Sunday, February 28, 2010

Remembering the Oscars

The Oscars are around the corner. Are they seriously going to include Avatar in the list?

Sigh.

Remembering that last great year of the Oscars.






Saturday, February 27, 2010

Have you ever...

... seen someone in desperate pain? - she asked.

Yea, I have seen Arjun Rampal try to act.

Unneeded qualifications to popular proverbs

  1. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush. Unless it is ostriches you are looking for.
  2. A fool and his money will soon be parted. He will not even get good exchange rates.
  3. No man is an island. Especially Iranians.
  4. If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. And close the door behind you.
  5. A man is known by the company he keeps. Unless he has a majority stake in it too.
  6. Every man has a price. And if you wait for the season to end, you might even get big discounts.
  7. A leopard cannot change its spots. Not even the underwear.
  8. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Unless they have a body odor issue.


What if

Saw a couple of women in the office Awww over the nude snap of a baby boy. Presumably one of theirs unless they go around stripping and snapping strange babies. Was thinking if they would have found it cute if the kid had been aroused at the moment the snap was taken? I mean, nothing else changes.

Do not see any reason why not.



By the way, a friend had a baby girl some time back but I got to know of it today morn.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Sachin did not hit a double ton


First of all, why can't centuries be called just that? Association with plywoods? And if they have to be called something else, the word is quintal.
It would take Sachin about a year to hit a double ton at his best.

And imagine how good an alliterative headline it makes:
Quixotic Sachin quintessentially hits a quality double quintal! Qrtics quietened again.



PJ: How would Auro (from Paa) describe a foreplay scene from the keyhole of his parent's bedroom?
Pa(a)-kis(s)-t(h)an.

Image links:

Thursday, February 25, 2010

How must it feel?

You're sitting in a new dhabha you came across, serving your favorite dish. You roll up your sleeves, and order a plate. There you are, hogging on it, maybe even moving the morsels around inside trying to guess the spices - when comes a giant asteroid from nowhere and you're squashed thinner than a blotting paper; your tongue, in two dimension, still extending towards a bite.



How must it feel for that mosquito I squash sucking on my blood in that brief millisecond?

Monday, February 22, 2010

Ek rupiyah banaam ek din

Read this.

It's seriously time to overhaul our law books.

Forget the fact that you need a century old act on an obsolete contraption to explain detention on suspected espionage. Just have a look at the possible punishment.

"... a prison term of up to three years, or with fine extending to up to Rs 1,000, or with both...."
Assuming that the first two options are somewhat mutually substitutable, since they are punishments for the same crime with differences in degrees, it translates to at the most Re. 1 for each day in the prison.

Sheesh.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Facebook thots

Is it just me or do the endless train of statuses and photos posted on Facebook evoke a sense of loss in you too?

Of the many lives open to us we are not leading.
Of the many places where we are not.
Of the many people lost to time and the weight of their own numbers.

I just realized...

... I have a fear of people who describe themselves as bindaas!

Friday, February 19, 2010

Are journalists who can't finish a story...

...suffering from Reuters block?

Thot on love and respect

Heard someone say "I want to be loved - and respected" some days ago.

Perhaps, it's a single theme.
We want to be loved but on our terms. Even a pet dog is loved. Being loved and respected at the same time is being loved for a self, an identity, we know within and what we want to stand for.

Image of the day explained



Image from Indian Express

Etiquettes for Bollywood



#1. If you happen to come across Dheeraj Kumar in a party, and have to suck up to him for a goddamn movie you want him to finance, we advice you to kiss him on the front of his face to avoid kissing him on the mouth.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Cruddy similes

Inspired by a pathetic simile I read.

Disclaimer: I do not think like this most times.


He smiled confidently as he stepped into the interview room, calm confidence brimming within like an overflowing bog in a public latrine.


She screamed in terror as if she had seen the NDTiwari video unblurred.


The child’s sweet song oozed into his ears, a balm, like the cool liquid that alleviated the agitation in his crotch’s fungal growth.


Christmas was a quiet affair with the family, suffused with a warm fuzzy happiness, like a hand inside one’s own underwear on a cold night.


He frowned and mulled deeply over the problem, rolling it between his fingers, feeling its texture and shape, an unidentifiable something dug from inside his ass and just alluding description.


He surfaced from the perfect dive and floated on his back, eyes shut and at perfect peace, his smooth brown body like a turd in the smooth expanse of the sea.

One of my old time favs


Would love to see the look on the face of the hubby when he comes back from work.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Quizzing terrorists

Police to quiz terrorists
Image links:



I turn 32

When I logged in this morning, I intended to do this as a spoof of a self-indulgent post I saw where the author preened and strutted about tid-bits about him(her)self on such an occasion.

Seemed like I was in another mood. But I am not one to grab at my thoughts once they have been left from the bow of my keyboard. (Any young writers watching: please spare the world such pitiful similes!)

32 thoughts


  1. If I were in a movie, I would side with the villain.

2. If I have power, I become a tyrant.

3. I have a horror of torture. If threatened with one, I would squeal on anyone. But I have moments when I might not under any threat.

