cocktail dress to a morning event and buying off the rack.

Noted designer Manish Malhotra termed her outfit at the public event as a ”seditious felony against couture”. “She acts as if the rules of fashion do not apply to her”, he continued.

Sources in the ministry of fashion told us that in a report submitted by LIFW agents assigned to spy on her it was revealed that she gets her hair done from the same barber as Jairam Ramesh.

Sagarika Ghose, CNN-IBN journalist and the second person ever to be given the title Nightingale of India, wondered on twitter “Why has Arundhati not yet understood that Jimmy Choo is an integral part of the modern Indian woman’s wardrobe?”

The death of romance on Indian television

2010-10-25T20:00:00.001+05:30

The other day I was aimlessly teevee surfing, trying to watch something watchable on Indian teevee (yeah. my bad!), which I tend to do from time to time, being the eternal optimist I am. I didn't succeed in that, as usual, but I did realize something which gave me the sads.

A sort of epiphany, if I may say so.

They finally killed romance at it's last remaining place of residence.

Television.

During the early 90's, when everyone was still innocent (because the internet was not that widespread and the only way to learn about sex was to read one of the 200 printed copies of a Shobha De book) and the only supercouple on teevee was Ram & Sita (they were like Bella & Edward from Twilight, except with less brooding and no sex), the leading protagonist from the epic Ramayana (it was just like Avatar, except instead of an American company, the good guys were fighting a really smart evil king. And the leader of the good guys was an actual real life AVATAR! In fact, he was probably the first Avatar ever!!).

So this ancient supercouple were the ideal representation of love on the small screen. However, their love took an ugly turn (which was very Alec Baldwin/Kim Bassinger-esque) and Sita ended up visiting her aunt in the earth's core, forever. (That's how the used to break up in ancient times. None of the modern 'I hope we can be friends' crap. Once you were done, boy, were you fucking done!).

Apparently, melodrama was all the rage back then!

The next supercouple which caught the nation's eye was from a cartoon show. Even though the show was for little children, it caught the adults fancy. That was because it contained the cutest couple on Indian television ever, Bagheera & Baloo.

Yes, that's right.

Though they weren't a conventional couple, and their love was the love that dare not speak it's name, (homophobia was all the rage back then) those of us in the know nodded our head and played along.

On Sunday morning, whenever that really irritating song came on, the whole family sat together and saw Bagheera and Baloo bring up their adopted retarded human child, whose name was Mowgli. In fact, if it wasn’t for them, Mowgli would have grown up to be an animal!

They bickered, fought over all the little things like household expenditures and in-laws, however, just like every other teevee couple, they made up.

Awww, love, thy name is Bagheera & Baloo!

Then, in the aughts, came the supercouple to beat all the other supercouples.

The greatest one of them all.

Mihir and Tulsi.

Indian teevee’s Bragelina!

They had 1,000,0000,00000,0000000,0000000,000000 kids, of both the legitimate and the illegitimate variety, magically born without them ever “bumping uglies”. They stayed together through so many ups and downs, aided in their adventures by one lonely woman who was probably as old as the earth itself.

Both Mihir & Tulsi loved each other so much that they came back from the dead, a couple of times, just to be with each other again. In fact, both of them voluntarily kept changing their appearance so as to keep the romance alive!. Say what you will about them but, boy, that's called commitment.

Now, even thought those two are not on teevee anymore, sometimes, when the night sky is clear, one can see them floating in space, along with their favourite old woman, because their saga is endless, just like a Manmohan Singh speech .

That was the past.

And this is the present.

'I just want to grab once' is the new 'Honey, your eyes are so beautiful'

Just like everything else, the most unreal thing on the teevee, "Reality Television", has ruined romance!

All everyone wants to do in these shows is fuck each other & get famous! Nobody wants to do the hard work of developing an actual talent. Even if they want to sleep their way to the top, they should do it discreetly, like in they used to do in olden times!

I don't know about you, but I'd rather believe that some woman lived for a thousand years rather than some misogynist who looks like Himesh Reyshamia and Shakti Kapoor had a love-child will get two, intelligent woman to get "intimate" with him. Although, girlfriend, if you end up with that guy, you’re really not that intelligent!

There was a time when people actually cared for the pretention of romance. In fact, some families were so modern that they let both their children speak to each other before they arranged their marriage!

And from that we went to this?

What has the world come to? A person can't even cheat on his significant other. Isn't that what they are there for? Why can't they find out about each other’s ventures outside their relationship in twenty years, when the illegitimate child comes to take his share of the money, like other normal people?

This began when all of us started watching Ally McBeal and took relationship advise from the cast of F.R.I.E.N.D.S.!

We took something so beautiful like forcibly living together with each other even though the love died long ago and all you’re doing now is keeping up appearances and we turned it into something so ugly!

This is going to be our generation’s teevee legacy. A bunch of illiterate people shouting the f-word at each other, completely out of context.

We helped kill something which gave hope to millions of suppressed kids that maybe one day they might actually have a chance to be happy before they grew up and their cynicism took over.

For that, we need to hang our heads in shame.

Just like the ~~old guy wearing a wig~~ young woman in the scene below.

Huffington Post SLAMS brown people*

2010-10-24T20:02:00.001+05:30

The Internet’s favourite do-rag, the Huffington Post, where the real housewives of Jim Carrey go to “educate” people on the dangers of getting their children vaccinated and actual writers are forced to sit in a slave shop under Arianna Huffington’s desk and write for free, encourages people to racially profile their fellow passengers while boarding a plane.

In an article published a couple of days ago, written by the wife of David “Axis of Evil” Frum, Danielle Crittenden. goes all Mike Huckabee and masks her ignorant bigotry as with “concern for her children”. Not surprising, because these days even David spends his time trying to unsuccessfully pass of as a reasonable person!

In January and February, 2004, there was a flurry of terrorist threats against international flights between London and Paris and Washington; some flights were canceled; aircraft were grounded and searched; in one instance, F-16 fighter jets escorted a British Airways flight from Heathrow to Dulles.
In March, my husband and I took our three children on a holiday in Europe: our return flight, aboard Air France, connected through Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport. We had a three-hour layover before we could board our homebound jet to Washington-Dulles. After clearing international security and poking around the terminal for a bit, the five of us settled into benches in the empty departure lounge -- empty, that was, except for two suspicious-looking men in a bench opposite ours.

Let’s see what those suspicious men looked like:

I say suspicious because they matched almost every profile of a terrorist I'd ever read: Both looked to be about 25 or 26, of Arab descent, beards, dressed in the modern Atta traveling fashion of jeans and t-shirts. Neither had any carry-on bags for an eight-hour flight. One of the men was reading an Arabic newspaper while the other seemed twitchy -- he kept looking around, and repeatedly kept pulling out his documents from a small bag to check them over again.

So, apparently, dressing in jeans and t-shirts is now part of the terrorist garb. Why couldn't those Muslims be conspicuous and wear “Death to America” t-shirts, instead of dressing like normal, harmless white people?. Also, how dare they pretend to act like every other bored airline passenger and keep checking their documents? So what if a middle-aged white woman kept staring at them like they were terrorists? They should have simply sat there silently, and not act twitchy and roam around the lounge making fragile people shit their pants!

Gradually more passengers began filtering into the lounge as the flight departure grew closer. Then, promptly at three o'clock, the two men went over to a large window, fell to their knees and began elaborately praying to Mecca.
"That's it," I told him. "I'm not getting on this plane."

Elementary, my dear Watson! That’s a sure-fire tell-tale sign. Not only were those two wearing the latest terrorist chic, they were praying TO Mecca, instead of in the direction of Mecca, just like the Catholics pray TO the Vatican and the Jews pray TO Jerusalem!

But, hey, maybe talking to security can allay her fears?

Spoiler alert: It doesn’t!

There was a very French-looking security man: white bushy hair, a big white mustache, and a girth that suggested he enjoyed his duck confit and lunchtime Bordeaux as much as his other fellow citizens of the Republic.

Okay, now she has a problem with the French? Then, what the fuck were you doing in fucking France? If you really are so afraid of everybody, why step out of your house at all? And, seriously, being an American, the capital country of obesity, you’re going to snark on the girth of a Frenchman? Also, just because he’s fat, does that make him incapable of being a proper security guard? He has to check people’s luggage for shampoo , not run a half-marathon! I’m beginning to think this lady might have a problem with people in general!

He listened to my husband, nodded, glanced over at the two men, then came over to speak to me. I stepped away from the children, who were all preoccupied with their electronic playthings. I reported everything I'd watched and he listened gravely -- I could not tell whether he thought he was dealing with a hysterical mother or not.
"Madame, I can assure you that no aspect of security has been overlooked on this flight."
"Why are you so certain."
He smiled slightly. "Because I am privy to security measures that I cannot discuss with you. French security is not so -- ahh -- let me say it is different from American security. Let me repeat: this is a very safe flight."
Over his shoulder I watched the two men join the boarding queue: they looked actively jumpy by this point.

Yes, jumpy! That is so suspicious. Because terrorists are known to attract attention to themselves while boarding a target. This woman is so smart, my brain hurts!

My husband and I discussed it between us. He was prepared to go ahead but equally okay to cancel out of the flight if I was that nervous; I felt a little embarrassed by my fears. Then I looked at the bent line of the heads of my children, fighting imaginary enemies on their toys. Was I going to trust their fates to the assurances of an airline security guard?
"If we stayed, we could get a room at one of the airport hotels, take the train in to Paris for dinner, and return here tomorrow morning," I proposed. "That wouldn't be so bad --"
"No."
"The alternative," I continued, "would be for you to have me digging my nails into your forearm for eight hours..."
We waited for our bags to be removed from the plane. The children were delighted at this turn of events. They had never seen Paris

Bigot McGee is right! It’s all about the children. That was her only concern. This wasn’t about her at all. She just didn’t want to see any of those evil looking, jeans wearing, Mecca praying “terrorisors” to harm her children. So what if her children grow up to be brown people hating bigots too? Isn’t that what’s American conservatism is all about? Passing on your own deep-seated fear of the “others” to your children, as inheritance?

But, hey, as Racist Barbie will tell you, just because she looks at brown people in a funny way, she ain’t no racist!

Three years after the shoe-bombing incident, I experienced my own episode of terrorist profiling (and maybe that's what we should call it: not "racial" profiling but "terrorist" profiling, because the two are completely different. The latter does not arise out of irrational prejudice).

Yes, it’s not “racial” profiling if you don’t call it that. Just like if you are for “family values” & “traditional marriage” doesn’t mean you hate gay people and want them to remain second class citizens. You just want to protect your children. And it’s not that you think women have a right to make choices about their own bodies, you just love believe in the sanctity of life. I mean if God didn’t want that baby to be born, he wouldn’t have let that frat boy date rape you! It’s that simple, people! God probably has a plan for you. It might include you spending your after-life in “eternal damnation”, but hey, a plan’s a plan!

Why is that so hard to understand?

However, let’s find out what ugly fate was wrought upon all those people who were stupid enough not to say something.

The flight we had rejected landed without incident.

So that means that you’re not going to do that again right? I mean, once bitten, twice shy, right? Right?

Now, nearly seven years later, and in the wake of the Juan Williams incident, I ask myself: Would I make that same decision again?
Without question. And I hope I would still have the guts to report a troubling passenger to an airline clerk without fear that I might be branded racist.

Basically, what she’s trying to say is: I was wrong. But I’d do it again, because of terrorism!

* Post headline written in the style of Huffington Post articles!

[via Gawker]

India wins seat on UN security council; takes over the world!

2010-10-13T19:45:00.001+05:30

The Indian government has been hard at work trying to convince the rest of the world to start giving a fuck about our opinion. It would been simpler to get a twitter account or write a free article for the Huffington Post and bait everybody into listening, but I guess we don’t do simple things, due to our impending superpower status.

Speaking of superpower status, guess what? We finally got a seat on the UN Security council! YAY! We numba one, bitches! Suck on that, Pakistan!

Uh, what?

After A gap of 19 years, India will once again be at the UN high table — the Security Council — as a non-permanent member.
As many as 187 countries in the 192-member UN General Assembly voted for India, the largest support received by any country for a non-permanent seat in the past five years. India has been on the UNSC six times in the past.

Huh? It’s just a non-permanent seat? And we’ve already held it six times before? You mean to say we’re doing it again with our own sloppy seconds? That’s simply preposterous!

But, hey, so many countries voted for us. That should count for something, innit?

To be elected to the Council, candidate countries need a two-thirds majority of ballots of Member States that are present and voting in the 192-member Assembly. The seats are allocated on the basis of geographical groupings.

Colombia, India and South Africa ran unopposed and were elected to represent their respective regions, having received 186 votes, 187 votes and 182 votes, respectively, in the first round of balloting.

Ahem, so what? We won, that’s what counts right? Now we can set the agenda, make them talk about real issues, show them who’s boss, right? RIGHT?

Following their election, South Africa, India, Colombia, Germany and Portugal will become non-veto holding members of the Council in January with the mandate to impose sanctions, as well as deploy peacekeeping forces around the world.

That’s it? All we get to do is write strongly worded letters and referee stupid civil wars? We don’t even get a measly ten percent discount at the UN gift shop? This is so disappointing! It’s like attending a Broadway musical choreographed by straight people! Or being a fan of the Kolkata Knight Riders! Or winning an all-expenses-paid vacation to New Jersey!

This is so unfair. We so deserve to be on the security council. We invented the zero, bhangra music and Anil Kapoor.

Isn’t that reason enough for everyone to ask us out and make us prom king?

Five new countries elected to two-year terms on UN Security Council [Joy Online]
187 of 192 backing it, India gets UNSC seat [Indian Express]
South Africans “Ecstatic” over Security Council Selection [VoA]

The India-Pak OMGLOLPalooza!

2010-06-23T01:22:00.001+05:30

So I wrote this post when India and Pakistan had started bilateral talks last year, for the first time after so many months! Anyways, this got lost in the ‘drafts’ section, and since both countries are back to talking again (because as they say 538061844791849173583629172491312 time is the charm), this is relevant. So you could read it both ways, as something that happened in the past, or something that will happen in the future. Whatever works for ya, guvnor!

Note: Some dialog may have been changed to reflect recent developments. Also, watch out for the clichés.

***

After three false restarts, India and Pakistan are ready to finally start the dialogue-to-plan-start-of-dialogue. Yes, welcome to Season 4 of So you think you can hold a bilateral dialogue? Even though PM Singh has had a few bilateral meetings with both President Zardari and PM Geelani, everyone's pretending that didn't happen, and this is the first time they're meeting, after thousands of years of sending rude superpokes to each other through facebook.

And since there is no definite name for the summit/meeting/whatevs, we have helpfully named it OMGLOLPalooza, because, why not?

So the stage was set for Nirupama 'I got a fancy new hairdo just for this' Rao, who was representing the Indian government, and Salman 'Made in China' Bashir, who was representing ~~the civilian government of Pakistan~~, ~~the Pakistani army~~, ~~Bilawal Bhutto~~, ~~Pervez Mussharaf's bad-ass moustache~~, ~~Jeebus~~, let's just keep it as a TBD.

Anyways, with the rest of the world watching (Not really. The Europeans are busy trying to save their economies while getting their ass kicked in football, the Americans are busy praying, sexting and blaming Obama for their hernia. the people in the continent of Africa are alternatively starving and killing each other, the South Koreans are occupied with playing video games, the Japanese spend their time having sex with female robots, the Australians are planning to spend the summer punching and kicking anyone they can get their hands on, meanwhile Israel and Iran are scheduled to spend the rest of the year trying to cockblock each other. Also, the whole world has seen this movie before and knows how it ends.) both these nuclear 'powers' on the brink of 'war' to finally set aside their differences and finish negotiating the divorce settlement they started negotiating more than six decades ago!

So here is the conversation that happened during their super-secret meeting:

SB: Hi . . .
NR: Oh hai, I can haz Hafiz Sayed?
SB: LOL! No! Strategic Asset FTW!
NR: Sadface
SB: I can haz Cashmere?
NR: R U Crazy?
NR: Can't even handle territory you actually have! Amirite?
SB: True dat! LMAO!
SB: But I can haz Cashmere?
NR: *facepalm*
SB: Is that a yes?
NR: No, no, a thousand times no! From our cold dead hands! Also!
NR: Which reminds me, stop trying to kill us all the time!
SB: Non-state actors, we can't control them, trolls etc. You know the drill . . .
NR: Yeah, pretty much.
NR: Okay, so here are some new dossiers. New evidence against old & new people.
SB: Ummmmm, yeah, sure, we're going to "read" this and take it "seriously". *snigger*
NR: Umm, yeah. I'm sure about that!
SB: So can we talk about Cashmere, then?
NR: On two conditions. . .
SB: Which are . . . ?
NR: First, stop pronouncing it as "Cashmere", it's a place, not a sweater. K-A-S-H-M-I-R.
NR: Second, are you fucking kidding me?
SB: Fair enough.
NR: Now that we've got that out of the way, what’s with spying through our embassy staff?
SB: Well, I can’t speak for the ISI, because I’m not even allowed near their offices and if they ever see me there they might shoot me . . . but they must be doing that just to piss off Arnab Goswami.
SB: If they wanted real intelligence about your country, they would just ask the Chinese to send it over, in PDF format!
NR: Well, the Chinese are efficient, to say the least.
SB: Yes, yes they are.
SB: Have you seen their phones? They can do anything! Anything! Even talk dirty to my wife, while I watch my favourite TV show, The Secret Adventures of Agent Rana! It’s the #1 show, in Pakistan.
NR: Dude, calm down! And really, that was way serious TMI!
SB: Well, I was promised that we could talk about anything we want . . .
NR: Anyways . . .
SB: Sorry to interrupt, but before I forget . . . . something something Indus Water Treaty
NR: Huh?
SB: Just needed to mention that too!
SB: Which completes my checklist.
SB: Now I can go on teevee and proclaim that all issues important to Pakistan were discussed.
NR: You’re a sneaky basted!
SB: Guilty as charged! LOL!
NR: *rolls eyes*
NR: Okay, now can we get back to talking about terrorism?
SB: Yeah, sure.
SB: We want you to stop terrorizing us . . .
NR: O RLY?
SB: . . . with Mahesh Bhatt movies!
NR: To tell you the truth, he is one of our secret weapons.The other one is Himesh Reshamiya.
NR: Collectively, they are known as the Weapons of Mass Irritation.
SB: I see your Himesh, and raise you an Atif Aslam.
NR: Oh, that’s a good move. A bloody good move.
SB: Want to play a game of Poker?
SB: Whoever wins gets Cashmere!
NR: Jebus Hussien Christ! You’re an idiot!
SB: Well, you’re starting to sound like my wife!
SB: It makes me horny.
NR: I can’t do this right now. I have a headache.
SB: That’s what she says! Hahahaha!
NR: …….
NR: ……..
NR: This meeting is over.
SB: See you again . . . . in a few months time?
NR: *Sigh*. Yeah, I guess.
SB: You bring the food, I’ll bring the wine. *Wink*
NR: *Mumbling to herself* The only thing I’ll be bringing is a frikin pepper spray.
NR: *Exits*

The way we live now: The Internet in 2010

2010-05-27T14:30:00.001+05:30

With every new internet application that becomes popular (Twitter! Facebook! Chatroulette!), there are millions of pixels written about the said phenomena. Almost all the “good” reporters write articles or do teevee news reports about how “<insert name of new web application>” is either ruining the internet and/or is a new revolutionary way to communicate with each other. (Except at Slate magazine of course, where I’m pretty sure that they’ve either written or are currently writing an article about how email is still the world’s most important “killer-app”).

Now, traditional journalists are not that fond of the internet as they claim to be. For them, the internet is sort of a bête noire. They may pretend to embrace it, but in most cases they simply come across as people devoid of any understanding of it whatsoever. Whenever they talk about the “new media” you can almost spot the froth coming out of their mouths. They can’t even know where to begin to understand the internet (to be fair, no one can. Maybe that is the beauty of the internet? OMG, we made an observation! And since it’s not on an old media platform, it probably doesn’t count!), but they bravely continue to talk about it. With embarrassing results.

The Internet in 2010: It knows everything. Just like that obnoxious kid in school.

Now here is the internet’s most common phenomena:

(a) Person A writes something and puts in on the internet.

