I got quoted!

Raja Sen, the rising star in Indian film critics, quoted me here.

I was reading a list of his articles that I had missed -- and you can imagine my surprise. I didn't ven remember I ever message-boarded that.

Fag Bomb video

I am falling in love with this guy.

My Oscar picks

Hours before the Oscars, I am going to stick my foot in the mouth and predict the Oscars for the top categories. Two guesses for each category.

I am hoping that the Academy doesn’t follow the script everyone has already scripted for them.


Best Picture: Surprise o’ surprise – Milk! Simply because it is the best movie of the lot. (The Reader is too distant and has too much of sex in the beginning – imagine me saying that – if only it could be entirely like the second half. Frost-Nixon: well-done but quite not there. Benjamin Button a curious case indeed – why was it made when the only scriptline in the movie is – ‘Let’s show a man ageing the other way round.’) But it’s probably going to be the Slumdog coz we all know why.

Best Director – a deserving Danny who lifted this movie to the top Oscar contender despite a ridiculous script and mediocre non-star actors.

Best Actor – Mickey Rourke, followed by Langella. This is a tough year for this category. Frank Langella, Sean Penn, (I didn’t see Jenkins in the Visitor) and Rourke: all of them in the roles of their life-times. I wish it was Penn tho’.

Best Actress – Another surprise. Mellisa Leo in Frozen River. Tho’ the Academy will again probably conform to the age ol’ pattern and bring out the Coppola-Spielberg-Lucas like trio for Winslet (my second choice) or that old fraud – Streep.

Supporting Actor – Josh Brolin for Milk. Again, the Academy will probably go for the dead Ledger. The only safe bet is that Hoffman won’t be getting it – just like Brad Pitt can’t win it for the Actors.) I haven’t seen Tropic Thunder and Revolutionary Road.

Supporting Actress – I predict a black year. Viola Davis for Doubt as the favorite, followed by Taraji for Button. It would be a shame if Amy Adams wins this one – as they are predicting it. Marisa Tomei is just not up there and, even though I haven’t seen her movie, I doubt whether my darling Croz would match the performances of either of my top two picks.

There I have said it.
In a few hours, I will be proved a fool.

Mutt alike none other

Did the turn of the century throw all previous constructions of logic out of the window?

Here, Mutalik, the Ram Sene openly-asshole head, declares that the right to protest peacefully is a democratic right (actually, it's not: it's a fundamental right that can be guaranteed under any govt. form respecting them).

And Here, he's declared that he will marry off any couple he finds on the street: "those found dating, expressing their love, cosying up to each other". (So if you're found cosying to some one else, you would be married to that someone else and not the one you were not cosying to -- makes sense?)

How does he plan to do this "peaceful" protest?

Does he plan to bring the couples to the marriage registrar on the basis of his excellent oratorial and persuasive skills?
Or by threatening to unleash on them his mimicry of Keshto Mukherji?

There should be a law against criminal negligence of logic.

the beauty and the beast

Yesterday afternoon, while walking across DLF Phase 2, I heard inhuman squealing up ahead. A couple of guys had bound the feet of a pig, and its mouth, with a sutli and were dragging it along on its back on the road. Wincing but accepting this as an unavoidable reality of our country, I walked ahead.

A black car stopped and the window rolled down. An aunty started speaking to the men and I assumed that she was the one who had asked them to drag the pig so. Another girl passing by stopped, and started speaking to the guys. A crowd of onlookers started agthering now. I walked over. A third girl joined in.

All the girls were absolute stunners - no doubt about that. the crowd of men ogled at them in the unabashed manner of Indian men -- a few tittered again in the wretched manner that indian males have. the girls were asking the guys why they were dragging the pig so. they gave some half-hearted talk of how they had been authorised to remove the pig because of the nuisance it was creating and there was a vehicle waiting at the corner.
I admit I again accepted this definition.

Authorised by whom?
Which vehicle?

The girls persisted. Some mumbled answers.

One of the girls pointed taht the pig was bleeding through the nose. Its chest was heaving heavily too.

I finally stepped in and asked the men why they could not at least have taken a rickshaw to transport the pig. One of the men whipped out a mobile and walked away. The other, seeing a male adversary, tried to get heavy-handed with me but when I didn't relent, he again fell to mumblings. We asked him to cut the ropes.
I am not authorised.
Authorise by whom? We screamed in unison. Police was mentioned.

The ropes were cut, the pig ran to a ditch and sat there heaving. A dog which had followed the proceedings with a strange empathy, walked to him, touched his nose with his, and walked away.

The man started walking away saying that he has to call the authority. I followed him to a distance only to see that the other man had brought in a bike, which the man clambered over, and they fled.

Thoughts:

I accepted the sight as unavoidable and nothing you can do about it: the girls didn't.
The girls braved unwanted attention from thirty men to stand for what they believed in -- I shied.
When the question of police came, even tho' I knew that the station was barely a kilmetre away I didn't know A) the number and how to get it B) what I will tell the police C) how I will follow it up.
The men for all their swagger were scared the moment their bluff of "chalta hai" was called - all it took was the lady in the car to stop.
In this country, women have more balls than men.