(b) A large amount of people agree & disagree with Person A’s opinion

(d) Person A writes post about how everyone who didn’t agree with them misunderstood them and/or the internet is full of mean and rude people.

The Internet in 2010: Just like your abusive ex-boyfriend. Nothing you do is ever going to be good enough.

Journalists' pride themselves in being the “first chroniclers” of history. However, nowadays, apparently, anybody with a computer and ability to type thinks “their opinion matters more than that of a journalist!” Silly idiots! How dare they think that? Thanks to the damn internet, the first chronicle of history will be by some stupid un-important person who doesn’t even have a teevee or dead-tree magazine gig and didn’t even go to some fancy journalism school.

Now, for a moment, imagine if you could read Cleopatra’s first person blog (Fuck like an Egyptian), how would you be able to figure out what she was saying? Would you have guessed that when she posted about her epic orgies with a Roman general named “Mark A”, she was referring to Roman general Mark Anthony? How would you be able to put two and two together, without the help of a journalist? How would you know that she was the first woman to ever get vajazzled?

And would Shakespeare have even bothered to write “Julius Caesar” if he found out that Caesar's death was caused by an harmless frat prank? Would there even be a “Caesar salad” if people thought that the man’s last words were “Don’t Ice me, bro”?

The Internet in 2010: Ruining history for future generations

The internet is a lot of things to lot of people. It even helps people create their own reality. Whether you want to still believe that the earth is flat, or that Paul is dead, there is an app for that. There is no universal truth anymore. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. And as it turns out, to their own facts. You don’t have to believe anything you don’t want to. And only on the internet can you have a second life, even if you don’t have a first one.

The Internet in 2010: Your own personal echo chamber

On the internet, opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one.

You may think that you’re smart, funny and insightful, but there is someone on the internet who is smarter, funnier and plenty more insightful than you will ever be. For every person who likes what you say, there are ten who think that you are full of crap.

The choice here is between speaking your mind or not saying anything at all.

If you think that anyone owes you respect because of whatever, well, just remember that on the internet no one gives a shit who you are.

To paraphrase some dude, The internet owes you nothing. It was here first.

The Internet in 2010: We’re all like a bunch of monkeys trapped in a cage. You can duck all you want, but one of these days you’re going to end up with shit on your face. The best you can do is to wipe it off and hope that no one figures out that the stench is coming from you.

Armageddon is almost here: Pakistanis in America pretending to be Indians!

2010-05-09T15:59:00.001+05:30

According to this Reuters report, Pakistanis in America are pretending to be . . . wait for it . . . . . wait some more . . . . INDIANS!

"A lot of Pakistanis can't get jobs after 9/11 and now it's even worse," said Asghar Choudhri, an accountant and chairman of Brooklyn's Pakistani American Merchant Association. "They are now pretending they are Indian so they can get a job."

This news has made everyone at TImes Now come in their pants. Jinnah is rolling in his grave, and has started hitting the bottle again. Gandhi is smiling, not because he heard this news, but because he made friends with Che Guevara in freedom fighter heaven and he’s high. Nehru just shrugged and is continuously eating Lady Mountbatten’s head by telling her that he knew this day would come. And Sardar Patel is still mad at Hari Singh because WHAT THE FUCK TOOK YOU SO LONG TO SIGN THE DAMN THING, HARI?

Anyways, this is big news in the subcontinent, because this is even bigger than Arsenal fans trying to pass for fans of Manchester United! (Or vice versa! Or do all the kids love Chelsea these days? Real Madrid? Delhi Daredevils? Facebook United? I DON’T REALLY KNOW THESE THINGS!) or Red Sox fans cheering for the Yankees!

This is so because India and Pakistan were roommates almost six decades ago and had a really bad separation. And everyone is still bitter about it, mostly because Pakistan took India’s Kenny Chesney CD collection. EVEN THOUGH INDIA BOUGHT ALL THE CDs. And now, India is in a polygamous relationship with America and a few European countries and Pakistan is in a monogamous relationship with China, which is unhealthy because China always insists on being on top.

Anyway, this nationality switcheroo seems a bit strange, because most racist Americans (i.e. Republicans/people from Arizona) don’t know an Indian from a Pakistani. For them there are only two types of brown people. One is all those people from Burritoville, who bring up their kids, mow their lawn and sleep with their wives. Everyone else is an Ay’rab [sic], who do their taxes, make funny smelling food and watch those musical movies.

However, on this blog we are nothing but fair (snigger!), so here are some helpful tips for all those people who want to pass as a person of Indian origin living overseas:

9. Find out who Rajan Zed is – If I wanted to tell you, I wouldn’t say “find out”, now would I? This is important not because you need to agree with him, but whenever someone asks you where you are from, you can always answer with “Did you hear what Rajan Zed said now? . . . Can you believe that guy? Sheesh”. Also, this might even lead to guest blogging opportunities at Sepia Mutiny.

8. Watch and love every hindi movie ever made – Not only is it important to watch those movies, you HAVE to like them. Even the crappy ones. And it is your solemn national duty to defend them in front of people who don’t like them. Even if your argument doesn’t make any sense.

7. Join the Narendra Modi fan club – You need to spend at least two hours everyday trolling the interwebs for blogs/articles/tweets about “NaMo” or any of his other brethren and attack whoever dares to write about them, without even reading what the blog/article/tweet is all about. If you don’t know what to write, just throw in the following in your word salad: “The mainstream media sucks, Congress bias, something something Sonia Gandhi and/or Rahul Gandhi”. Check the comments on www.rediff.com for more inspiration.

6. Always act guilty around your parents – A sure sign of Indian upbringing is when you see a perfectly normal, confident person act like a bumbling idiot in front of his or her parents. No matter how successful you get, no matter how much money you have, your parents will always make you feel guilty. You can’t fight thousands of years of civilisation. (Which reminds me, Mom, Dad, if you are reading this, then please remember that I didn’t do anything. I WAS TRICKED INTO WRITING ALL OF THESE THINGS).

5. Excel at science and/or medicine – Let’s face it. Most kids of NRI’s are ready to do their PhD’s before they celebrate their tenth birthday. As to why, refer to reason no. 6. Hey, don’t take my word for it.

4. Don’t marry your cousin – That is because then you’ll be mistaken for someone from Arkansas. And believe me, you’d rather be from the caves of Tora Bora than from Arkansas.

3. Whenever someone tells you that your English is really good, thank them and inform them that their English is heavily accented.

2. Don’t kill your wife -- No, seriously. Don’t.

And the #1 most important thing to keep in mind while trying to pass as Indian in America:

*cue drum roll*

1. Don’t blow shit up.

Bada Bing, Bada boom . . . G’night everyone!

Today in comical attempts at racism

2010-05-04T16:31:00.001+05:30

Sometimes, racism can be funny! And instead of outrage, it invokes pity!

Here are a few examples:

First, everyone’s favourite American election issue, Outsourcing! (They hate it so much that they even made a terrible movie about it!)

There are so many things wrong with this video.

a) The background music is probably middle eastern. But really, India, Arabia, all brown people must listen to the same music, no?:

b) None of the background pictures are actually Bangalore. One of them is Connaught Place, New Delhi!

c) What’s with the accent?

To be fair, the “many, many” jobs guy is simply hilarious! Hey, NRI’s, you should hire him at the next birthday/anniversary party to entertain the kids, so that the adults can talk about the desh, without getting disturbed.

Anyways, seriously, Arkansas?

Your state is famous for only two things, cousin-marriage and giving birth to Presidential candidates.

And out of the two Presidential candidates, Bill Clinton pretends he’s from New York because now that he doesn’t have to run for an election, he doesn’t want anyone to remember his hee-haw connections and as for Mike Huckabee, that’s just another hilariously stupid thing about Arkansas.

So if you rednecks want to compete with people from India, then, instead of blaming other people, get an education. Oh, sorry. Let me spell it out for you: ej-u-cay-shun. It means book-larnin’.

If you want your children to be competitive in the international market, maybe get them to read something other than the bible or Going Rogue? Or maybe you shouldn’t have sent your children to Jesus school, in lieu of college?

If you want jobs in Arkansas, then maybe it’s best not to teach your children that evolution is not true and global warming is fake? Because if you do, then they’re going to end up like you. Bitter, dumb and clinging on to their guns.

Who am I kidding? It’s obviously those damn foreigners, who take away jobs you are not qualified to do!

*****

Now, you may not know this, but seems like England is having elections! I know! I thought Susan Boyle became their Prime Minister for life last year? Or whatever. How do British elections even work?

Anyways, this post is not about that. It’s about idiotic racist emails!

Two Tory councilman have been suspended for sending out a racist joke via email, because the Tories are trying to convince everyone that they aren’t bigoted and racist anymore and welcome everyone to their party! ~~As long as they are rich, white and straight!~~

So here is the joke:

A Somalian arrives in the UK as a new immigrant.
He stops the first person he sees walking down the street and says, "Thank you Mr UK man for letting me into this country, giving me housing, money for food, free medical care, free education and no taxes!"

The passerby says, "You are mistaken, I am an Afghani [sic]!"

The man goes on and encounters another passer by. "Thank you for having such a beautiful country here in the UK!"
The person says, "I not from the UK, I am Iraqi!"

The new arrival walks further, and the next person he sees he stops, shakes his hand and says, 'Thank you for the wonderful UK!'
That person puts up his hand and says, "I am from Pakistan, I am not from the UK!"

He finally sees a nice lady and asks, "Are you British?"
She says, "No, I am from India!" Puzzled, he asks her, "Where are all the British?"
The Indian lady checks her watch and says: "Probably all at work."

Haha, what jobs is she talking about? There are no jobs in England!

And those which exist, are all thanks to those damn foreigners!

Here are some suggestions on what the Indian lady at the end of the joke should say, to make it less racist and/or better:

a) All the British people are at the pub, drinking themselves silly!

b) All the British people are auditioning for Britain's Got Talent!

c) All the British people are working for my husband’s company!

d) All the British People? They’re all resting because they knawed on a terribly large piece of spotted dick and now all of them have food poisoning!

That’s not funny, it’s true.

If Nick Clegg is Obama 2.0, then Gordon Brown is definitely Joe Biden!

2010-04-30T00:22:00.001+05:30

O Blimey! We are in serious shite now!

The British are still having elections!

Things got terribly exciting for the British journalists yesterday when Gordon Brown committed a ‘gaffe’.

He was talking to a sweet old lady (sweet by British standards. In Britain anybody who doesn’t get drunk and beat up their husbands or have bad teeth is referred to as ‘sweet’.) who asked him “All these eastern Europeans are coming in, where are they flocking from?”.

Instead of answering her by saying “East Europeans? They come from Africa, of course!” or telling her to shut her gob, the Prime Minister said some boilerplate about immigration and then asked her about her grandchildren.

Well, that was that.

Afterwards, while heading back to his car, the following happened:

But Mr Brown was still wearing a microphone provided by Sky News, which recorded him turning to his aide Justin Forsyth, and pronouncing: “That was a disaster.”
He added: “Whose idea was that?” He then blamed “Sue” – Sue Nye his longest serving aide and friend.
He was then asked by the aide what Mrs Duffy had said.
He replied: “Everything, she was just a sort of bigoted woman who said she used to be Labour.”

Basically he called his whole base (working middle class who are worried about “them immigrants stealing me job” ), bigots.

Although, when I first heard that Gordon Brown had called someone a bigoted lady, I thought he had run into David Cameroon.

This is probably the first mildly interesting thing to happen to Gordon Brown.

Now, since anything that happens in this election has to be compared to the 2008 US Presidential elections, because that was the only election that happened on earth ever, the sweet racist lady is now Britain’s Joe the Plumber. Damn. I hate that guy!

Anyways, sweet racist lady, Mrs. Gillian Duffy, now has an agent. and stands to profit to the tune of £250,000.

That will buy her a lot of East European maids, won’t it?

Strangely, for the first time, all the brown people in Britain are going “Wait, someone said something racist and it wasn’t about one of us? That’s a bloody miracle!” In fact, the were missing racism so much they decided to go to the airport, just to be racially profiled, for old times sake.

While the rest of the world does something important, it's election season in England!

2010-04-16T22:41:00.003+05:30

From L to R: Peter Pan, Gandalf the Grey and the Wizard of Oz

Everyone in England has got their knickers in a knot these days. No, not because some rogues in some far-off colony want their independence, like in the good old days, but because in three weeks they have to stop drinking for a bit and go to a bloody voting booth and caste their votes to elect one of those sorry arse politicians to the sodding parliament.

In three weeks, Britain might even have a shiny, new Prime Minister!

Now, they had a brilliant idea. To have a debate on teevee, with all the candidates, just like they do in America. Thankfully, they didn't take other ideas from American Democracy like having a two-year election for a four year term or choosing Vice-Presidential candidates through the reality show Project Running-mate.

The British debates were boring, compared to their American counterparts. Not one person winked or shouted "Drill, baby, drill" and apparently, they don't give a broken tooth about Joe the Plumber! And no one was offering a kilo of rice at 2 bucks a pop.

Here are the top three contenders:

1. Gordon 'Big Ears' Brown

He is the current incumbent Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party. This is the first election the Labour is fighting under his leadership. The last three were fought with Tony Blair at the helm. Unfortunately for him, neither is he as charming nor can he lie as well as Blair. Analysts predict that he is going to lose badly, because the economy is shite and after thirteen years of Labour, the people want a change (Yeah, you're gonna be hearing this word a LOT. Better get used to it). He has a huge man-crush on President Barack Obama and wants to bone him very badly, as all British PM's are constitutionally mandated to have unrequited feelings for their American counterparts. If he loses the election, he'll probably retire into some remote British village with his wife & kids and open up a bed & breakfast, since due to his insanely boring personality, he really can't make that much money on the lecture circuit.

2. David 'David' Cameroon

He is the front-runner for this election, and current leader of the opposition. It is his election to lose. And since he has been acting like he already won the election since last year, he is probably going to come up short. He is a 'compassionate conservative', which means a conservative who does not say racist things in public. If he were writing this blog post, he would have thanked you for reading it. He would have also reminded you that he loves all minorities, even those poor, gross Lesbians who live down the street. He understands how difficult this economic recession has been for everyone, as he has had to fire his fourth butler too, which has made things very difficult at Cameroon manor. Thank the lord for his own personal fortune, otherwise he would have had to live like an immigrant. Which would have been an absolute travesty! Unthinkable, innit?

3. Nick 'The Kidd' Clegg

As the leader of the Liberal-Democrats, he is the 'wild-card' in this whole shebang. Due to Gordon being such a fuck up, and David being, well, David, experts are predicting that Clegg might be instrumental in deciding who forms the next government, because the election results might yield a hung parliament. Nick is famous for always spewing facts at anyone who cares (or for that matter anyone who doesn't care). He is sort of a wanker. That is why no one in England wants to go drinking with him, as constantly hearing about how mass-marketed alcohol beverages are causing malnutrition in Somalia is a real bugger. I mean, for fucks sake, all a bloke wants to do after a hard day's work is sit in a pub, make some jokes about how the fat chick flirting with the bartender looks like Wayne Rooney and watch some bleeding Rugger on the telly, so shut your pie hole and pass the crisps.

Anyways, after yesterday's debate, everyone and their grandmother thinks that Nick Glegg is going to be the Prime Minister, because not only is he supremely confident & speaks 'truth to power', all the grannies and single mums in England want to take him home and do things to him which you absolutely do not mention in polite society. Also, since he talked about hope & change, he is being billed as the next Obama because after Nov 4, 2008 every election has to have it's OWN Obama, otherwise no one will care. Thanks, Barry, for ruining all elections, forever.

Gordon Brown got some good reviews too because he managed to get in a few zingers and was also endorsed by Dr. Who (aka The Doctor. Because I don't want to get hate mail from those people.) and the only working person in the whole of England, Harry Potter's mom.

These three got another two debates before they finally go to the polls after which everyone in Britain can go back doing whatever they do, like spreading sex diseases through the bookface and then stabbing each other to death.

Ah, Blighty. What would we do without you?

(No don't answer that. It was supposed to be a rhetorical question.)

Lastly, if anyone manages to 'steal' this election, just remember, I AM NOT GOING TO CHANGE MY TWITTER DISPLAY PIC.

Right, ho!

[All pictures via Reuters]

Only Sarah Palin knows what it takes to win something

2010-04-14T22:45:00.001+05:30

via Salon:

"We miss Ronald Reagan, who used to say, when he would look at our enemies, he would say: 'No. You lose. We win.' That's what we miss. And that is what we have to get back to."

- Sarah Palin

Insane clown Barbie is right. To win anything, all you have to do is look at your opponent, tell them that you win, and viola, YOU HAVE WON!

Holy Magic beans, batman!

If only this woman had been manufactured when I was in school.

Or maybe I can do this retroactively?

Yes, I can!

So here goes:

Listen up, all you people I was in school with, I WON ALL THE COMEPETONS! EVEN THE SPELLLLING B!

Suck it, nerds!

Dear Indian media and south block diplomats, Barack Obama is not your boyfriend

2010-04-13T14:30:00.001+05:30

So Manmohan Singh is back in Washington, because "The Barack Obama" invited him, to steal all of India's nukes and then distribute them equally between Pakistan and China, because he hates outsourcing?!

Anyways, it's that time of the year again, whenever there is some official level interaction between the Indian and American governments, everyone in the Indian media, print or teevee, has just has one question and one question only: WHAT IS THE CURRENT STATUS OF THE HYPHENATION? IS IT BACK? HAS IT GONE AWAY? IT'S BACK ISN'T IT? OR HAS IT GONE AWAY? WHY DON'T YOU TELL ME? WAIT, WHAT IS THIS NEW SHINY OBJECT YOU'RE HOLDING? TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE NEW, SHINY OBJECT. . . .

Everyone (the media and their "anonymous sources" in South Block) keeps talking about how the previous Bush administration was such a "good friend" to India. Don't you remember how we could call ol' Dubya anytime of the night, to complain about how after gym class whenever we were in the locker room changing back into our casuals, Pakistan used to pick a fight with us to distract us so that China could sneak behind our back and empty a whole tube of ben-gay into our fresh, clean underwear. And Dubya used to huff and puff and threaten to blow someone's house down!

And this Obama, he doesn't even poke us back on facebook! What a big 'ol meanie!

Despite the fact that by Dubya did more to upset the Indo-Pak defence "equilibrium", then any other American President before him, he's still missed by everyone, and is seen as a "good friend" to India. The reason that is set in stone is because of the Indo-US nuclear power deal. Even though that was signed not because our buddy had a soft-spot for India, but because it was good for American business interests. Which is why countries usually do business with other countries, because it benefits them in some way or the other!

Shocking! I know!

The truth is that, Bush gave all those little girls in the media and South block a lady boner because just like them he didn't worry about "global warming" or the "Geneva convention" or "International treaties" etc. He would bomb, whoever he wanted, whenever he wanted! He was their brave, white knight in faux cowboy boots, out there killing the bad guys! Even though most of the times the bad guys turn out to be innocent civilians!

And this new guy, Chocolate Gandhi, wants to talk about all those gay things like "nuclear disarmament" and "cutting carbon emissions" and wants to withdraw his army from Afghanistan and Iraq. Gee, what a homo! Whoever has ever even heard of "nuclear disarmament" in our country?

Of course, right now, India and the US have different goals, internationally. Obama is not here to make friends. He's looking out for his own country's interest, and we should look out for ours. Which doesn't mean that both countries can't be "friendly" with each other and go out for a beer once in six months or spoon each other every few years (NO HOMO). It's really hard for our media to comprehend the fact that two adults can be friends without actually agreeing on everything. What else do you expect? These are the same people who morphed Amitabh Bachchan's gig of becoming Gujarat's brand ambassador into WHY DID AMITABH BACHCHAN PERSONALLY KILL EVERYONE IN GUJARAT, IN 2002?

The fact of the matter is that even if Barack Obama forcefully lands in Pakistan, bitch slaps Zardari and then pees on Jinnah's grave, our news anchors will find some way to complain about how his actions prove his negativity towards India (I can already imagine Arnab Goswami asking G Parthasarthy "Does his peeing over Jinnah's grave mean that Obama is trying to melt the frozen dialogue with the Taliban?"). All these insinuations are usually for the viewers/readers benefit. Whenever someone from the Obama administration comes a-knockin, they gush over them like a creepy overage Justin Beiber fangirl!

Someone needs to remind them that this is international politics. It requires a little more nuance than what is required during the weekly meeting of the Lajpat Nagar Traders Association (Regd).

This is how we treat 'em

2010-04-12T15:04:00.001+05:30

This is simply stomach-churning, mind boggling atrocious:

. . . at 2 am on April 7, hours before Chidambaram’s farewell to the dead and barely 18 hours after the CRPF combatants were gunned down, it is only the angry lowly officer, a sub-inspector, representing the State at this government hospital at Jagdalpur town, 150 km north of the site of the deadly Maoist attack. It must be said that he is here on his own and not detailed for the job.

No chief minister, no state home minister, no other minister, no member of Parliament, no MLA, no director-general of police (Vishwa Ranjan, a man popular with journalists in all seasons), no chief secretary, no home secretary, no inspector-general (TJ Longkumer, who Chidambaram later told journalists had planned the dead men’s fatal foray into the forests), no district magistrate (frenzied a few hours later as reporters surged at Chidambaram’s press conference because he didn’t want anyone to throw a shoe at the Union home minister), no superintendent of police, not one high-ranking officer of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), to which 75 of the dead belonged, were here; just the very angry CRPF sub-inspector. “They were like my children,” he says.

Typically, the survivors mattered less than the dead. Head Constable Raj Bahadur and Constables Pramod Kumar Singh and Baljeet Singh are lucky to survive the carnage, having taken bullets everywhere but in the guts. A hundred paces from the mortuary, they lie writhing in pain on dirty hospital linen stained from previous occupants’ dried blood. Only one has a mosquito net. There are no doctors or nurses. Two constables who’ve come on their own watch over their wounded mates. The ward is a hovel; the toilet is a stinking blocked drain. “Our officers are home sleeping,” an attendant says.

Five hours later, just minutes before Chidambaram and Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh visit the heroes, bureaucrats and the hospital’s administrators fuss in panic over the non-functioning air-conditioning. “Can’t it run for just 15 minutes?” asks one. Bottles of intravenous fluids now hang from their stands, their needles pushed into the arms of the wounded. These weren’t here six hours earlier. The linen has changed. The hovel is now spic and span. A couple hours later, Chidambaram chokes at a press conference, grieving the dead and expressing his resolve to wipe out the Maoists.

I know this is not a new thing for our country, but this is just sick. This is supposedly under our "best home minister" ever. And while those brave CPRF soldiers sacrifice away their lives, Mr Palipapan Chidambram gets to be the hero because he supposedly "resigned" from his ministry. You know what, "PC", if you really feel that you can't continue doing your job anymore, stay at home and let someone else do it. Otherwise, stfu and do what you were appointed to do and stop acting like a prissy teenage drama queen.

I always wonder what makes all those poor people join our armed forces. The pay is crap, they are most likely to die in combat because of some stupid bureaucrat or politician and if they happen to survive, no one is there to take care of their injuries. Most of them probably do it out of pure-patriotism, for a state which gives nary a thought about them.

Even reality show contestants have better working conditions.

Also, the phrase "Can't it run for 15 minutes?" encapsulates the philosophy of "governance" that is prevalent in India.

Yes, we're Incredible!

Incredibly insensitive, incredibly ignorant and incredibly idiotic.

If you don't stop eating that plate of scrumptious beef THIS INSTANT, Varun Gandhi will do unspeakable things to you

2010-04-01T15:41:00.001+05:30

India's #1 idea person, Varun Gandhi, ~~evil~~ spawn of Sanjay "Imma cut your nads off" Gandhi and Maneka "Makes PETA look like pussies" Gandhi (gee, I wonder where Varun got his mean streak from?), is taking India into the 21st century by talking about issues relevant to people in this day and age:

Cow slaughter — topped Varun's agenda during his hour-and-half long address.
Urging Hindus to rise against the "heinous act which is a punishable offence and not only a social crime" the MP questioned the prevailing silence surrounding 'gau hatya'.
"Why hasn't a single case been registered so far for violation of anti-cow slaughter law," he asked.

Yes. Now that UP enjoys peace & prosperity due to there being a lack of actual real criminals (as they are busy trying to run the government!), why isn't the police pursuing more cow slaughterers? Besides stopping people from having sex, shouldn't this also be their other #1 priority? Which doesn't mean that they should forget their most important #1 priority, which is protecting Madam Maya's 'freedom' statues.

Varun also has another brilliant idea:

The Pilibhit MP asked his Hindu brethren to stand up for their "samman" (honour) and "swabhiman" (self-respect), and hoped to raise "an army of one lakh Varun Gandhi clones to fulfil his wish-list".

GREAT NEWS, EVERYONE! There are going to be Varun Gandhi's running around everywhere! Varun knows that he is one of the most awesomest human beings alive! So why not spread his awesomeness around? I'm pretty sure there is enough awesomenss to spare, for anyone who is interested! Isn't that simply awesome?

This is known as an 'Hands free' approach to governance! Since his cousin Rahul gets all the attention (due to the fact that he INVENTED politics and everybody anywhere is always 'pulling a Rahul Gandhi'), everything Varun does reeks of desperation. The poor guy is out in the wilderness and is continuously trying to draw attention to himself, as if trying to say "I'm a Gandhi, get me out of here!".

Tut, tut Varun. All you have to do to get noticed by the media is to get a twitter account, because if you don't have a twatter account or are not on "the bookface", you don't even exist anymore! Also, since the people on teevee have even lesser substantive things to talk about, they will put your twats on teevee everyday, because they are basically assholes.

In fact, through the magical powers of the hot tub time machine, one of our "reporters" from the "future" have sent in this "poem" which based on a very famous literary work, which speculates what life would be after a couple of decades under Prime Minister Varun Gandhi. It's never going to actually happen (because of education, which is a fundamental right now! Teehee, FUNDAMENTAL!), but let's just suppose it does, for shits & giggles:

When they came for the people who eat beef,
I said nothing because I prefer fried chicken.

When they came for the people who get their hair cut on a Tuesday,
I said nothing because I always have a standing appointment with my barber for every Friday evening.

When they came for people who drank alcohol on dry days,
I said nothing because those drunken bastards deserved it anyway!

When they came for the people who had sex outside of wedlock,
I said nothing because I was married and wasn't getting any sex so I didn't want anyone else to have it either!

When they came for all the gay people,
I said nothing because just like Chetan Bhagat, I am not "a gay".

When they came for all those women who wanted to be something other than a housewife,
I said nothing because they're women, what else are they going to do?

When they came to give me a vasectomy so that I couldn't reproduce,
They left me alone because they realized I lost my testicles when I didn't say anything the first time they tried to curtail my freedom!

Some not-so-important points about the whole temple/mosque case thing . . .

2010-03-26T23:59:00.001+05:30

So everyone has been blowing their horn about the whole Mosque/Temple case thing, because, really it's so important because . . . .

Wait!

YAWN!

I'm bored already!

I think we should take away the land from the crazies and build something which will piss of the high priests of all religions! [So it's either a gay bar or something to do with women's rights. Nothing pisses off the crazies more than a gay person or a women with no husband. Or WAIT! Let's combine the two and make it a Lesbian S & M bar. Maybe Lady Gaga will drop by to shoot a video or something! That will piss EVERYONE off! Also, TOURISM!]

However, since I ended up seeing one of the shouting sessions on the teevee cleverly masquerading as a debate, here are some thoughts:

1. How does the Congress party get to sit on a moral high chair? These are the same guys who nominated Sajjan "Imma going to run away from the law until I get anticipatory bail" Kumar multiple times and whose brother is currently the MP from the same seat Sajjan "Ironically Named" Kumar used to represent. So, seriously, Congress, STFU already!

2. I'm not a lawyer or something (Even though I have watched a lot of Boston Legal!) but shouldn't the witness at least be cross-examined before ANYONE is pronounced guilty?

3. This is not the worst 'thing' to happen to the country! There are worse-r things. Like droughts, famines and Vivek Oberoi movies!

4. The BJP person who shouts on teevee needs to stop frothing at the mouth (where else does one froth, anyway). Answering everything with "OMGOOGLES, MEDIA IS TEH SUCKZ, CONGRESS BIAS, LALALALALALALALLAALALA" makes you look even more mean and petty than you usually are! Also, "questioning the witness's character " is prudent legal strategy, but it is "prudent" only in the courtroom. If you do that outside, you're just a douchebag! Although, I'm pretty sure you have no problem with that!

An open letter to the Indian government to stop hating on Indian Culture

2010-03-25T20:22:00.001+05:30

[Warning: Some links are probably NSFW. Also, if you really believe in the whole 'Indian culture' thing really seriously, some things, ummmmm, might not sit well with you. So I suggest you go to the nearest place of worship instead. Or haggle some random news anchor on twitter.]

Dear Indian Government,

Before you read any further, let me first ask you to hand this letter to an adult. No, not just anyone whose age is more than 18, but someone who can actually think like an adult. Possibly someone who doesn't giggle when they see human reproductive parts or cover their mouth with both hands when they say a 'bad word' like peepee.

I'm waiting.

Okay, fine. Since there is no one in your 'august organisation' who actually fits that description, I'd have to make do with whoever is actually reading this letter.

So, hey, what is up? (That is how we begin letters in 2010. None of the 'Dear ____' crap they taught you in school in the 1880s.)

I heard recently that you banned FTV. Again.

What is your beef exactly?

That they showed boobs?

Now, let me ask you for a minute, WHY ARE YOU AGAINST INDIAN CULTURE?

You see, before all the prudes invaded us and plundered us like they do to Paris Hilton, we were a country of non-prudes. In fact, all the best art-movie sex was being had in India, while those boring Europeans had only the 'missionary position' to work with. Although, to be fair, if you need to take off thousands of layers of clothes before you have sex, you're probably too tired to try anything but the missionary position anyway.

Look, we invented good sex in India. We're the land of the Kama Sutra (not the lame movie you also kind of banned. But the actual ancient text, which is much more famous than the Maharamamayana or whatever).

Did you know that when they accidentally invented the zero, they were actually trying to explain to people how a circle jerk works? I bet you didn't. That's what happens when you get celibate right-wing idiots to re-write your history.

Also, did you know that we have ancient caves in India which show actual ancient people having sex? Don't look now or you'll get a heart attack, but some of the ancient people even did it doggie style!

I know! It's a hard thing to digest.

You can stop crying now.

In ancient times, being a nymph was considered a good thing. They were worshipped, even! Now, people like you consider a girl who even talks to a boy a whore, and beat her/get her married to the nearest rich-old man!

And stuff they did in public back then would actually get you arrested nowdays! Or worse, get some dipshit jackass prudes who have nothing better to do except trying to stop people from having sex to file a PIL against you!

They didn't even need to have 'wardrobe malfunctions' during kama-sutric times. They believed that, if you have, not just flaunt it, but carve it on a fucking stone!

Also, most scientific and empirical evidence points to the fact that if kids take out their "pubertal frustration" (I'm using euphemisms, so as to speak your language, since you're scared shitless of saying the words 'sexual intercourse' or 'masturbate'.) during puberty, they don't turn into Shiny Ahuja. Do you really want to be responsible for a nation of Shiny Ahujas?

So, dear government, let the nice FTV ladyee show her wombachumbas.

Because, dude, she is doing more for public welfare than you ever will.

Therefore, on behalf of all the remaining adults in the country, and in the interest of public welfare and maid safety, I implore you to stop hating on Indian culture.

KThanksBai

Welcome to the offense economy

2010-03-05T11:09:00.001+05:30

Are you one of them lazy fucks who wants to get famous but don't want to do the hard work like suck up to judges in a reality show? Do you want to be the self-appointed & self-righteous spokesperson for millions of other people who don't want you to speak on their behalf? Are you mentally unstable and have family and/or intimacy issues? Have you never spoken to someone outside your immediate family? Do you like Jackie Shroff movies?

Then do we have an offer for you!

Welcome to the offense economy, where everything is made up and the issues don't matter!

Just like everything else, to succeed in the offense economy, you need (a) A determination to succeed despite all the odds (b) Psychopathic tendencies (c) An ability to say the most vile things, without any remorse whatsoever.

If you got that, then we have the tools to help you achieve your goal!

Now, let's start with the basics. Here is an outline of how the offense economy works:

You do something stupid --> You get a large amount of time on teevee --> The people who own the teevee channels make money --> They keep talking about you --> You get undue influence --> You keep doing more stupid things --> They keep talking about you --> They make more money --> You get more undue influence --> *∞

Confused? Need more explanation?

Let us break it down for you.

Now, understand and memorize (where applicable) all the steps involved in achieving our goal:

1. Choose something to be angry about. It could be anything. A book, a TV show, a movie, a group on Orkut, a few dozen people having fun in a bar, anything that gets your goat (or doesn't. You don't have to be actually offended, you just have to pretend that you are. Everyone else will play along).

2. Make sure it's a slow news day (which is almost everyday, except the days India has a cricket match or Shah Rukh Khan has a movie out. Don't even try to go against Shah Rukh Khan, because no one can ever beat him at famewhoring!).

3. After you've selected your target, gather a few dozen out of work people like you, and start protesting by breaking/burning stuff up. For eg: If it's a bookshop, attack the shop and tear some books. If it's a movie you don't like, attack the theatre. If it's a television show you are fake-outraged by, go attack their local office etc.

4. Before you attack your target, make sure that you alert a few news channels about the
"unorganised" expression of "outrage". This is the most important step. Don't worry about the news channels ignoring you. That will never happen, no matter how silly your protest.

5. After the footage of you and your fellow "protestors", has been canned, give out your phone number and go home and prepare the rant that you will be giving to the tv "news" shows later.

6. Make sure your rant is as vile and as threatening as possible. Pepper your speech with liberal (ha!) doses of "We will not let _____ hurt the sentiments of our _______ community" and "This _____ is against our _____ culture". That is very important, because once you say that, no government will touch you because any government in India literally shits bricks at the thought of protecting free speech. Yes, they are pussies in that department. They only pick on easy, elitist targets!

7. Millions of outraged Indians will protest your actions through twitter & facebook status messages. Hey, you might even trend on twitter (due to which many thousands of proud Indians will point out how instead of Justin Beiber, an Indian topic is trending ZOMG!). Someone might even write a blog post which while masquerading as satire, will basically be a rant having a huge undercurrent of cynicism! But you probably don't even know what these things are, so why bother learning about them?

Now, remember that each event you stage will get you about a week or two of coverage. Three if you're lucky.

The following is a timeline of the events:

Week 1

This week will consist of various one-on-one interviews. You can pick and choose your appearances. Make sure that you choose more hindi/local language channels because they would be more sympathetic to your cause. English channels should only be used when you want to scare people further. The hosts of these programs will help you immensely because they have perfected the art of feeding lines to their interview subject while simultaneously acting outraged. It's modern art, really. Remember, do not, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, try to sound reasonable. That will destroy your buzz before you can say Halla Bol!

Week 2

After week 1, your role is over. Week 2 will revolve around how free speech in India is dead, thanks to people like you. Do not appear on ANY panel discussion during this time. Instead, the news channels will schedule other people with extreme points of view to argue against/on your behalf. Sit back on your sofa, grab a box of popcorn and enjoy the ride. Throughout the week, prime time news will being focusing on you and your actions. Barkha Dutt will call a few guests and ask them the same question in different words, Arnab Goswami and Suhel Seth will spend the whole time interrupting each other, Rajdeep & Sagarika will continue to shout at the camera and whatishisname at Headlines Today will continue to look like someone permanently attached his eyebrows to the top of his forehead so that he could continue to have an always-on exasperated expression.

Week 3

If you've managed to keep yourself in the news for this long based on a single incident, then well done! You must have done something really, really vile! If you didn't, well, next time try harder? Now, since most of the mileage that they could gather from your story has been gathered, the coverage during week 3 will be in the form of we-the-people type weekend shows. Here, a panel discussion will take place along with an audience. Most of the same points that have been repeated for the past two weeks, will get a final airing. However, before the end of the show, an audience member will say something emotional & patriotic (like "Be an Indian first" etc.) which will be useless and bullshit-y, but will make everyone in the audience applaud like crazy. The anchor of the show will then close the show on a somber but surprisingly happy note. And then everyone will go back home, until they are called on to do the same thing again.

There. CONGRATULATIONS! You're now a bonafide famewhore. A celebrity.

Your name will live on in infamy.

At least until the next guy who does the same thing!

Dating advice from hell by Love Guru Chetan Bhagat

2010-02-26T15:59:00.001+05:30

India's largest selling author, who has an even larger head, Chetan "Imma block yo ass" Bhagat, is not just a writer (and we use that word very loosely here. Very. Loosely.), he is also also responsible for bringing together millions and millions of lonely people by helping them find a way to love each other.

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting Love Guru extraordinaire, Chetan Bhagat:

We start with the basics:

Yes, ladies. It's as simple as that (aka the less popular ASAT). Whenever you feel lonely, whenever you feel that you are ready to finally fill the void in your life (which cannot be filled by either food or ice-cream) just smile. And then thousands and thousands of men will literally present themselves and will be yours for the taking. Even though there is a multi-billion dollar industry whose whole purpose is to get women laid (Cosmo, Maybeline, Daniel Steele), just ignore all that and smile. You're welcome!

Yes, because men are somehow like penguins, maybe? Also, in case you really, really like her shout the words "Ouuugaaaaaa, Muaagaaaaaaaaaaa" and jump up and down three times. She is sure to select you, then! Money back, guarantee!

Yup. You want to keep your options open, always. Also, make sure to move fast, because seriously WHAT THE FUCK?

Now for some brass tacks:

You can also send a "fraaandship" request on Orkut, keep superpoking her on facebook and if you really want to win her over, send her really weird sentimental messages every two hours. If she doesn't reply and ignores you, it doesn't mean she wants you to stop. It just means that you need to try harder!

Burping is for wussies. If you want to show her how much of a man you are, FART right in front of her. If she doesn't slap you, SCORE, bro! After the farting is over, please remember to be nice to her. Like give her a room freshener or something!

Other accepted things you can call her: Lesbian. Because if she doesn't like people who give her constant missed calls, stalk her online and fart in front of her, she probably is not into men at all. Ergo, Lesbian. Also, can you blame her? FYI, in case she already has a significant other, you can also call her 'a whore' while bad-mouthing her to other people. It's your right, as a shunned, creepy, almost-romeo.

If you are one of those people who think that the above steps are too much to remember, then have we got a deal for you! Something, short, sweet and really handy:

Yes, the path to a woman's heart is by irritating her. If you have feelings for her, irritate her. If you really like her, quit your job and follow her around wherever she goes. If she calls the police, she probably likes you back and wants you to follow her even more. Do not stop, continue to follow her around and this time, make obscene gestures. And if you really, really love her, just go ahead and punch her in her face. Nothing says "I love you long time" like a broken frikin' jaw!

Now, you may wonder what exactly makes Chetan qualified enough to give "advice" on love to other people. You might be a little skeptical. For you, ladies and gentlemen, I present Exhibit A:

Mind = blown.

Tiger Woods apologizes for being just too fucking awesome!

2010-02-21T19:49:00.001+05:30

[pic via Reuters]

So the world came to a stop on Friday to collectively sit back and watch Tiger Woods robotic apology. Now, Tiger seemed to be a little dispassionate about his 'apology'. So, we, at Overrated Outcast decided to investigate the matter and find out what really went on. Turns out, this was not the speech Tiger originally wanted to give. The speech he was supposed to give was vetoed at the last minute by his PR team. So, we 'convinced' one of Tiger's blonde hussies to give us a copy of the original speech, due to the right to information act (which does not apply to US jurisdiction, but our blonde operative, ~~Jessica Simpson~~, did not know that). So here it is, ladies and gentlemen, Tiger Woods's original speech (needless to say, this is so not safe for work. Or children. Or women):

Hey Everyone, thanks for gathering here, to hear me speak. Some of you here are my friends, some of you are my colleagues and as for the rest of you, I have no fucking idea what you are doing here.

The only reason I called this non press conference is because I'm fucking tired of all your fucking insinuation about my private life. So I'm just going to spell it out for you.

Yes, I did sleep with a lot of women. Yes, most of them were blondes. Yes, I like having sex.

Boo fucking hoo. Cry me a fucking river.

Back when I was in high school, and I was a kid and didn't have any friends because no one wanted to be friends with that weird kid who plays and talks about golf all day. Not even that weird fat girl who made Ugly Betty look like a goddess. No one gave a shit when I didn't have a date to my own Senior Prom and I sat at home and watched reruns of The Cosby Show.

Now that I'm rich and good looking and get more tail that all the Kennedy brothers combined (yes, I get more tail than JFK, the guy whose middle name was "Fucking"), everyone's bothered and up in my bizness.

You know what, fuck you.

I don't have a sex 'addiction'. I have what every other guy on this planet (& Ann Coulter) has.

A dick.

I get horny. So I do what any other person in my position would have done, I go out and have sex.

What's so wrong with that?

The only person who should have a problem with that is my wife.

Anyone else is just being too fucking nosy for their own fucking good.

I don't care if you judge me. You have nothing better to do anyway.

I'm a slut. A man-whore. A casanova. A womanizer. Hell, I'm the black male version of Paris fucking Hilton. In fact, there is even a Rihanna song about me!

Don't expect a fucking apology tour from me, cause I ain't no fucking politician, and I don't need your fucking approval rating.

However, I do think I need to apologize to some people.

I apologize to all those single and not so single women that I have yet to sleep with. I promise you that I will get to you one of these days.

I apologize to all those people who had to bear all these pre-medieval fucks bark about things which are essentially none of their fucking business.

In fact, I'm sorry I'm just too fucking awesome for most people to recognize.

I'm not sorry for what I did. In fact, after this bloody thing is over, Imma gonna do it again,

As for parents who think I'm a bad role model for children? Well, I'm sorry you feel that way but I'm a great fucking role model. It's important to teach your kids that the only way you can get so much tail is if you either have money or are good looking. Hell, scratch good looking. If you only have money. So, kids, if you're listening. No matter how ugly your are, no matter how many people pick on you, no matter what your parents say, when you grow up, just work towards one thing: Making money. Everything else is crap. If you have money, you can fucking do anything. And no one is gonna stop ya.

As for those sponsors who ditched me midway, Fuck You. I made more money for you than anyone else. You know, Accenture, no one even cared for your small-ass consultancy before I let you put my picture up next to your logo. And as for Pepsico, I made drinking Gatorade look cool. Even some hot-shot basketball player couldn't pull that off. Well good riddance to bad rubbish. I always preferred Coke anyway.

As for all those bad-ass players, my so called 'peers' who think they're better than me, well I got news for ya buddy. I'm the best fucking golfer this world has even seen or will ever see. And if it makes you feel any better, I don't have to play even a single day of golf if I don't want to. I have more fucking money than I know what to do with. I'll be spending my Sunday afternoons with Candy and the rest of her hot stripper friends while you are going to be 50, and playing in some lame-ass "Masters" tournament, in the middle of fucking nowhere like Peru or Narnia.

So, a here's a big, sweet merry Fuck You to you too.

As for the media, I didn't join the cast of Jersey Shore and get into their STD-infested sauna for the world to talk about my 'sex-life'. And I didn't go around like the Ghost of Larry King and marry 7 dwarf-wives. By the by, CNN, this is why no one's watching you. Cause you're talking about a fucking glfer and his fucking whores!

Lastly, Brit Hume, you slimy, old mother fucking asshole, Fuck you.

Also!

Now, everybody, let's stop worrying about my penis and get back to more important things.

Like, have you given any money for Haiti lately?

The 'Rahul Gandhi' is everyone's new favourite dance step!

2010-02-18T20:15:00.001+05:30

So the new Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari went to have lunch at a colleague's house, and it made the national news.

There are so many things wrong with that. Let's do a point by point thingie (or as purists call it 'bullet point analysis'. I call it 'thingie' cause it's amateurish & childish. Just like me!) to explain.

1. Unless Rahul Gandhi INVENTED politics, or 'pulling a Rahul Gandhi' is a new dance move which involves doing the hustle in your Kurta, no one can pull a 'Rahul Gandhi'. Every politician who requires points for his 'imma-son-of-the-soil' marksheet does this. In fact, in the book "Beginners guide in how to be a son-of-the-soil politician", this is probably Chapter 1 (Go eat in a poor person's house). Or maybe I'm wrong and even MK Gandhi was 'doing a Rahul' when he did this more than sixty years ago. Or maybe even those stuffy politicians in Europe, who were doing this in the 1800s were pulling a "Rahul Gandhi'. Who knows, really?

2. Eating a meal at a poor person's house is nothing but theatric symbolism. It sounds so good, "Oh Mah Gawd, he went and literally ATE at a poor person's house!! Literally!! The Horror! Must vote for him next time!" Don't they see the unintentional bigotry involved in this? Just by eating a small meal in their house, does it make you understand the years of their struggle? Does a white light emerge from the back of your head and you suddenly become aware of years of oppression your 'hosts' had to face? This is even worse than when Mayawati builds a statue of herself and tells all her poor, suffering voters "This pigeon-bait is going to solve all your problems! Thee should now rejoice, and haveth some cake!". Hey, at least she doesn't make them pay for lunch!

3. Don't the reporters have anything better to do than sit around watching a fat guy eat? Do the reporters who 'report' on such 'symbolic luncheons' actually believe what they are saying? If they do, would you actually want someone like that 'reporting' on the 'news'? If they don't and still go on about it, would you actually want someone like that 'reporting' on the 'news'? If I ask so many questions, does it make me sound like a certain anchor of a 9PM news-show? If it does, then will someone volunteer to kill me?

Gadkari does a Rahul, has lunch in Dalit's house [Rediff News]
Nitin Gadkari does a Rahul, has lunch in Dalit's house [DNA India]

Attack of the lawmakers: Unparliamentary behavior from around the world

2010-02-13T20:21:00.001+05:30

Usually, we expect our parliamentarians to be demure and classy (not really). However, sometimes they let their emotions get the better of them.

Now, most modern day parliaments can trace their ancestry to the British Parliament. The British Parliament is known for it's boisterous debates, strong objections (!) and vigorous name-calling. Basically the British parliament is like a slumber party with the cast of the movie Mean Girls, except with more slutiness.

Here are a few cases of politicians taking the words "legislative action" a little too seriously (This is just a pre-cursor. Expect more horrible puns as we go along. Don't tell me you weren't warned).

In most of the videos, I really don't know why these people are doing what they are doing. However, that's not going to stop me from guessing:

We begin with everyone's favourite damaged good, Canada. Canadians are not known for violence, except when it comes to ice-hockey. They are literally militant about ice-hockey. Hey, I'm not anyone to judge. America gets to be more famous, more successful and has better teevee shows. Let Canada have it's ice-hockey, Okay? And if you don't, this is what's gonna start happening.

I don't speak Canadian, so I'm guessing the Congressman is angry because no one wanted to take his proposal of getting rid of debt by betting taxpayer money on Stanley Cup games seriously? No, he's not crazy. He had a system.

Anyways, we now move to the other side of the Atlantic. Here we get a glimpse of what the Irish Parliament looks like. Now, please note that the honourable member was probably drunk. Hey, it's Ireland. Every hour is happy hour. Being sober in Ireland is literally a crime.

'Fuck you deputy Stagg' is my new favourite catchphrase. Also, it was heartening to see the large number of people attending the session.

Speaking of drunk parliamentarians, how could we leave the Russian Duma behind? They sure know how to pack a punch.

I'm not sure what the fight was all about, but I'm positive that it involved the following: Lots of Vodka and someone sleeping with someone else's wife.

We move towards South East Asia now, where South Korean Parliamentarians are fighting over who gets to see the only available front row tickets to a Lady Gaga concert. What can I say, they must enjoy people who love bluffin' with their muffin.

Also, is it me or did you expect Jackie Chan to suddenly jump on to the podium and kick everybody's ass?

They say that a women's biggest enemy is another woman. These Taiwanese parliamentary ladies prove that theory.

CATFIGHT! RAWRRR, ladies! The men are all content standing by and letting the women sort out their business. I'm pretty sure, in their heads their thinking (like Joey Tribianni from the sitcom Friends) "Stop them? NO! Let's throw some jello on 'em!".

However, as always, the best of legislative violence award goes to none other then the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly, which I'm sure would win the battle of the Parliament-All Stars.

Yea, baby! Make 'em bleed!

WE NUMBA ONE! WE NUMBA ONE! BOOM BOOM POW!

Suck on that, everyone.

SUCK. ON. THAT.

A treasury of classical greatest twitter hits from Sagarika Ghose

2010-02-07T16:41:00.001+05:30

Famous crazy person, Sagarika 'Shouty' Ghose, who screams from inside your teevee every night, also has a twitter machine, which is full of comedic gold.

Here are a few selected classics:

Here, Ms. Ghose appears to be apologizing to a movie, for leaving a stain on it's coffee table, perhaps?

She loves Dan Brown. Now her whole 'reporting' makes sense.

OMG, she JUST discovered the subject for the next Dan Brown best-seller!!1! The HOLY GRAIL of Global Warming! It's almost orgasmic, for Dan Brown fans!!!

Yes, because the temperature changes are only happening in the West. Having a heat wave and a cold wave in the same frikin year signifies that mother nature is simply trying to be fair in choosing the method with which to kill homeless people. And who knows better about the science behind global warming than an economist?

*Facepalm*

Yes. And Ms. Ghose, who is the daughter of Bhaskar Ghose, famous I&B secretary, and wife of Rajdeep Sardesai, her boss, is clearly against nepotism. Well, done maa'm. Well, done.

Those goddamn poors do not know how to behave. They should just behave like good poor people and be happy that they have got the opportunity to study in a "foreign" University. A "journalist" like "Sagarika" "Ghose" will not "stand" for such "behaviour". ( I might have "overdone" with the quotation marks. "Sorry".)

She will single-handedly kill Haldirams and all it's thousands of branches, by not gracing it with her benign presence.

I am willing to bet good money that she talks to her plants. And by talking I mean SHOUTING ON THE TOP OF HER VOICE. Her plants are not not growing because of the season, THEY ARE SCARED & AFRAID THAT SHE WILL TALK TO THEM, EVERYDAY!

I hadn't read this tweet before I posted the previous one. Honest!

Yes, bollywood is famous for such Bohemian and Liberal movies such as DDLJ, HAHK, K3G etc. Because nothing says liberal like movies which 'empower' woman by portraying them as pawns in the hands of men. And those crazy Bohemian movies, which portray children who don't obey every single directive from their parents as evil! Also, Alok Nath's career, for some reason.

Yes, it's so great that she can win a debate against a straw man. It's such an accomplishment to offend people that are looking for something to be offended at!! Bravo, Ms. Ghoss! Bravo!!

Childish name calling and generalising is such a great way to win an argument. Grouping and stereotyping your opponents on the basis of religion is the same bullshit tactic that is used by the very people she pretends to stand against. Using your soapbox to score brownie points against people with whom you have a political disagreement with is simply the way of the coward.

Oh! Oh!! Oh!!! Comparisons!! My turn! If Sagarika Ghose is India's Sarah Palin. then Rajdeep Sardesai is it's John McCain. If Sagarika Ghose offends you, then you probably must be stupider than she is. If you watch Sagrika on teevee everyday, there is a 1000% chance of you becoming suicidal.

[Tweets via Sagarika Ghose's Twitter feed]

Everyone is retarded, today!

2010-02-05T16:01:00.001+05:30

India's #1 platonic comical duo Amar Singh and Jayapradha have been suspended from their party. While Amar has the sads, according to Jayapradha, she is neither 'happy' nor 'sad'. Well, she must want everyone to read her j-j-j-j-joker face. [The Hindu]

After a year and half of saying that there will be no dialogue with the Pakistani government, the Indian government has decided to re-start the dialogue with Pakistan. So that retarded 'Aman weds Aasha' campaign finally worked!1! [HT]

While the Indian and Pakistani diplomats exchange frozen mangoes, a tribe of dangerous dandruff-beard people wants to start Jehadin' again. They must be angry because they weren't included in the IPL, maybe?! [Indian Express]

Miserable old coot Bal Thackeray wants famous movie person Shah Rukh Khan to take his freedom of speech and move to twitter. Meanwhile, famous movie person Shah Rukh Khan just wants EVERYONE TO WATCH HIS GODDAMN MOVIE, in which he plays Shah Rukh Khan playing a retarded version of a person suffering from Asperger's syndrome. [HT]

Pakistan's ambassador to Saudi Arabia is a dick. Literally. [FP]

Obama is scheduled to meet the Dalai Lama later this month even though China has threatened to stop sending the US free Farmville goodies on Facebook if he goes ahead with the meeting. Obama is really eager to met the Dalai Lama because he rarely gets a chance to meet a fellow messiah. [The Guardian]

Director of Moulin Rouge & Australia, Baz Luhrman is currently touring India, for charitable purposes. He wants to make a movie with the Bachchans and AR Rahman. Ugh. Dude, that would be WORSE than a punch in the face, so why don't you just Baz away?. [The Hindu]

Apparently, megalomania has no statue of limitations

2010-01-30T18:38:00.001+05:30

Warning: This is not fake news.

An Indian politician is calling for a police force to be created to protect statues she has erected of herself and her mentors. The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state, Mayawati, says her political opponents want to demolish the statues. A bill proposing the force has been introduced in the state assembly, to be debated at a later date.

Yes, pick up your jaw from the floor, sew it back on and then come back for more.

According to the bill tabled in the state assembly, the squad would be named the Special State Security Force. If passed, the bill will give officers powers to detain people they suspect of threatening security near the statues. The initial cost of raising the force is estimated to be 540m rupees ($11.6m; £7.1m). Yearly maintenance would cost 140m rupees ($3m; £1.8m).

That's just dandy.

Maybe if the people of Uttar Pradesh turned into statues, then someone might try to protect them from the criminals?

No?

I could really put a long rant here about how dangerous this woman is to the institution of democracy or how she doesn't give a rat's ass about her constituents.

But what's the point?

She's like Marie Antoinette who wanted the hungry people in her kingdom to eat cake, instead of bread. She's like Colonel Jessop and probably thinks that we can't handle the truth. She's like Arthur Kirkland and believes that it's not her but everyone else who is out of order.

She's like the ugly zit on your face which no amount of make-up can hide. She's like Angela Petrelli from Heroes, responsible for everything bad that occurs, but still getting away with zero percent of the blame.

She's like . . . wait, you get the idea!

In the driver's seat

2010-01-30T18:37:00.001+05:30

Minister of External Affairs, Shashi Tharoor, training for a backup skill in case the MoEA gig doesn't work out. [Twatter]

The truth is nothing but a well produced marketing campaign

2010-01-28T23:06:00.001+05:30

[Note: This is not a review of the new RGV film, Rann. I haven't seen the film, and frankly I don't plan too.]

One thing that is apparent from the buildup to the new Ram Gopal Varma movie, Rann, is that Ram Gopal Varma hates the media.

Shocker! I know.

What makes me say that, you ask?

Well, if you haven't seen the thousands of of interviews he's given about 'hating the media', to the media then you must have seen him hold discussions with members of the cast of his movie, which was shown during prime time on the same "news" channels whose dubiousness he plans to expose. Or maybe you caught the press conference he held for journalists in which he told them how much he didn't care for them. Or maybe you are a journalist and were invited to the special screenings of his movie, which was held exclusively for journalists.

He's probably angry with the media for giving him so much coverage. I mean remember right after Rangeela and Satya the media anointed him as the master filmmaker? And then, out of nowhere, they dropped him like a hot potato after the disastrous Sholay remake [in their own opinion RGV still stands by his masterpiece.] and those nineteen hundred Antra Mali movies. They called him a failed genius!

Him. The man who has the eye of Copola, the passion of Tarnatino and the raw cinematic vision of Hitchcock.

RGV will not play their game again!

He will also not be seduced by their current efforts to band him as "The Comeback Kid".

RGV will not be fooled by the media. Because he has seen the emperor and the emperor has no clothes!

What his "enemies" in the media have forgotten is that Ram Gopal Varma is an outsider. An outlier, as our friend Malcom Gladwell would say.

That is why he only works with such small name actors like the Bachchans. And who has even heard of Paresh Rawal? The only "big star" who appears in his movies is Ritiesh Deshmukh, who, let's face it, only does Varma's movies for the friendship, as he is so busy otherwise, playing both male and female leads simultaneously!

Do you think Varma is in the business of making movies for the money?

Sheeple, please.

He is the personification of you, a brave everyman underdog trying to take on the system and show the truth behind the truth!

He does not care about how much business his movies do. That's just a bonus! He probably gives away all the profits, to charity!

He's just here to change society.

And don't you ever forget that!

If only they had given the Padma award to the iPad

2010-01-28T00:34:00.001+05:30

The Samajwadi Party finds rebound Amar Singh. The most important question is, which 'powerful' Bollywood family is the new Amar Singh close too? [IndExp]

The Indian government says that the Padma Bhushan awarded to Sant 'Clinton' Chatwal was done so after strict due diligence. [TOI]. Exactly. The same due diligence give to Government of India advertisements. [BBC]. Meanwhile, non-elitist tweeter Vir Sanghvi has joined forces with another non-elitist tweeter Pritish Nandy to file an RTI application wanting to know the selection process that resulted in Mr Chatwal being awarded the nation's third highest civilian honour. [Twitter]. The highest award in the Padma series is the Padma Lakshmi and only one person of Indian origin has been known to receive it, although reportedly he received it over and over and over again.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold the new apple device which is going to take over your life. The iPad. First everyone will hate it because Steve Jobs is a douchebag, then everyone will buy it because besides being a douchebag, Steve Jobs is also like a kidnapper and we're all hostages suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Although I think he is losing it a little bit. Apple probably spends billions of dollars on product development, but that's the best name they could come up with? The only name worse than "iPad" is the "iQueada". [Gizmodo]

President Obama will give his first 'State of the Union' address to the joint session of the US Congress. Rumour has it that he might open the speech by singing an acoustic version of Pants on the ground. [VOA]

Hey McDonalds, yo mama so cheap she washes her paper plates! [BBC]

2010 Republic Day Live Blog

2010-01-26T08:54:00.001+05:30

I realised that I never completed the essay on republic Day my teacher in third grade told me too write. So since I don't like to leave things incomplete, and I am up at this infernal hour, I thought why not do that essay in the form of a live blog. Because why the fuck not? Blogging is just like writing an essay in third grade, except with more cuss words.

Therefore (yeah, we're even using fancy words now! Mrs. Keeler would be so proud!) grab a bottle of your favourite alcoholic drink and join us while we commemorate India's 61st Republic Day. If you are one of the five people who read this blog, or are someone new, you can always use the comment section to comment!

08:55 AM They're showing various ancient people they call 'Governors' reading out something I presume to be a speech. If they had any guts, they would show an ND Tiwari/Viagra advert instead.

09:00 AM The news channels are going all out!! Everyone is dressed in ethnic chic!!

09:05 AM Headlines Today continues to do it's patriotic duty by continuing to SCARE PEOPLE! DON'T LEAVE YOUR HOME!! BOOOOOOO!!

09:10 AM Okay, news channels. We get it. There is heightened security. Can we move on, please?

09:15 AM My alarm just went off. I NEVER wake up before my alarm. This almost never happens. It must mean that the universe WANTED me to write this live blog.

09:20 AM They're showing patriotic songs now, sung by that famous old singing lady, while shots of determined people interwoven with other things. A thousand throats must be choking right now, with poignant sadness.

09:22 AM New song has mixed theme: Mobile Phones, children in school, solitary Olympic Gold medal. I had forgotten that DD videos are a work of 'art'.

09:25 AM The DD anchor lady is either on crack or just found out that her mother-in-law is moving out.

09:30 AM India Gate is looking beautiful! No, seriously. But Rajpath is fogged like a son-of-a-bitch!

09:32 AM They are doing a history lesson! In all languages!

09:36 AM No one can see anything. Specially the defence minister! Which is a good thing!

09: 39 AM The voice-over lady has said the words "Indira Gandhi" 31525463991740374891 times already.

09:44 AM Anchor lady is reading out President Kalam's poems. Kalam is many things, however, sadly, not a poet.

09:50 AM I hope President Pratibha Patil either fly's down on her own or has someone fly her over Rajpath while she skydives towards the podium, while everyone looks on, applauding her for her gumption.

09:55 AM This year's chief guest is South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. South Korea is the non-crazy Korea.

09:58 AM Dammit! President Patil did not do any dare-devilry today. That would have been awesome, and let's face it, done wonders for the ratings. Also, the video would have gone viral on You Tube. Sigh. So many missed opportunities.

09: 59 AM Also, why no theme song? Our President deserves a theme song! Even Vince McMahon has one!

10:00 AM Pranab Mukhrejee looks like he just teleported from Antarctica!

10:05 AM Wow! The brave Major's wife is also a Major! Our soldiers really do make us proud!

10:10 AM Someone please get the DD anchors some coffee. I think they have a DD anchor pool in their office where they hold a contest to see how many people they can bore to sleep.

10:15 AM I'm not going to lie, but the Koreans are already bored. Quick, someone give them an idea so that the can get busy inventing something!

10:20 AM Wow! Portable pulls! They are going all out, for this parade!

10:18 AM I can never understand why the tank guns are AIMED towards the person they are supposed to be saluting? To scare them to keep saluting or something?

10:20 AM The tank carrying the medical supplies looks SO CUTE!!

10:25 AM The Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar has a permanent smile plastered on her face. She's the Arjun Rampal of Lok Sabha speakers.

10:27 AM Did you know that the Republic Day marks the anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution of India and the transition of India from a British Dominion to a republic on January 26, 1950?

10:30 AM The IAF tableau could have used a better font.

10:32 AM The display of all those missiles has a somewhat "Looking at you, neighbours!" spirit to it. Hey, it's Republic Day. We need to tell everyone that we can open a can of serious nuclear whoop-ass on them.

10:38 AM Obama wishes the Indian constitution a happy 60th birthday! http://bit.ly/6eAzEO

10:42 AM Right now, someone is explaining to the Thackreys what "constitution" means. *Spoiler alert*: It has nothing to do with the strange feeling in your digestive system!

10:50 AM The Rajasthan contingent has the tallest Sardarji's I've ever seen!

10:52 AM Millions of teevee viewers were disappointed that the Rajasthan tableau did not include that famous teevee child bride.

10:54 AM The Maharastha tableau depicts taxi drivers being beaten by MNS activists! Oddly, accompanied by a hindi song!! THIS IS NOT GOING TO GO DOWN WELL WITH YOU-KNOW-WHO!!

10:56 AM Seriously DD cameraperson, there are other people besides the UPA CHAIRPERSON attending the parade!

10:58 AM The Goa tableau has a bikini-clad drunk white lady along with Indian high school students who are snorting something.

11:02 AM The Kerela float had a couple of replica buildings from Dubai and a person looking like Shashi Tharoor, typing intensely into his blackberry.

11:04 AM The Uttrakahand float depicts children who are lost in the Kumbh mela, who will grow up to be future hindi film characters and ND Tiwari's casting couch.

11:06 AM The cultural ministry tableau contains Ustad Amjad Ali Khan's broken sarod!

11:09 AM The South Korean delegation is amused by the Indian Railways ancient steam engine float!

11:10 AM So the Global Warming float consists of an actual healthy earth? So Jairam Ramesh wins?

11:15 AM The Travel Ministry float depicts touts fleecing millions of innocent tourists.

11:16 AM The sports ministry float contains half-built stadiums for the 2010 CW games and starving sports people.

11:20 AM All these kids have been rehearsing their performances for months!

11:21 AM The Delhi kids who are performing are accompanied by a tiny India Gate replica and a list of government officials you can bribe to get your work done ASAP!

11:25 AM Students doing aerobics for world peace! As Gandhi once said, nothing brings world peace like a Richard Simmons leg crunch!

11:32 AM You know what they call eight people riding a bike in China? A family's day out!

11:35 AM IF THE BORDER SECURITY FORCE IS DOING LAME MOTORCYCLE STUNTS, WHO IS LOOKING AFTER THE BORDER?

11:38 AM I'm sorry, whenever I see planes flying, I am reminded of this. Teehee!

11:40 AM The parade is now getting over? Well, I haven't even used up all my recycled jokes yet!

So here are floats we were not able to see:

- The UP tableau, which contained three statues of Mayawati Aunty along with a family which is without any food, electricity or water, but is still depicted voting for her!

- The Gujarat float, which only had an almost life-like replica of Narendra Modi's head.

11:45 AM The parade ends with famous old lady singer singing another national song which some people don't like singing, because of the difficult lyrics?

11:48 AM OMG! The DD anchor on crack is BACK!

So then we came to an end!

I haven't sat through such a long teevee broadcast in ages! Specially on DD, which I had even forgotten existed! It still is the same, sad network it was, back in the day. Except that the anchors are on drugs! Maybe they always were on drugs!

Anyways, all the cynicism aside, no matter how sucky it gets, no matter who they elect to be Prime Minister (Personally, I wouldn't mind Snooki from Jersey Shore, but whatever!), I will always love my country because there is no other place in the world where I can have Dal Makhani with Veg. Fried Rice!

Happy Republic Day, everyone.

Stay safe.

Also, use a condom, perhaps?

It's never too late to apologize

2010-01-21T20:26:00.001+05:30

So a few months ago we pointed and laughed at Jairam Ramesh and this one scientist who said that global warming is false and that the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035.

Turns out, they were half right:

Leaders of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change apologized yesterday for making a "poorly substantiated" claim that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.

The finding was included in the group's 2007 report in an error-riddled paragraph that also misstates the total land area covered by Himalayan glaciers. Scientists who identified the mistakes say the IPCC report relied on news accounts that appear to misquote a scientific paper that estimated the glaciers could disappear by 2350, not 2035.

Oops!

Hey, IPCC, aren't you guys scientists? So shouldn't you have OVERCHECKED for errors? Shouldn't you have higher standards than a student in fifth grade who even has typos in his project report which he completely copied from Wikipedia?

And yes, I WAS WRONG to believe the IPCC when they said that their "report was peer reviewed by scientists from various countries" and that they used data provided by ISRO.

So, to quote my favourite sign outside my neighbourhood grocery shop, "PLEASE BRING EXACT CHANGE. SORRY FOR THE INCONVEIENCE. THANK YOU FOR COOPERATION."

However, the point remains that even though the IPCC was wrong, even Jairam Ramesh and his crank scientist were wrong to deny global warming. Global warming is not a myth. It is something which is quite evident and in front of us. We see it when it rains unseasonly or the thick fog which envelops our cities every morning, we feel it when we have a heat wave and cold wave in the same year. It's real. The climate is changing and not in a good way.

Yes, I screwed up by believing those fact fudgers.

The pointing and laughing may now commence.

Regular programming will resume shortly.

Climate Science Panel Apologizes for Himalayan Error [NYT]
India's environment minister will not believe any stupid scientific fact about global warming [Me]

NBC is like the Shivraj Patil of American television

2010-01-21T02:31:00.001+05:30

The greyest lady of all in newsbusiness, the New York Times, is to start charging people for reading their online edition from 2011. Which is funny because by 2011 we'll all be getting our news from the twitter client embedded in our brain. [Mediabistro]

The people of Massachusetts elected a crazy, wingnutty cosmo centerfold to replace Ted Kennedy in the US Senate. This gives the Republicans a 41-59 majority, which will somehow finally kill the world in 2012. Just like the Mayans predicted. [Gawker]

The Italian Prime Minister (aka the ND Tiwari of Europe) could even teach Indian politicians a thing or two about having your cake and eating it too. [WashPost]

Famous teevee journalist who writes books about food and hosts shows about getting stuff custom made for yourself, thinks that bloggers and twatters are elitists. [Vir Sanghvi via FlyYouFools]

Shivraj "Crazy McPants" Patil and his extensive wardrobe are being rewarded for their performance as India's best minister of 'home' by being made Governor of Punjab. After this was announced, Patil, as is his habit, announced that "we will ensure that the perpetrators of this horrible incident will be caught and bought to justice". And then he wet his pants. [Zee News]

Good news for all those stuck in the office because you don't really want to spend time with your significant other. The IPL will now be broadcast for free on You Tube. This will be even better than the teevee broadcast because you won't have to hear Ravi Shastri's "commentary" & "analysis" during the match. Another #win for the internets. [Techie Buzz]

The NBC late-night show brouhaha is not just good for a few jokes, it's also a good business lesson. You can use this to make a PPT for the next company 'retreat' (if you work for a company which has enough money to have one) and sound all cool and zeitgesty. And if you really want the presentation to be a hit, make sure to end by making a joke about Jay Leno's huge chin. [WSJ]

Finally, in case you haven't already heard, Bill Gates joined twitter. He gets followed 208 times per minute. He also makes millions of dollars per minute. I fear that this is headed towards the all new Bill-Gates-will-donate-a-million-dollars-to-charity-for-every-follower-he-has spam meme. Kidding. He will probably give all his followers a free copy of Windows 7! [PC Mag]

Maharashtra ready to be the new Australia

2010-01-20T21:53:00.001+05:30

Everyone thought (not really) that they solved the MNS-is-punching-north-Indians problem when they elected the Congress-NCP people for a record third term. However, as it turns out, the election was fixed and no matter who they voted for, it turns out they elected the crazy guy who runs that bullying operation.

The Maharashtra Cabinet on Wednesday decided to grant taxi permits to only those people who have been residing in the state for 15 years.

The new rules also state that who applying for taxi permits must speak, read and write Marathi.

Ha, ha! Despite the Maharashtra government wanting the poors from other states to eat a bag of dicks, this won't last for long. That is because (a) As my Irish friend Colin (!) points out, it is against the feckin constitution and (b) When the noble bench of the Janpath High Court hears about this, they are going to put their foot down and hold the Maharshtra government by it's ear, and make them say "back-sies".

Which will then accomplish two things: (One.) Make the "high command" look all magnanimous and statesmen-like and will help them burnish their "pro-people" credentials (whatever that is) &&& (Two.) Local leaders of the Maharashtra Congress can pretend to be "sources" for those sexy clued-in journalists and tell people (anonymously, of course) how "disappointed" they are at their own party, which in turn helps them polish their pro-Marathi-speaking-people credentials (whatever that is).

Game. Set. Match.

And if you're wondering, it's a two headed coin. You have no chance of winning. Go home and watch some teevee. Or get a blog and vent.

Whatevers.

Maharashtra to grant taxi permits only to domiciles [IBN-Live]

This is what a bad hair day looks like!

2010-01-14T21:38:00.001+05:30

There are men who are born to a life of mediocrity. Men who are born to work, eat and wither away. Men who go by their whole lives, without being noticed at all. Men who fall by the wayside, never to be heard from again. Then there are those men who born into greatness. Men who have destinies to fulfil. Men who by the sheer force of their willpower end up changing the world. Men who are the true heroes of our time.

One such hero is Mr. Jairam Ramesh. Friend of the blog, hair enthusiast and all round nice guy. After first proving that global warming is a conspiracy and then still coming up with a solution for it, toupee Gandhi is now trying to solve the problem of BT Brinjal, which, as it turns out, is not a type of brinjal sponsored by British Telecom (who knew?).

Anyways, Dr. Hairspray decided that enough was enough and it was time for a change. So he went to West Bengal, the brinjal capital of India (not really. But it adds a little sense to the narrative. So just shuddap and play along).

Since His Hairness is a man of the people, he thought that he would give the people a chance to speak to him. All his friends and co-heroes asked him not to consider views of the lesser beings. But he ignored their sage advice. 'Nay', he said to all the naysayers. He would discard his ego like a bad strand of hair and listen to the wisdom of the less heroic. The less knowledgeable. The people who have no greatness bestowed upon them. The ones who have not been chosen by the almighty to lead the people onto the light.

He braved rain, wind, wind blowing sand in his face, heat, and the arctic cold, (miraculously none of which was able to mess his hair. I need to find out which product he uses), so as to reach his people.

And what did the people do?

The people failed him.

All he wanted to do was listen to his people. And they shout at him. Scream at him? Throw ineligible words at him? Try to insult their beloved Captain Haircut? After everything he did for them?

All this just for some goddamn brinjals? It's confounding, is what it is.

Shame on you, people. Shame on you! How could you? How can you sleep at night knowing how much hurt you caused to our heroes' heart?

However, a small setback like this does not deter our great hero. If the people want him to leave, he would get out of their hair in an instant. He doesn't need their permission to do what's good for them. A true hero sees things us mere mortals cannot even fathom. A true hero saves you from calamities you may never even know off. As some old guy once said, with great power comes ~~great amounts of money~~ great responsibility.

He may be wounded, but he still has a lot of fight in him.

He will be back.

To fight for the people.

To fulfil his destiny.

To take his people onto the light.

Stay tuned, mere mortal.

Stay tuned cause it's going to be one hair raising spectacle.

This bird has nine lives!

2010-01-13T16:17:00.001+05:30

It's that time of the month again, when our minister of talking to scary foreign people, Tweety Tharoor, says something with some amount of truth (or as journalists call it, a "gaffe") and everyone catches fire. Usually he uses his satanic smart phone to cause a national uproar, this time he gave a speech at the Pravasi Bharat Divas (aka the annual meeting of the Narendra Modi fan club). So while everybody rehashes the Shashi Tharoor-flashes-someone-on-twitter meme into the Shashi Tharoor-disrespects-the-olds meme, and ends up blowing blows hot air up each other's asses, here's what they really mean to say:

The Media: ZOMG! We can't really do any real reporting because all the people who fuck with the country's resources have got us by the balls, but hey look Shashi Tharoor said something. Haha, this guy is like a gift who keeps on giving. STOP THE PRESSES!!! WE GOT A FRONT PAGE HEADLINE FOR TOMMOROW!! LOOK, OUR EDITOR JUST CAME IN HIS PANTS!! OR DON'T BECAUSE THAT IS JUST GROSS!!

The INC(I): How dare someone have an opinion on anything? Doesn't he realize that the Congress is like an army of pods? We are only allowed to think those thoughts which have been downloaded into our brains by either Soniajee Madam or Rahuljee "baba". Everything else is blasphemy. Wait, what do you mean Shashi Tharoor wrote a book spoofing both Nehru and Gandhi? When did that happen? DID SOMEONE TELL MADAM? Don't worry, I think we know who our next Ambassador to Yemen is going to be!

The Shashi Tharoor: Me . . . Me . . . Look at me . . . Imma reach out to y'all. Love me, follow me, read my son's articles, BUY MY BOOKS!!1!! MEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeee . . . . . Gimme a T, gimme a H, gimme an A . . . ~ . . .

The people in Fake India: OMFG! SRK IS ON TWITTER! Now we can see how seriously he
takes himself behind the facade of self-depreciation!

The people in Real India: I can haz blanket?

[Pic via Goofy Duck]
NRI voting: PM holds out hope, Tharoor picks holes in bill [HT]

Tharoor criticises Nehru's 'moralistic' foreign policy [DNA]
I was misquoted on Nehruvian policy: Tharoor [Zee News]

Master of all trades, jack of none!

2010-01-10T22:35:00.001+05:30

God whisperer, Pilot, Navy Seal and now doctor. Is there anything this woman cannot do?

p.s. I'd bet good money that the kid is thinking "What am I doing here?? FML"!

The future is finally here: Scientifically accurate predictions for the next awful ten years of your life

2010-01-02T17:15:00.001+05:30

Even though the jury is still out on whether this is technically the start of the new decade or not, we are simply going to ignore all that and just like the mainstream media do whatever the hell we want to. Since everyone and their mother have summed up the last decade in hundreds of nauseating ways, we thought that we would channel the dead spirit of nostradamus (and the people who were pretty darn sure that Iraq had WMD's) and just like them, based on absolutely nothing, come with predictions which might or might not be true. Who really knows or cares because isn't everything printed on the internets the gospel truth?

The decade will start by forcing everyone who wants to travel in an airplane to basically travel nude because some dipshit who got tired of scamming people by pretending to be the son of a deposed prince and then wanted to blow up his crotch to prove a point which no one really knows (or as Joe Liberman put it, 'preemptive War on any Muslim sounding country'). Since no luggage will be provided, airlines will try to recoup their losses by charging people with large body parts more money under 'extra baggage'. Emo kids and reality teevee stars will also be asked to pay double, due to their large amount of emotional baggage.

If no celebrities will die then Larry king will get Nancy Regan to séance with Michael Jackson's ghost in which he will finally confess to being a white catholic Republican lady in disguise. This will ensure that Jebus forgives all his 'alleged' child-porn sins.

The oracle of hope, President Obama, will win the 2012 election by default because Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin will end up inadvertently shooting each other in their Last Hunter Standing match at Wrestlemania, which would be held to decide the nomination for the Republican candidate.

The green movement in Iran will finally win their fight for electoral reform. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will escape to America where he will be hired as a contributor to Fox News wherein his only task would be to appear on the screen for five minutes during the Glenn Beck show and make scary faces while continuously shouting "Death to Diet Bagels".

Sometime during the decade, Arnab Goswami will get tired of shouting at the camera and decide to take matters into his own hand and will invade Pakistan along with Farook Dhondy and Suhel Seth.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will gay-marry Hussain Sharrif so that their love-child, Benazir Bilawal Asif Nawaz Hussain Zardari Bhutto Sharif, will become the youngest President of Pakistan.

Manmohan Singh will cite 'health grounds' and Jayanti Natrajan's body odour in his resignation letter to future astronaut and current President, Prathibha Patil, which will pave the way for Rahul Gandhi to become Prime Minister of both the India's, the 'real one' (which only exists in Madhur Bhandarkar movies) and the 'fake one' (which only exists in Karan Johar movies).

96 year old ND Tiwari will become the Governor of India's 137th state, which will solely consist of all the children he has 'allegedly' illegally sired over these years. He will continue to have orgies in the Governor's mansion.

However, all the screwing will stop when Narendra Modi and his merry band of non-voting NRI's, who will make it compulsory for everyone to vote for them, take over and no one will ever have sex in India ever again.

Have a great decade, people! If this doesn't make you look forward to it, I don't know what will.

The Democratic Peoples Republic of Narendra Modi

2009-12-22T03:41:00.001+05:30

The glorious government of the world's greatest #1 chief minister of all time, Narendra Modi, has found a solution to the whole people-who-don't-vote problem:

Gujarat on Saturday became the first state in India to make voting compulsory in all local body elections, with chief minister Narendra Modi terming it a "move to strengthen democracy". Amid opposition from the Congress, the assembly passed the controversial Gujarat Local Authorities Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2009.

The bill makes voting mandatory in elections to all seven municipal corporations, 159 municipalities, 26 district panchayats, 223 taluka panchayats and in 13,713 village panchayats of the state. The bill, which also seeks to raise the reservation of seats for women in local self governance bodies from 33% to 50%, was passed by voice vote.

Yeah, baby. Forcing someone to do something is what democracy is all about. Just like when you don't want ice cream to melt, you take it out from the freezer and put it outside, under the sun.

This is how democracy works, you stupid non-believers. You vote for your leaders, and they decide what you drink, what you read, what you eat because obviously, in a democracy, you have no right to decide any of those things. If you really want any of those things, try a different state. Or country. Whatever. Although, make sure it's not North Korea, because they have compulsory voting there too, among other things.

According to the new law, all registered voters in Gujarat will be required to vote. Those absent will be asked to submit a valid reason . The bill empowers the election officer to declare people who do not vote as 'defaulter voters'.

Of course, the only people who will benefit from this law will be those election officers who will now be able to earn bribes so as to exempt those prickly 'defaulter voters' from getting prosecuted. And those who can't afford too, well, too bad. They should have thought of that before registering to vote.

Anyways, the ultimate irony was reserved for when the bill was being 'debated' in the Gujarat assembly:

Chief minister Narendra Modi and most of his ministers were absent when the Bill was being voted in the House. Cabinet ministers Vajubhai Vala, close Modi ally Dilip Sanghani and Jay Narayan Vyas. Ministers of state Jaswantsinh Bhabhor, Vasan Ahir and Purshottam Solanki were also missing from the Assembly. Nearly 40 per cent of MLAs in a House of 181 were absent during voting.

You know what? Instead of trying to mandate people to vote, maybe they should make it compulsory for politicians to not be two-faced, hypocritical, no good neanderthals.

Somebody should put that on the ballot

Hell, I'd vote for it.

Controversial local bodies' bill passed in Gujarat assembly [DNA]
Modi absent when compulsory voting bill tabled [TOI]
A guide to voting in North Korea [Japan Probe]

Even Rocket Singh cannot save the newspaper industry

2009-12-17T01:31:00.001+05:30

India's favourite bussinessy "newspaper", The Economic Times, which a lot of retired old men read so that they can impress their wives and each other's wives by using words like "derivatives" and "quant fund", brings you the most important breaking business news story of the day:

Bollywood's latest offering "Rocket Singh - Salesman Of The Year" is going great guns in the US with its review currently the number one most read movie story on the New York Times site.

The NUMBER ONE article on the NY Times website? YOU DON'T SAY!! OMFG, this must mean that Ranbir Kapoor will win an Oscar this year, for looking like a bearded version of his Mom!!!

Great! So do we have any numbers to back up those claims? Any box office receipts, revenue collections, anything?

In an equally flattering review, Film Journal International says: "David-and-Goliath workplace drama from India goes unexpected places, and hits satisfying chords."

OMFG, AGAIN!! They compared the movie to a biblical story! This is even BETTER than the Oscars! We'll ignore the fact that the sentence is full of so many grammatical errors.

Rocket Singh, FTW!!

But seriously, where are the numbers? Aren't you the friggin' Economic Times? Shouldn't your assumption be based on the, errrr, ummmm,*ahem*, economics? Just sayin'.

Okay. Fine. Let's just find proof of your obviously accurate assumption using teh googlez.

When a Bollywood movie grosses less than a Harman Baweja film in the opening weekend at the box office, there are only two words in the English language to describe its miserable fate: EPIC DISASTER.

Yes, folks.

Ranbir Kapoor’s Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year has fared miserably at the U.S. box office.

So bad that even Harman Baweja’s What’s Your Rashee had a higher opening gross ($169,005).

Epic disaster? Even sad little Harman Baweja's movie fared better?

You must be kidding me!!

This can't be right. EVERYONE IS READING THE REVIEW ON THE NEW YORK TIMES WEBSITE. HOW CAN THIS NOT TRANSLATE TO SUCCESS AT THE BOX OFFICE??

Hmpfh.

You must be lying.

Let's ask someone who knows what they are talking about.

What do you say, self-important movie critic, Taran Adarsh?

The keenly anticipated Rocket Singh - Salesman of the Year has emerged a gigantic disappointment in the key international markets. The film is one of the lowest openers of Yash Raj in U.K. and America, which has come as a rude shock for the entire industry. The opening weekend of Rocket Singh - Salesman of the Year should've been huge in these territories because Yash Raj movies, generally, open very well in the international markets and also because there's a sizable Punjabi population in U.K. and Canada-America.

Gigantic disappointment? Even in Canada-America, which is not a REAL COUNTRY! WTF?

But how can The Economic Times not give us an accurate picture?

First Tiger Woods.

Now The Economic Times.

Is there anybody left in this world who I can trust?

Oh, wait.

Maybe there is. [click here]

Rocket Singh going great guns in US [ET]
Rocket Singh - Epic Disaster at Box Office [Search India Blog]
Rocket Singh is a colossal disaster overseas [One India]
Movie Review - Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year [NYT]

Dr. Singh goes to Washington

2009-11-25T18:49:00.001+05:30

Even though Prime Minister Singh and Mrs Kaur would have rather stayed at home with the Obamas and enjoy Michelle's world-famous Pecan Pie after playing a game of charades, President Obama threw together a fancy-schmancy dinner party for the leader of the ghee world along with 400 other distinguished guests and Joe Biden.

The toast given by both were short and sweet. Obama quoted Nehru and Singh quoted Lincoln. Even though everyone knew that both of them got some underpaid assistant to copy that from Wikipedia, both were applauded for their knowledge of each other's culture. Although, Obama won this competition because he welcomed everybody in hindi. And you know how we macacaz simply go all crazy when someone foreign speaks in one of our languages. You could almost hear the Prime Minister mumbling in his head "Oh Barack, you complete me!!".

After the speeches were over the guests dug into scrumptious potato and eggplant salad (ugh) and roasted potato dumplings in tomato chutney (double ugh. Although, CHUTNEY!). There was this weird moment when they announced that they would be serving Pumpkin Pie Tart which made everyone look towards the stage because they thought it was the cue for Sarah Palin to do some dramatic reading from her new book which has replaced the bible as the biggest selling book of all time. Which did not happen because Sarah Palin went rogue and was stuffing her face with good ol' American turkey in some good ol' city in the "real" America. No self-respecting hockey mom would be caught dead in a elitist state dinner full of stuffy east coast liberals eating hippie food like chickpeas and okra.

Everyone was dressed in their elegant best and supposedly the flower arrangements around the tables were a homage to the Indian peacock. Which begs the question, what happened to the Indian peacock?

The guests were an eclectic mix of people from the fields of politics, business and entertainment, none of whom would be caught dead in a reality show.

There were many Indian-Americans and Indian-Indians among the guests. There was Obama's weed czar, Kal "Kumar" Penn, America's favourite sweetheart surgeon Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Louisiana Governor and spelling bee champion Bobby Jindal, who was regaling everyone with his unintentional impression of Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock. While Fareed Zakaria and Rajiv Chandershakeran were making Zardari jokes, Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani were probably eyeing each other suspiciously. Also spotted was Jhumpa Lahri, making furious notes on a napkin about a new story in which the son of a Bengali immigrant in America gets elected to the highest office in the world, as the host of the Oprah Winfrey show. Nobel laureate Amratya Sen was heard explaining his idea of justice for millions of downtrodden people to Deepak Chopra. Deepak then explained to Amratya that hunger is a man-made desire which can easily be overcome by subscribing to the new (& improved) patented personal program, The Deepak Chopra 12 New Yoga Positions to Eliminate Hunger. M. Night Shayamalam and his wife were eating the PB & J sandwiches they brought from home because Night doesn't trust anyone. Anyone. Airtel honcho Sunil Mittal was seen going out of the tent to take a call, because his phone wasn't getting any signals inside. He then kept asking the caller whether they could hear him now! Steven Spielberg, who is now an honorary Indian-American because he is property of Anil Ambani, was also there, probably discussing with Pepsi honcho Indira Nooyi about making a bi-lingual biopic about her life.

There were also a lot of distinguished American-Americans present at the dinner. There was Colin Powell, telling anyone who would lend him an ear about how he was tricked into lying at the UN. All three of the Pelosis were also in attendance. Nancy, Paul and Nancy's face were just like a family. Uber-producer David Geffen was also there, with his partner, Jeffery Katzenberg. Although Mrs. Kaur kept referring to Jeffery as David's "roommate", accompanied by a wink. And since Oprah could not make it, she sent her "roommate" *wink, wink*, Gayle King.

It was not all fun & games. There was also important state business conducted at the dinner. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was heard teaching National Security Advisor MK Narayanan on how to intimidate your subordinates by alternating between starving them and calling them MoFo's. External affairs minister SM Krishna and Secretary Clinton both agreed that if newly sworn in Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai wants to be taken seriously, he has to ditch that damn Harlem pimp coat he never leaves home without.

The entertainment was provided by Jennifer Hudson and AR Rahman, among others. Adam Lambert's appearance was cancelled at the last minute because having more then two gay people in attendance would alienate one of Obama's core constituency, rednecks & retards.

It was a fun evening for those attending although some people were disappointed that Katie Couric didn't get drunk enough to start doing her thang. There was just one awkward moment when Joe Biden asked Prime Minister Singh to help him with those pesky pop-ups he gets everytime he tries to send an email. To shut Joe up, President Obama kneed him on the "Bidens" and he was taken away by the secret service to be put back into his cage. Obama then reassured a visibly shaken Dr. Singh not to worry because that was just Joe being Joe.

As they say, all's well that ends with Joe Biden shooting his mouth.

State Dinner Menu [Gawker]
State Dinner Guest list [HuffPo]
Manmohan/Obama toast [HuffPo]

Photo Credit: The Daily Beast

The beagle has landed: Part 2

2009-11-24T21:20:00.001+05:30

Washington DC's current "rainy, chilly" weather is supposed to be a metaphor (boy, this word has been overused in the past few days, hasn't it?) for the current thaw between Indo-US relations. In short, the weather has gone rogue! 9expect more of that too!)

Anyways, here is former Professor Barack Obama welcoming former Professor Manmohan Singh to the White House.

I never attended a lot of classes in my time, but let me just say this, I would have gone to sleep during Manmohan Singh lectures.

Just sayin.

Hold the phone shylock because Rahul Gandhi just made an important discovery

2009-11-24T00:50:00.001+05:30

Our next king and emperor, the scion of our country's "first family", the personification of all that is pure in this world, the apple of every mother's eye, Lord Rahul Gandhi has just made a discovery ~~by reading the December 2000 issue of DUH magazine~~ which has eluded millions and millions of people before him.

India has two sides, the urban and developed and the rural and underdeveloped, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi said here today.

"There exists two Indias -- one in towns and cities with highrise buildings, computers, cars and modern gadgets, and the other in rural areas, still underdeveloped for lack of facilities and opportunities," Gandhi told a rally to thank the people for voting back the Congress to power in the state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Oh My God! Why has no one else thought of this before?

Dammit! As they say, when you lose something, it's always at the LAST PLACE YOU LOOK. If only someone had thought of checking inside Rahul Gandhi's head.

However, now that we know, EVERYTHING's going to be okay. Because Rahul Gandhi is ON THE CASE. And as you know, when Rahul Gandhi is on a case, he ALWAYS SOLVES IT. He's like that guy from those uppity Arthur Conan Doyle novels.

"I took a British minister to the villages some time back to show him the strength of the people of rural India, as they were making use of the opportunities offered to them by the NREGA and the waiving of loans," he said.

"But I was criticised by the BJP, which alleged that I was showing the poverty of the country to a minister from a foreign country," he said.

Yes, because the BJP in it's infinite wisdom thinks that if you IGNORE something completely, it will go away. That is the reason no one in the BJP is talking to Rajnath Singh anymore. Someone should memo them and let them know that this doesn't work. Have they even seen Bigg Boss?

Anyways, I'm sure the "minister from a foreign country" knows that there are a few dozen poor people in India, because he must have seen Slumdog Millionaire.

It is heartening to know that his highness will be our next "Dear Leader". I feel optimistic about the country's future already.

Jai Ho!

India has two sides, developed and underdeveloped, says Rahul Gandhi [DNA]

[Hat Tip: Iyer Deepak]

The beagle has landed

2009-11-23T07:03:00.001+05:30

Manmohan, dude, could you at least get your safari suit dry cleaned?

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived in Washington on Sunday afternoon, for a five day "state" visit. Now, no one really knows what a state visit means, but everyone agrees it's sort of important, like the American Idol season finale or Tyra Banks opinion on America's Next Top Model.

Let's see what the demi-gods of our times, the conscious keepers of our nation, those wonderful people who tell you what you need to think, journalists are saying:

DNA wants our jumpy foreign office to stop being so paranoid:

Serious strains in Sino-US relations are showing up barely days after US president Barack Obama concluded a conciliatory visit to China, and ahead of Singh's visit to the US. These belie the paranoid perception from New Delhi that an emerging Washington-Beijing entente is selling India's interests short. In particular, a paragraph in the Sino-US joint statement at the conclusion of Obama's visit, which commits the two countries to promoting peace in South Asia, has given rise to much Indian angst over China being given a "policing role" over Indo-Pakistan relations.

Some analysts caution against the risk of investing too much authority to sentiments reflected in joint statements. "A joint statement is less binding than, say, a joint declaration," points out Pang Zhongying, professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. "If the two sides were sure they wanted to work together, they would have issued a declaration."

Dude, didja forget that our whole foreign policy is based on paranoia? Most of the people in our ministry of external affairs are only seen in public when we have to denounce a statement made by some crazy fuck in Pakistan or some godforsaken "newspaper" in China. But, hey, if it is already broken, why even try to fix it?

Our ambassador to the US, Meera Shankar, thinks that India wants Indo-US ties to be more than just a B2B relationship:

. . . defence relations have seen steady progress as an important aspect of the strategic partnership. Our Defence Policy Group (DPG) and its sub-groups, which meet annually, have acquired substance and depth in their deliberations. There has been an increase in the interaction between our armed forces. All our three services now conduct annual exercises with their US counterparts. At the same time, we are also looking at the US as one of the possible suppliers of weapon systems as we continue to modernize our armed forces. We would like the relationship not just to be limited to a buyer-seller relationship but also to move into areas of joint development and transfer of technology. Our armed forces are also cooperating in areas such as maritime security, which is vital to economic and national interests of both our countries.

Yay. Both our armed forces are ready to take on China the minute the US repays back all the money it owes to home of the dragon.

The US and India will also be signing a pact to cooperate on 'counter-terrorism':

US and India will sign a pact on intelligence sharing and counter-terrorism during the Prime Minister's visit, one of nearly a dozen agreements to be inked during the visit. Details of the pact are not being disclosed yet, but such was the importance of the agreement that CIA Director Leon Panetta flew down to New Delhi last week to discuss details with his Indian counterparts before the fine print could be drawn up. The agreement could involve exchanging and stationing more intelligence personnel in the two countries, including mobile units, to facilitate better interaction.
Initiative for the intelligence upgrade, including ''technical means,'' has come from the US side after Washington finally realized the fallacy of distinguishing Pakistani terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba from al-Qaida, a grasp that has been brought home by the latest episode involving the terror suspect duo of Tawassur Rana and Daood Gilani aka David Headley.

Does this mean our guys get to ask Rana why he was metaphorically sodomizing Rahul Bhatt?

Now, there are some people who borrow a page from the Obama campaign and lower expectations:

When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his team land at the Andrews Air Force Base in nearby Maryland on Sunday afternoon (early Monday in India) for the first state visited hosted by the Obama administration, they will find a capital region that is bathed in sunshine, although there is a nip in the air that presages winter, and trees are devoid of foliage, autumn having been swept out.

[snip]

However, circumspection is expected to be the order of the day, even though if you go by the fact that this is Singh’s second state visit and the third hosted for India in less than a decade (more than any other country), you’d think the two countries are more than just natural allies or strategic partners . While there is an element of security in the bilateral relationship, India and the US are not allies in the conventional sense and are not likely to be so any time soon, says Walter Anderson, a veteran South Asia hand. His advice: "India will have to formulate its own strategy vis-a-vis its neighbourhood devoid of any unrealistic expectations from Washington, despite the perceived closeness.’’

For a minute there, I thought I was in an Indian novel, with the talk of all the sunshine and the foliage. Before this, I used to think I was the world's worst metaphor writer. Clearly, someone has me beat.

Now, if for a minute, have you ever wondered how this visit would have been reported in the Soviet Union fifty years ago? Well, if you have, this is your lucky day, because our second most favourite insufferable old curmudgeon, Prakash Karat, answers your question:

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Sunday warned the United Progressive Alliance government against allying with the U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan and promised to launch joint struggles with its counterparts in the region against increasing American intervention in South Asia.

[snip]

“We have to continue our struggle against capitalism, put an end to it and establish socialism as the real alternative. At the same time, we also oppose the India-U.S. strategic ties — economic and military,” Mr. Karat said at a public rally at the end of the 11th International Meet of Communist and Workers Parties here.

Where do I even begin? Oh, Prakash. In case you had been asleep for the past twenty years, in the whole decades long football match between socialism and capitalism, the scoreboard stands as, Capitalism - 1, Socialism - 0. Even though capitalism is now crony capitalism, it's evil twin, your system still sucked. Also, fyi, you lost the election. So, please have a nice, warm cup of green tea from China.

Now lets see what the thought leaders on the other side of the pond are thinking. One wonders whether they would be as excited about the visit as much as our own press is.

Since not much of the American press is covering this right now, let's turn our attention to the Times UK, for how the Obama administration is preparing for the Indian PM's visit:

The first dinner party in a new house is a test for every hostess and an awkward eater is the last thing she needs. In Michelle Obama’s case, not only is her first guest of honour an abstemious vegetarian, but the whole world will be watching.

On Tuesday the Obamas host their first state banquet since taking office in January. After the staid years of President George W Bush, who liked to be in bed by 9pm, Washington is desperate for some glamour.

“Official Washington is hungry for this — it’s an important moment,” said Robert Watson, author of American First Ladies and associate professor of American studies at Lynn University, Florida. “It’s a test for Michelle. Every detail will be looked at, from the menu to the guest list, to who’s sitting next to whom. One faux pas and the critics will pounce.”

As the youngest White House family since the Kennedys, the Obamas draw inevitable comparisons. Everyone will be watching to see how Michelle ranks against Jackie.

OMG, did someone remember to send an e-vite to Manmohan?

However, Politico has WON THE DAY, by it's superb coverage of the state visit.

Looks like former President Clinton won't be attending:

Former President Bill Clinton did snag an invite to the White House state dinner on Tuesday, but he won’t be there with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

It’s not a case of “Been there, done that” for Clinton, though he hosted 30 state dinners of his own. Clinton just has other plans. “He’ll be at previously scheduled events in New York,” Matt McKenna, Clinton’s spokesman, told POLITICO.

Well, just get invite a young woman who is on the healthier side. I am sure that Mr Clinton's schedule would 'suddenly' open up.

Now, since Bill isn't going to be there, Mr Hollywood himself, Ari Emanuel, is going to make up for his absence:

Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel (and brother to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel) is expected to be at the White House Tuesday evening for the Obamas' first state dinner.

[snip]

Ari Emanuel won't be the only one from Tinseltown at 1600 Pennsylvania on Tuesday. POLITICO confirmed late last week that Hollywood director M. Night Shyamalan will also attend the dinner.

Although, to be fair, Shyamlan's appearance at the dinner will likely be a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo. And, now that he's there, look for something really paranoid and boring to happen, simultaneously.

There were originally supposed to be 400 guests at the banquet. However, since EVERYONE in the WHOLE WORLD basically wants to be there, the banquet will now consist of 600 guests. The only criteria is that you should have some kind of remote connection to India. Cause, for this banquet, brown seems to be the new black.

Photo Credit: The Magalorean

Manmohan Singh to visit the US to have awkward conversations of epic proportions

2009-11-22T17:27:00.001+05:30

Now that President Obama is all grown up and is allowed to have friends over for the whole night, he couldn't have invited a guest more polite than Manmohan Singh. Mr Singh probably never leaves wet towels lying around, makes his own bed and would rather starve than raid the host's fridge at midnight. Also, I think he would bring a better gift than the usual ferrero rocher chocolates that the other guests bring.

Anyways, as luck would have it, the Indian PM is Obama's first "official state guest". Ha ha, suck on that, Japan. Obama may bow down to your make-believe emperor, but he's only got eyes for the land of karma. This has impressed all our bureaucrats at South Block and our journalists, because both these groups of people have hearts of little teenage girls and all they want is for someone to make them feel special and whisper sweet nothings into their ear. Over the next few weeks, we will see countless panel discussions and read a zillion articles on how the US has finally de-hyphenated the South Asia desk and now simply hyphenates both Afghanistan & Pakistan together, affectionately referring to both those countries as Clusterfuckistan. This must mean that we finally get to play in the same room as the five veto-powered 'superpowers' whenever one of our schoolchildren visit the UN. We now probably have the same power over the other countries of the world that the BCCI has over the ICC. Pretty soon we will have our own little domestic United Nations, based on the IPL, which we can let Shashi Tharoor head so that he finally gets his childhood wish fulfilled.

However, sadly, this might never come true. That's because due to some unforeseen circumstances like reality, the US and India don't really have a lot of common goals anymore. Both countries view the world with a different prism. The US wants the rest of the world to call it Zen Master Popeye and India just wants everyone to get along and watch musical movies which make no sense unless you suspend logical thinking completely.

There are other tight 'knots' in this friendship band too. The US continues to fight the war on terror on two wrong fronts, while ignoring the real root of the problem in Pakistan. The US also want India & Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir issue which New Delhi doesn't see happening anytime soon, because in reality there is no one in the Pakistani establishment who sees a benefit in making peace with India and no one in the Indian government has hypnotic powers.

Both India and the US are on different sides on the issue of reducing carbon emissions. There doesn't seem to be an urgency in India to 'save the environment' because (a) There are very few out and open Lesbian-hippies in India and (b) the Indian news channels haven't yet shown a "news" report about the environment accompanied by scary, armageddonesque music. So we focus on other pressing issues of the day, like reality shows.

The only thing India and the US really sorta agree on is the Indo-US nuclear deal, which, it seems, hasn't really been completed yet. Although we've signed agreements for civilian nuclear power with other members of the NSG like France, Russia and Canada. Canada! The Indo-US nuclear deal is like the worst will-they, won't they sitcom storyline ever.

So when President Obama and Prime Minister Singh sit down mano-a-mano to talk business, the conversation will be quite similar to the conversation that parents of an inter-religious couple have when they meet for the first time. They will skip anything which may reek of controversy and try to convince each other that all they want is for their children to be happy.

However, that's not going to deter both parties from praising each other's 'leadership' and how they see a 'new beginning' in this 'important' relationship between the world's largest and biggest democracies, and how together they can work towards solving problems like climate change, terrorism and preventing Twilight and Harry Potter fans from mating.

Of course this will impress a lot of people. But unlike real teenage girls, our metaphorical ones forget to learn life's most important lesson: If Colin Farrell replies to your blood-stained letter in which you confess your true and eternal love for him with a generic "Dear Fan" boilerplate, then, he's just not that into you.

That, and how you always get a zit whenever you have an important date.

Damn, looks like I really need to stop watching Drew Barrymore movies. It's kind of affecting my mixed metaphors!

Somebody please give Jairam Ramesh his own show. Please.

2009-11-20T20:56:00.001+05:30

Look, my hair has 0% dandruff. Geddit?

Say what you want to, but UPA: Season 2 is beginning to sound more fun than the first one. At first, the only comedic stars to emerge from this comedy classic were Shashi "Tweety" Tharoor, A "What's your spectrum?" Raja and VK "Imma Lawwwya" Moily. However, thanks to the writers of the UPA show, another great comedic superstar is now emerging from the shadows.

Usually only known for his really well styled hair (I know, but this joke is still funny to me.), he was last spotted solving the problem of climate change.

He's now back, with more comedic gold:

“The single-most important cause of [carbon] emissions is eating beef,” Ramesh said. “My formula is stop eating beef. This would stop the emission of [large amounts of] methane.”

Yes. All the damn emissions are because of the damn beef eaters. Stop closing those factories people, and start eating the green crap growing in your garden. If you don't have a garden, you're probably poor or live in Bombay. Either way, your life isn't that valuable. Sorry. Maybe next time, try to be born in some garden-heavy city. Preferably in the 'real India'. Where what you eat and what happens after you eat it are on display in the same field.

And Mr. Minister, I'm sure you don't have an agenda while trying to convert everyone into eating & shooting vegetables. I mean, shooting and eating vegetables. Dammit! I mean eating shoots and leaves.

A vegetarian himself, Ramesh offered a pat on the back for non-beef eaters, saying they help in “climate mitigation”.

Fuck yeah, vegetarians and non-vegetarians who don't eat beef. You just got a pat on the back from Jairam Ramesh. THIS IS PROBABLY YOUR LIFE'S BIGGEST HONOR. Savour it and probably don't wash your back on the spot where you got patted by Uber-environ-mentalist, His Green Highness, Jairam Ramesh.

Or, on second thoughts, please wash your back. I am allergic to any kinds of smell. Thanks.

Now, wait. This is not over.

There are other things he said too:

Environment and Forest Minister Jairam Ramesh, known for making forthright comments, today said if there was any Nobel Prize for dirt and filth, India would get it.

Yes. It is a sublime tragedy indeed, your forthrightness. If only you would have been in government and were able to do something about it. Maybe they should make you a minister or something. If only your party was the party "governing" the country for the past five years. Or the one that won the election with an increased majority.

If only!!!1!

Although, my favourite part of the article is when the reporter says Mr Ramesh is known for making forthright comments.

In fact, I think, if there was a nobel prize for making forthright comments, Jairam Ramesh would get it.

WAIT! I JUST thought of ANOTHER REALLY, REALLY bright idea.

You know what will be the BEST THING for the environment?

Wait for it . . . .

If we stop publishing newspapers at all.

Because, MORE NEWSPAPERS = MORE NEWS REPORTERS

And, MORE NEWS REPORTERS = LOTS OF HOT AIR BLOWN UP PEOPLE'S ASSES

Finally, LOTS OF HOT AIR BLOWN UP PEOPLE'S ASSES = GLOBAL WARMING

OhMaiGawd, I AM SO frikin' FORTHRIGHT TOO.

*Pats self on back*

*Breaks collarbone*

*Whatever*

Green at heart? Avoid beef: Jairam [HT]
If there is a Nobel prize for filth, India will win it: Jairam Ramesh [TOI]

India's environment minister will not believe any stupid scientific fact about global warming

2009-11-12T23:06:00.001+05:30

India's Minister of Environment, Jairam Ramesh, who is also the first Cabinet rank minister in India to have an openly-Lesbian hairdo, has been hard at work during the past few months trying to come up with a coherent policy for prevention of climate change while continuously listening to the Madonna song "4 Minutes" on his iPod.

So let's check in and see how that seems to be going:

For the first time, the Indian government has challenged western research that says global warming has hastened the melting of Himalayan glaciers. On Monday, environment and forests minister Jairam Ramesh released a paper saying there was no evidence of such a link.

. . .

“The health of Himalayan glaciers is poor,” Ramesh said. “But according to the paper, the doomsday prediction of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore is also not correct. I want scientists to critique the report.”

Hooray, everyone!

There is no global warming. That's all a myth that has been perpetuated by those gay hippies and that giant talking carbon footprint people refer to as Al Gore. There must be some other reason why all those cities in Southern Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka look like large, open-air aquariums.

And those effing glaciers? They probably melted because of the heat generated by the poster of Kareena Kapoor with Saggy McManboobs.

And what do these environmental terrorists known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change know anyway?

The IPCC and Gore, a former US vice-president, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

The government’s view goes against the IPCC’s claims that most Himalayan glaciers will vanish by 2035.

“Our prediction [in 2007] was based on government data, and a peer review was done by all countries before our report was released,” IPCC chief R.K. Pachauri said.

. . .

The IPCC’s forecast was based on Indian Space Research Organisation data that said 1,000 Himalayan glaciers had retreated by 16 per cent between 1962 and 2004.

Yeah those commies who run the nobel prize thing award these prizes for doing nothing anyway. And ISRO, those moon geeks went looking for water on the moon when they could have easily bought it at the Moon Starbucks for $50 a pop.

Pachauri, who is also chairman of the UN's intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC), said the report prepared by geologist VK Raina was based on "insufficient data" and "unsubstantiated observations" made over a small two-year period.

While Pachauri was not in town, a Teri spokesperson said he disagreed with Raina's findings which flew in the face of well-researched and documented studies by thousands of IPCC scientists.

Pachauri pointed out that Raina's research was still to be reviewed and authenticated by peers. "It is like schoolboy science," he said. Teri glaciologist Shresth Tayal questioned Raina's conclusion that the melting of the Gangotri glacier had "come to a stand still". He said, "If rain is scarce for two years, can one say drought is here forever?"

Certain aspects of Raina's study were self-contradictory, Tayal said. For example, it claims that glaciers in western Himalayas are melting faster but also says the Siachen glacier is advancing. Even the conclusion that glacier melting is more pronounced in western Himalayas than eastern Himalayas was wrong, Tayal pointed out.

"Our research shows all lakes formed by melting of glaciers are in eastern Himalayas. A glacier in Sikkim, East Rathong, has reportedly lost over 80% of its mass. No one has recorded a glacial lake in western Himalayas," he said.

OH MY GOD. He didn't just say that. You can take your "thousands of scientists" and get stuffed, Pachuri. C'mon, Raina. Don't let him get away with this. Tell him to "unsubstanciate" his whatchamacallit.

“Nothing abnormal is happening to Indian glaciers,” said Raina. “They’re retreating because of negative mass balance. There’s no evidence of climate change.”

Mass balance is primarily determined by annual snow precipitation. Raina could not give reasons for the decrease in snowfall in the Himalayas. “It is for the weather departments to tell,” he said.

Sigh.

Ramesh says Himalayan glaciers not melting, PM's adviser says rubbish [DNA]
No proof of Himalayan ice melting due to climate change [TOI]
Government quells panic over Himalayan glacial melt [HT]
Kareena talks about bareback shot in Kurbaan [Total Filmy]

ZOMG, we're living in an Anurag Mathur novel!

2009-10-26T19:17:00.001+05:30

So I go to sleep for almost a month to try and see what Rip Van Winkle was raving about and it seems that instead of waking up in the real world, I seem to have woken up in one of Anurag Mathur's satirical novels.

Let's look at the evidence:

Karan Johar had to apologize to Raj Thackray for essentially doing something which is guaranteed by the constitution. A little something called Right to Free Speech. So obviously in real life this would not have happened. In real life, the police would have stopped the rent-a-goons which disrupted the movie screenings. In real life, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra would not have gone on every news channel and said that Karan should have gone to the police. Because in real life, one doesn't need to ask the police to essentially do their duty. Because hasn't the Maharashtra government protected the North Indian taxi drivers and railway exam candidates from the MNS goons? And didn't they do a stellar job during 26/11? So this could never have happened in the real world.

Our minister of permanently getting his foot inside his mouth, Shashi Tharoor, got jealous because he had to give a speech on Gandhi Jayanti instead of sitting home and twatting on twitter. So he suggested that everyone should stop taking a day off on Gandhiji's birthday and instead should work like it's going out of fashion. Again, this would never happen in the real world because politicians should be the last people to give tips on "working hard". Because my grandmother does more work than these politicians and she's been dead for ten years. So this won't happen in the real world. Ever. And if it did, I would be giving Mr Tharoor the same advise I give my Aunt Nina when she wants to drunk-dial one of her ex-husbands. PUT DOWN THE BOTTLE AND STEP AWAY FROM THE PHONE.

Then our fearless government appointed liaison of corporate affairs, a bobble-head named Salman Khursheed, decided to appoint himself the UPA government's "pay-czar" and 'warned' the companies against 'vulgar' salaries & perks. That could never happen in the real world. Because if anyone knows about vulgar salaries & perks, it's the politicians. In the real world, people who get taxpayer's to pay for their house, their cars, their household help, their phones, their travelling expenses, their toilet paper, their food, their viagra, their hernia operation, their re-election expenses, the upkeep of their mistresses's and her family, would not shoot their mouth and accuse others of unnecessary expenses. This would never happen in the real world because didn't we learn during one of those 'moral science' classes that we must practice what we preach?

Of course when one is writing a satirical novel about India, how can the symbol of our national apathy and ability to procrastinate endlessly, Air India, be left behind? Because in real life, if there was a scuffle between the airline staff in mid-air, there would have been hell to pay and heads would roll. But during this chapter in the book, nothing happened except a few really creepy news reports. Also, in real life, the government would never invest billions of rupees in a company which has already lost billions of rupees. In real life, any company with such a bad business model would have been shut down. Unless of course, if it was a Wall Street bank. Because Wall Street banks are too big to fail. Even in a fictional novel. In real life, we need to do to Air India what we do to poor, useless old people. Euthanize it.

It doesn't take a genius to realize that pseudo-sanctimony is very funny. A movie, titled Indian Summer, based on the book of the same name, uses the backdrop of our Independence struggle while also depicting the personal lives of some of our 'esteemed' leaders, has faced a lot of artificial roadblocks while it is still in the pre-production phase. Somehow our 'fictional' government feels that this is against our 'culture' and deeply censors the movie to the point that it completely deviates from reality. That's because the fictional government doesn't want to let out the secret that even the leaders of our freedom movement had sexual intercourse, because that would make them lesser human beings and prove that immaculate conception is really a myth. In real life, this would be really, really ridiculous and people would actually not stand for such nonsense.

One of the funniest things about our political culture is the large amounts of sycophancy that is in the DNA of our politicians. So therefore in a satirical novel, no one would raise an eyebrow when the incompetent head of the Commonwealth games organising committee would suggest that the commonwealth games can be salvaged only by Rahul Gandhi. It would never happen in real life because anyone with even half a brain would realize that it would be suicidal to add nepotism to a project which has already been clusterfucked beyond any recognition.

Lastly, have you ever thought how hilariously funny it would be if the CBI suddenly decided to close the bofors case-file just because it has been too long? How can this even happen in real life? Because doesn't conventional wisdom tell us that the long hands of the law catch up to us one time or another? Where are The Hardy Boys when you actually need them! It's also really funny that the character who plays 'Minister of Law' in the book says that they stopped pursuing a case because it would be really sad to 'celebrate' the case's golden jubilee? Ha, ha. That is simply too funny to be true. I think Roman Polanski would agree with me on this one.

Therefore, I think it would be best if I back to sleep and hopefully wake up in the real, saner world.

Karan Johar’s apology a publicity stunt: Ashok Chavan [Indian Express]
Why is Gandhi Jayanti a holiday? [Times Now]
Salman Khursheed warns firms on "vulgar" top pay [Reuters India]
Air India speaks on cabin scuffle [BBC News]
Air India Estimates 50 Billion Rupees Loss This Year [WSJ India]
From saint to statesman [Mint]
Rahul Gandhi can be leader of Commonwealth Games: Kalmadi [TOI]
We did not want to celebrate golden jubilee of Bofors case [TOI]

The best Gandhi commemoration E-V-E-R

2009-09-30T11:51:00.001+05:30

Have you ever looked at your skewered history books, seen some obscure English words describe the freedom struggle and heard about a man called Gandhi?

If yes, then have you ever thought to yourself, that you should do something to celebrate his memory but have never found an appropriate forum/hallmark card?

Then you're in luck. Thanks to the wonderful people at Mont Blanc, now you can.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s iconic Dandi March in 1930 to protest against the British salt tax has inspired pen-makers Mont Blanc to come out with a limited-series pen on the Father of the Nation.

The high-end pen is priced around Rs.14 lakh, according to a watch retailer.

The pen comes with a gold wire entwined by hand around the middle, which “evokes the roughly wound yarn on the spindle with which Gandhi spun everyday.”

Inspired by the “241 mile” march, the white gold pen, of which only 241 pieces will be available worldwide, boasts of a hand-crafted rhodium plated 18-carat gold nib depicting Gandhiji holding his trademark lathi — all in gold.

You see ladies and gentlemen, nothing evokes the memory of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi then a pen which costs more than a million rupees.

Forget how many children you could feed with that money. Or how many medicines you could buy for people who cannot afford them. Hell, let's even forget how many cottage industries can be supported.

Gandhi never cared about shit like that.

Nope.

That dude was all about the bling-bling.

If you remember, all of Gandhi's clothes were custom made. He was a style icon for millions of people. He was busy spoofing Salman Khan's ~~man boobs~~ bare chest a few decades before Salman Khan was born.

Now go do your patriotic duty and buy this pen.

Because that's exactly what Gandhi would have done.

‘Mahatma’ pens from Mont Blanc [The Hindu]

Baba Ramdev on grand path to becoming C-Grade movie villain

2009-09-30T08:58:00.001+05:30

Famous breath-inhaler and guy who does strange things to his stomach, popularly refereed to as "Baba Ramdev" has now convinced a few of his followers to pool their weekly earnings and buy him a small European Island.

Mr. Ramdev plans to turn the island into a riviera for really boring people. Since there would be no booze or sex or music or drugs on this "holy" island, the only thing people will be able to do the whole day is stand on their head.

I think this isn't really a step in the right direction. As all the hindi movies in the 1980s taught us, buying a tiny private island is simply a pre-cursor to possibly-delusional-but-still-really-grand plans for world domination.

There are other signs too. The BBC provides an unintentional clue:

Bought by two of his devotees from Glasgow for £2m, the tiny North Ayrshire island of Little Cumbrae is being converted into an international yoga camp after a blessing from India's most popular lifestyle guru Baba Ramdev, also known as Swami Ji.

The only people who are referred to as "Swami Ji" are the ones who look at the bosoms of their young & nubile female followers and start salivating. Everyone knows that "real" gurus at least have the decency to add a couple of hundred Sri's to their name. Or at least are able to convince Monks to sell their Ferraris.

Anyways, the Times takes the cake in irresponsible journalism:

Swami Ramdev, who has 80 million followers around the globe, is the Indian equivalent of a rock star, with crowds of up to 10,000 at his outdoor events.

A. ROCK. STAR.

REALLY?

How dare they?

Is there NOTHING sacred left in this world anymore? Where is the decency and respect?

Do the hacks at the Times know how hard people have to work to earn that title?

Do you know how many near-death experiences you need to have to even be considered? Does anyone even have the slightest idea about the amount of cocaine you need to snort? The large number of syringe wounds that you end up having as you continue to battle life itself? Does anyone realize the countless STDs you catch because as a bonafide rockstar you need to make out and have sex with countless number of fans?

Does the Times think that all this is just a fucking joke?

If Courtney Love found out about this, she would be so angry she would post a rant on twitter.

Even the God who came up with Yoga millions of years ago is looking down right now, shaking his head, rolling his eyes and asking his fellow Gods in an exasperated tone "This guy? Seriously?"

Scottish island to become ashram [BBC News]
Yoga guru Swami Ramdev turns Little Cumbrae into Peace Island [Times Online]

If only Julia Roberts could fight terrorism, we would be okay

2009-09-23T04:48:00.001+05:30

The opening paragraph of this 'report' is the most awesome description of why things in our country are so fucked up. [Rediff Movies]

Pakistan puts Hafiz Saeed 'in custody'. They will let us know what that means once they figure it out themselves. Meanwhile, intelligence sources told us that Saeed is still allowed to order his favourite biryani pizza from Dominos, everyday. So much for austerity. [HT]

After successfully ruining some dude's life by getting him to impregnate Rakhi Sawant with an alien child, the producers of NDTV Un-Imagine have decided to find a child bride for famewhore Rahul Mahajan. Mahajan's ideal partner should have long hair, believe in traditional values, be able to change adult diapers and have both male and female reproductive organs. [NDTV Movies]

Sonia Gandhi asks Shashi Tharoor to write "I will not twitter during class" a hundred times, using a Mont Blanc ink pen. This will also go into Tharoor's permanent record and might hinder his getting admission into a good college. [The Hindu]

Sarah Palin will address fund managers in Hong Kong because those douchebags have too much money and they thought that instead of a real person they would just hire a hockey mom who winks a lot. After she gives her 'speech', she will give each attendee a free copy of the straight-to-dvd movie Knocked Up: The Bristol Palin story. Then, she will go sightseeing to the 'Americatown' part of Hong Kong. [Bloomberg]

The Union Home Minister says that Delhiites need to change their behavioural pattern and need to learn to respect the rules. Phooey! That's such false propaganda. Delhiites respect the law, we just tend not to follow it on rare occasions. Like I jumped only two red lights today. Okay, it was five. But I had a good reason for it. I was late for happy hour. Fine, whatever. By the way, someone needs to tell the minister that the biggest lawbreakers in Delhi are those guys he sits with in that Lok Sabha thing where he and his peers do that thing they do. As I said, whatever.[TOI]

Who wants to be a superpower?

2009-09-19T10:22:00.001+05:30

The word on the street is that India is ready to finally rise and shine and take it's rightful place as one of the world's foremost superpowers. What is it about being a superpower that really attracts us? Besides giving nostalgic NRI's who meet every Sunday something other than marriage & food to talk about, what good is it, really?

Maybe it's because I never stayed in a hostel or joined the Boy Scouts, but I don't see the point of playing the geographical version of "Mine is Bigger".

If you look at the evidence, being a superpower is not all that it is cracked up to be.

Superpowers have to keep fighting wars. Even those which they have won. Did you know that there are still more than fifty thousand American soldiers stationed in Germany? Why? Probably just in case Germany gets that funny feeling in it's stomach and wants to try to take over the world again. No wonder McCain claimed that the US would be in Iraq for more than a hundred years. In India, we don't like wars. No, not because of the millions of lives that are fruitlessly lost. We don't like wars because they ruin the cricket season.

Superpowers also have to keep demonising an enemy with newer and newer stuff. We can't do that. We basically keep hugging Pakistan while it keeps stabbing us in the back. Also, the demonizing turns sadistic and people turn on each other (Does McCarthyism ring a bell? In fact, if had something like that in India, we would be like a nation of Vivek Oberois. That scares me. A lot).

Superpowers need to engineer & arrange coups in different parts of the world. Our intelligence department can't even arrange a dinner party.

Superpowers also need to keep messing with their smaller neighbors. And everyone knows that we love our smaller neighbours. Specially Bhutan, who we find so cute with their long robes and their pointy roofs. Let's face it, we quite love that little fella.

Superpowers also collect bad karma. As Sharon Stone told me one day during our yoga class with Deepak Chopra, Karma is a bitch. Between themselves, both the US and Russia have collected so much bad karma that it's coming to bite them in the ass. How else can you explain the career of Anastacia?

Then there is the superpower of yore, good ol' Britannia. If Britain were a person, it would presently be like a failed actor who shoots and releases his own 'sex-tape' which ends up getting him a half-hour "Where are they now?" special on VH1 and an interview with The Daily Mail. Even TMZ won't give a shit about that sucka.

A 'perk' of being a permanent member of the UN security council is something other former and current superpowers enjoy. Pfft. The security council reacts to events in two ways: (a) By issuing a strongly worded statement (b) By issuing a harsh, mean and really strongly worded statement which ends with an exclamation mark. The UN security council is as effective as my school's debate club. (Which, for the record, I was not part of. Why? Well, I think I was spending too much time studying the effects of medical marijuana. Also, the dude heading the debate team was sort of a cunt. Yes, I know. Sounds exactly like the guy who heads the United Nations!).

Being a member of the security council doesn't even get you tickets to a Depeche Mode concert. And no one really goes to their concerts! Also, despite all the rumors, there is no special supermarket for superpowers. It's just a sham, like the son of a deposed Nigerian prince and Shah Rukh Khan's marriage.

So instead of concentrating all our energy on being a "superpower", why not concentrate our energies somewhere else? Why not go in a different direction? A more saner one. Like Canada. Of course, you don't hear about Canada a lot. Which is a good thing. They've got healthcare for everyone, marriage equality, medical marijuana and authentic Punjabi cuisine. What's not to like?

Also, we're almost halfway there. So it won't take a huge effort. Like Canada, we have one huge national sport. Like Canada, our version of MTV sucks too. And as for the Prime Minister who looks like an old lesbian, well, for that we have Jairam Ramesh.

History is not something that can only useful to politicians so that they can distort it for their personal gain. It also helps us learn from the mistakes of the past.

So what we need to learn from history is that just like bell-bottoms and flannel shirts, being a superpower is so out of date.

It's a bird . . . It's a plane . . . No, it's Twitter-gate!!!

2009-09-17T07:24:00.001+05:30

Leader of the freemasons, currently masquerading as Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor (INC-Twittervantupuram) , who leaves clues for Robert Langdon on the internets, has offended 'cows' because he dared to infer that they would enjoy the indignity of travelling by Indian Airlines' Economy class. The cows have all gone on mass sick leave, in protest.

Now since all the 'journalists' will be talking about this 'important' issue for the next week or so, here is the sequence of events for you to keep in mind while wasting away your life in front of the teevee:

United Nations operative 'Skeletor' Shashi Tharoor, used his secret weapon '@shashitharor' to make fun and challenge the authority of 'The Sorceress' living inside ~~10 Janpath~~ Castle Greyskull. He embarrassed the both the sorceress and Prince Adam by daring to make light of their totally sincere attempt at austerity.

This angered both the sorceress and the young prince, who then decided to take charge and set the record straight. So they sent 'Man-at-arms' Jayanti Natrajan (who causes millions of children to cry everytime she appears on teevee) to defend them by huffing and puffing while talking to fellow human & TV anchor Evil-Lyn. They could not send He-Man because he had just been laid off due to the recession. He is now busy writing a book about Jinnah.

However, since by then the cat was out of the bag and all hell had broken loose, even all the king's horses and all the king's men could not put humpty-dumpty together.

The End

p.s. The links are NSFW because of horrible pun porn.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe [Wikipedia]
Tharoor in tweetle-class trouble [HT]
Cong slams Tharoor's (t)wits on cattle class [TOI]
Rahul Gandhi’s flying visit to Tamil Nadu cost over Rs.1 crore [The Hindu]

Living with Judge Dread

2009-09-10T20:37:00.001+05:30

I really don't understand what's going on with the whole Ishrat Jahan "encounter" fiasco and I'm not going to even attempt to go into it's intricate details. These days between the allegedly fake encounters, to the allegedly useless nuclear tests and the allegedly clunkety piece of crap we sent to the moon, it seems that the truth, just like Elvis, has left the building.

One would expect that there would be more outrage about "encounters" being that they are the complete anti-thesis of the constitution and impinges on the basic right to life and all that jazz which those stupid jhola-walas and their boring-ass NGOs keep blabbing about. But, hey, did you even see Shaenshah? In which Amitabh Bachachan plays a crooked cop by the day and a rugged one-man court by night? It was just like the sitcom Night Court but with more dead people.

Didn't you learn anything from it?

See, thanks to our totally useless legal system, evil men called JK get away from the long-hands of the law ALL the time. Because they have what we in the 'hood call cash money.

So what's a brother to do?

Simple.

Just go ahead and encounter those sum-bitches. Totally effective in decreasing crime. And also, a great method of crowd control. In fact, they do the exact same thing in China whenever some stupid democracy loving fool wants to question the totally excellent, awesome and glorious one-party rule.

Another thing, it is so cool when someone says "Shoot first and ask questions later". Except, of course, when you are the one being shot at. Tee Hee! Yippie-Kay-yay, motherfucker. That's just how we roll.

You see, we have to be very vigilant. When those evil-doers from that country we affectionately refer to as the foreign hand come over here, they take no prisoners and kill indiscriminately.

Therefore, we have to do the same. Even if most of the time innocent people get killed. That's what the term Collateral Damage was coined for. DUH. As the fellow once said, When in Paris, do as the romans do.

So what if the government wants to take away my civil rights under the guise of 'national security' so that they can protect me from the growing China-Pakistan-Bangladesh-Nepal-Sri Lanka-Maldives-North Korea-Papua New Guinea nexus?

Just tell me where I sign.

This is why irony is dead

2009-09-09T20:39:00.001+05:30

This is an actual news report on the site of an actual newspaper.

You know, let's go one step further. Let's add this to the Incredible India campaign.

In fact, we can even add a new slogan to the campaign.

"!ncredible India: Where statues are more important than actual people"

If that doesn't bring tourists in, I don't know what will.

Mayawati statues attract tourists in UP [Hindustan Times]

And that's how you secure the Indian-American vote for 2012

2009-09-09T17:30:00.001+05:30

On Tuesday, the students of Wakefield High School in Arlington Virginia were welcomed back to school by President-Comrade Obama so that he could indoctrinate them and turn them into socialist zombies. One of the little Zombies had a very interesting question for Dear Leader. A question whose impact can be felt from across the Atlantic Ocean.

STUDENT: Hi. I'm Lilly. And if you could have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be? (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: Dinner with anyone dead or alive? Well, you know, dead or alive, that's a pretty big list. (Laughter.) You know, I think that it might be Gandhi, who is a real hero of mine. Now, it would probably be a really small meal because -- (laughter) -- he didn't eat a lot. But he's somebody who I find a lot of inspiration in. He inspired Dr. King, so if it hadn't been for the non-violent movement in India, you might not have seen the same non-violent movement for civil rights here in the United States. He inspired César Chávez, and he -- and what was interesting was that he ended up doing so much and changing the world just by the power of his ethics, by his ability to change how people saw each other and saw themselves -- and help people who thought they had no power realize that they had power, and then help people who had a lot of power realize that if all they're doing is oppressing people, then that's not a really good exercise of power.
So I'm always interested in people who are able to bring about change, not through violence, not through money, but through the force of their personality and their ethical and moral stances. And that's somebody that I'd love to sit down and talk to.

[via The Chicago Sun-Times Blog]

Dear Times Now, why haven't you procured a you tube video of the event and broadcasted it every five minutes branding it as an "exclusive"? C'mon Headlines Today, isn't this representative of the fact that India-US relations have FINALLY been de-hyphenated from the country who shall not be named? And TOI, isn't this more irrefutable proof that the Obama administration is full of people who heart India? Isn't this another feather in our collective caps? Isn't it another example of how India has finally made it on the world stage and that we are a superpower now? Why aren't you guys covering the "real" issues here? Do your job and tell us what we need to think. Hold our hands and guide us through the treacherous clusterfuck called real life. Thank you, good people. Thank you.

OMG, NEWS!!

2009-09-09T17:28:00.001+05:30

This is almost one of the best headlines ever! Right next to "Man feels thirsty, drinks water" . . .

If we didn't have Jackie Shroff movies, there would be no point of reference to use for comparison with terrible things

2009-09-01T00:15:00.001+05:30

The leaner and meaner version of the UPA has completed 100 days into it's second term. Coincidently, it's performance is as bad as the 1991 movie, 100 Days. The last time I saw such bad results, I was looking at my Class 12 marksheet. [Indian Express]

The Australian deputy Prime Minister tries her best to convince weary Indians that Australia is a safe and welcoming place, just like Sarah Palin's womb. [TOI]

Arjun Rampal opens a restaurant in Delhi. In honour of its owner, the restaurant will serve just one type of cocktail and everything on the menu will be overcooked and will taste the same. [IBN Live]

Trillions of dollars of ill-gotten money, which rightly belongs to the Indian government, lies in limbo in Swiss Banks because most of the shady characters who have been killed by Inspector Vijay failed to mention to their kith and kin that they might have terribly large sums of money hidden safely in their uber-evil Swiss bank accounts. In fact, if we could get back all that money, we could build so many statues that a certain Chief Minister's head would explode. [The Hindu]

A magazine in Germany came up with a fake "Michael Jackson is alive" video and posted it on the web. Minutes later the video went viral and everybody was convinced that MJ was part of the undead, much like the Zombie he portrayed in his Thriller video. Turns out, they just wanted to prove that people will believe anything. My theory is that MJ is still alive and has been recruited by the secret shadow Kenyan crime syndicate which planned Obama's socialist presidency about 50 years ago. There, I said it, no matter what personal price I have to pay. FYI, if I suddenly disappear, you know who to blame. [CNN]

Disney Inc. has just bought Marvel Comics. I'm not saying that this will ruin marvel comics, but in the sequel to this year's Wolverine, the self-healing mutant of Canadian-origin spends the first half of the movie trying to find Donald Duck's pants. [NYT]

They have got to come up with a better naming system for hurricanes. I mean, Hurricane Jimena? Are you fucking kidding me? That doesn't sound scary enough. It sounds less like an intense storm and more like what happens to your stomach after you happen to "accidentally" overeat at Taco Bell. [LA Times]

Let's solve all our problems by building a statue, like they did during ancient times

2009-08-30T18:36:00.001+05:30

There is nothing surprising that the Govt of Maharashtra unveiled it's plans to build a monument worth Rs. 350 crores in "honour" of Shivaji. In India, you don't honour someone by trying to emulate the good works that those people did in their lifetime, rather you can only honour someone when you build an ostentatious statue in their probable likeness.

The statue is nothing but another step towards the black hole of identity politics. The foundation for identity politics in Maharashtra was laid by the Shiv Sena. The MNS simply snatched away the torch and took it to the next level. And now, it's simply like a game of poker. The Congress-NCP has upped the stakes. It's like their telling their opponents, I see your indigenous vada=pav stalls & your empty rhetoric and raise you a hundred million rupee Shivaji statue. Whose the real Manoos now, huh? Gappa Bas?

Since there is no reasonable explanation for the statue, the Congress-NCP government surrogates who are sent to defend such an expense will talk in cliches and say that only the "elites" are against the Statue and anyone who is against building of the statue is against the Marathi people, and so on. And then if that doesn't work, they will send their violent-protestors-for-hire to intimidate and silence the critics.

Of course the money could be well spent in other areas. Like perhaps making a better life for all those slum kids who did not star in a Oscar winning movie by giving them access to quality education so that they don't spend their lives waiting for a their own great white hope. Or the families of thousands of farmers who kill themselves because they don't have a good crop due to the fact that they can't irrigate their fields and can't pay back the large and unfair interest that the moneylenders impose on them. Or developing a proper sewer system in Mumbai so that whenever it drizzles, the country's "financial capital" doesn't resemble Venice (Which by the way, is not something to brag about)! Or buying quality equipment for the people who are our first line of defence against a terrorist attack so that their courage is not betrayed by faulty equipment?

But hey, there's nothing a large statue will not solve, eh?

If the Swine Flu does not kill you, then reading banned books will

2009-08-27T17:37:00.001+05:30

In Gujarat,while the government scrambles to give reasons for banning Jaswant Singh's book, anybody carrying the book can be arrested. Yay! Now that we've caught all the book readers, maybe we can try to catch the terrorists? Maybe? Please? [TOI]

Just like my friend's wife on her honeymoon, India seems to be wasting good money to buy cheap crap from Russia. [The Faster Times]

Since Bush and Cheney could not go personally to shoot each and every "terroriser" in the world, they did the next best thing. They outsourced the killings to a private firm. [The Nation]

Some smart teenagers blogging for the WSJ have determined that we are not ready to fight the impending Swine Flu epidemic, we are all going to die soon. See you in hell, everyone. I'll be the guy sitting on the beach drinking weird alcoholic drinks while telling everyone how to improve things. [WSJ]

After the Afghanistan election, the biggest one for a pretend country, everyone is worried that it may not bring peace to the region and escalate the violence to levels which have not been seen since last week. [Times UK]

I&B minister Ambika Soni plans to make DD news more like the private news channels. The first step in that direction is to start getting the DD anchors to shout the news at the top of their voice. Then, they start reporting on food items shaped like Lord Ganesha. [Indopia]

Curiosity did not kill the cat; getting stressed out over the wrong thing did

2009-08-17T16:42:00.001+05:30

So welcome to another episode of "Let's get outraged together, because some lady on teevee said so".

Tonight, we take a look at how an arrogant American immigration officer treated the Badshaah of Bollywood like a mere commoner.

Okay. So SRK was stopped an interrogated by an American CBP officer for a couple of hours. I'd like to say that they officer was doing his job, but he seemed to have crossed the line and gotten a little Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay-overboard.

But you know what's really outrageous? The fact that there are people who have to go through this everytime they go to America because they don't have Congress MP Rajiv Shukla on speed dial. Why doesn't the Indian embassy do this for EVERY INDIAN who is racially profiled at an American airport? Why are the rules different for movie stars?

You know another thing that is outrageous? Robert Vadra, son-in-law of the nation, does not have to go through security check, whereas the former chief of the army has to.

The Indian government lodged an official complaint with the American embassy in Delhi. Why does the government have to lodge an OFFICIAL complaint? Why do we have to act like little children whose fragile little ego's are hurt everytime someone wants to follow the law? The American embassy in India spends most of it's time trying to stroke the humongous egos in South Block.

The whole SRK incident in short: If you want to get people outraged for being mistreated, go do a couple of movies first. Otherwise, just grin and bear it.

As far as coverage of the incident is concerned, there are a few things:

If anyone else points out the irony of Shah Rukh Khan being stopped at the airport and his upcoming movie, they need to be waterboarded by Dick Cheney. Because, um, even little children figured this out. So you don't have to mention it EVERYTIME you report on this.
You know what's not ironical? This happening on Independence day. Besides us and a few NRI's trying to compensate for their "guilt" at abandoning the desh, no one else gives a fudge about OUR Independence day. At least not until we have an actor use it in a memorable speech given at a very poignant moment in a blockbuster movie in which the human race is fighting aliens together for the survival of the whole planet.
SRK is not a "world celebrity". There are millions of people in India who haven't heard of him because they don't have TV or electricity or BSNL phone lines.
Ambika Soni's brilliant suggestion of racially profiling American tourists is our childish desire for an eye for an eye. Some dude named MK Gandhi once said that An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. I wonder if that dude is on twitter because I'd like totally follow him.
For once I'd like a leader who stands up and asks the country to act like a frikin grown up. However, I don't think that's happening anytime soon. Which proves once again that growing old does not necessarily make you wiser.
One immigration officer does not make the whole country racist. Also, electing Barack Hussien Obama does not make the whole country post-racist.

If the Newark CBP officer was in India, he would have been transferred to some naxal-infested area before you could say Dilwalaye Dulhaniya Le Jayengay. In fact, our security slogan should be "Come to India, if terrorists don't kill you, the swine flu will".

Jai Ho?

Chicken Manchurian is the best revenge

2009-08-11T15:56:00.001+05:30

Hey, remember the time when we lost the war and said to ourselves, "never again" and decided to shore up our defence capabilities.

Let's check in and see how that's turned out.

Admitting that India neither has the “capability nor the intention” to match China’s military strength, Chairman of Chiefs of Staff Committee and Navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta said here today that “common sense dictates” that India needs to cooperate with China rather than confront it.

“In military terms, both conventional and non-conventional, we neither have the capability nor the intention to match China, force for force. These are indeed sobering thoughts and therefore our strategy to deal with China would need to be in consonance with these realities,” Mehta said, delivering an address on National Security Challenges organized by the National Maritime Foundation.

Oh, goody.

If only we you were in a position to do something about it, like being chairman of the chiefs of staff committee or chief of the navy. I wonder ho things might have turned out.

Thankfully, we've not been at it for long.

For most of the last six decades, the ethos of the Indian military has been to prepare for a battle on two fronts — to the west with Pakistan and to the north with China.

Oh, a-ha, ha, ha.

*Gulp*

However, that's not the important thing to focus on. No, not at all.

Even if the military balance with China is heavily loaded against India, it is simply not in the culture of armed forces officers to publicly acknowledge the weakness.

Mehta has gone against the grain, fully aware that he was giving a reality check.

Of course, government-official-who-knows-what-he-is-talking-about, how dare you say something aloud which everyone is aware off? I don't believe you. The only people I believe are those "defence analysts" on my teevee who have never really seen a battlefield outside of watching reruns of Lakshya and Border.

Also, since when have we started acknowledging things in public? It's totally against our culture. Because everyone knows that unless you publicly acknowledge something, it is simply not true. Just like pregnant woman and homosexuality, if you close your eyes long enough, it goes away.

Have you ever heard someone talk about a fart? No, because he who smelt it, dealt it. That's the rule that applies to most public discussions in India.

Our government officials aren't supposed to speak the truth. Heavens, no! Government officials are supposed to treat the people of the country like a five year old who starts crying as soon as he hears about all the bad monsters under his bed.

So instead of saying what you said, you should have followed the lead of the all our defence officials of yore and said that "We are more than capable of defending our borders with might but we act like wussies everytime China jumps from behind the door and shouts "BOO! because we are a PEACE LOVING people".

And that, my friend, is how it's done.

Aw, India is less macho now [The Telegraph]
Don’t have capability or intention to match China force for force: Navy chief [Indian Express]

This is why we're screwed #8979089697525453654

2009-08-03T22:43:00.001+05:30

Unfazed by the criticism over its statue-erecting spree, the Mayawati government of Uttar Pradesh has sought the assembly sanction for an additional Rs 556 crore for the projects, and in contrast sought just Rs 250 crore to deal with the prevailing drought in the state.

Over the years, Rs 5,000 crore have been allocated towards chief minister Mayawati's dream projects since the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) came to power in May 2007.
On Monday, she raised a fresh demand for Rs 556 crore in the Rs 7,559 crore supplementary budget tabled before the state assembly here. And a mere Rs 250 crores for fighting the prevailing drought.

Misplaced priorities is an understatement.

Ironically, the state has been after the central government for release of a special economic package to deal with the drought-hit districts that cover almost the entire state.

Irony doesn't even begin to describe this clusterfuck.

They were also critical of the chief minister's craving for new aircraft in her fleet. A special Rs 10 crore provision has been made to purchase a helicopter.

Capital idea, Madam CM. Capital idea.

Pretty soon she is going to hold a press conference and will announce that as far as she is concerned, all the parched children in her state can have Evian sparkling water.

And then she will turn into a bat and fly away.

Or we wish.

Okay, the last part will not happen. But this woman will not rest until every damn inch of land in the state of UP is covered with her statues.

And then she will go on to be Prime Minister.

Which will cause her to lather, rinse and repeat.

Gulp.

Where is Glen Beck when you really need him to scare people?

Mayawati seeks more money for statues [TOI]