4. Nothing makes my day like a good tea and shite in the morning.

5. I like seeing people laugh.

6. I think kids are overrated. I wish I could say the same about sex.

7. I moan obscenities in my sleep.

8. I do not know myself.

9. I do not dig words like dig.

10. I am good at padding numbers and lists.

11. I am deeply sceptical yet hopelessly romantic.

12. A decade ago, I used to blush.

13. Sexual euphemisms amuse me; vulgar allusions disgust me. My wit abounds in both.

14. I find rapists more abominable than murderers.

15. I am not maturing gracefully.

16. My last grand discovery was the farting sound between my hands pressed to my mouth.

17. There is nothing in this world that I know to any considerable degree.

18. I have dreams of witnessing Nehru’s “Tryst with Destiny – to be followed by my dynasty” live; I see everyone in the grand hall nekked.

19. I am usually proved wrong.

20. I have been loved more than I loved; believed in more than I believe in myself.

21. Whenever I see pierced nipples, I want to yank them off.

22. I find my existence perplexing.

23. When I am dying, I would probably be thinking if I had been a good man.

24. I am fascinated by the way we remember and think. I read endlessly about it.

25. I have hurt too many people.

26. If I were to meet my doppelganger, I would take an intense dislike to him.

27. I meet people of whom I just remember an intimacy once but no details.

28. I was haunted by the character of Ms. Havisham when I was a child.

29. I stop listening when people raise their voices.

30. I respect sluts more than virgins.

31. I say things I mean and then immediately retract that I did not mean them.

32. I do not mean any of the above.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

A scene from IIMB

Ordinary piece of writing. I was trying to imagine IIM Bangalore after not seeing it for almost half a decade now. I sometimes took long walks along its corridors in the night and the sense of surrealism still remains. There were corners and nooks so quiet, so alone that for a moment it felt that you have broken through the skin of the world to enter a new one.
____________________________________________________

The temperature drops immediately as I enter the campus and the smells of woods and pollen fill the air. A tree-lined driveway curving around a wooded lawn brings me to the side patio of a grey stone building where I park the bike and step inside. A network of corridors opens in three directions: to my left, my right and straight ahead. No one in sight: I walk straight. The corridors shift space as I walk. The width of the walkway expands and contracts; tunnels break into open spaces, walls give way to pergolas lined with colonnade of pillars two stories high, unbroken ceilings to trellis running like rail-tracks overhead and laden with vines; whole section of walls get eaten by climbers, the veins of their branches pressed flat and gray to the granite like fossils; corridors run alongside separated by rows of pillars or green spaces only to disappear around a corner where others meet; they lead to stairways, climb steps to inner passages, run around central courts, drop to an amphitheatre, end in doors – I get lost.

I walk out of the dormitory and stand uncertainly in the middle of the corridor, trying to remember the tortuous route the hostel prefect had taken to bring and abandon me here. No one in sight. Absolutely quiet but for the rustling leaves. And yet, an overwhelming sense of their presence here once – like the wet stains of their shadows which had fallen across the courtyard and this corridor have just dried. A thought – am I dead? I am still ten but I know what it feels to be dying: the dark suffocating passage through its crypt. Is this the aftermath of dying – I wonder. Crawling back to the very world one has left the others weeping behind and denied, too, of their presence forever? Does heaven mean having the world to yourself and yet be condemned to chase shadows around the corner? Mirages baking in the distance, breaking and disappearing in a smoke at the last lap of approach; footprints ahead in the wet sand sucked back in the tide; rooms where the blades of the switched-off fan still turn and the food untouched on the table still warm. What is hell then?

A couple of guards whispering at a nook. They direct me to follow to the end a corridor branching at a tangent and watch for a wide open space boxed between two lecture-halls on my left.

The space is wide, flanked by flights of steps leading to the lecture-halls and opening at the back to a stone-paved walkway melding into darkness. Strings of green lampposts had lit the open passage which had led to here, the phosphorescent light between them seaming passages of radiance and gloom; here, rows of tube-lights bracing the ceiling like girders frame the scene in milky unshadowed lucidity. Again, no one around but a scrawny boy in a black suit, sitting on the steps and arranging a pile of papers on his lap, two fingers hooked like talons crawling along the sheaf, one marking the spot where a sheet is pulled out and the other where it is inserted back.

Time imagined is passage of thoughts. My mind remains numb.

Time sensed is breaking of rhythms; culmination of actions. He pulls another sheet out and slides it back.

I stand still and silent – as if a ripple stirred and sent quivering on the surface of this tableau of limbo and it would dissolve again into labyrinthine corridors. The talons meet and the boy shuffles the stack one last time, lines the sheets – three taps along the short edge on his knee, a quarter rotation, three taps along the long edge – and places them in a folder. He looks up and notices me. ‘Yes?’

The clock starts ticking again.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Reaping the garbage you sow


Interesting how minnows have learnt the art of getting footage in the media by threatening celebrities. Like leeches, they suck of the fragile fame of the victim knowing he is pretty helpless, his or anyone else's' rights pretty much trespassable in a state with a weak and corrupt law and order machinery and a tabloid press. Unlike South India, where the big stars have militant fan following to rival a militia if needed, Bollywood stars do not. However, the reach of their popularity cuts across more regions and they are truly national celebrities. But, as the saying goes, every Friday decides how bright their stars wax and wane.

The politicians hit these insecure stars where it hits them most - their business. Violence in a soft state like ours comes dirt cheap and even these minnows can now afford to scale minor beatings on taxi stands and local trains to national news. With only a handful of idle youths, one can beat girls(Muthalik), tar mayors, marry unwilling couples (Muthalik again) and vandalize libraries and destroy artifacts of the very civilization whose offence is claimed as the motive for the violence(Bhandarkar oriental research institute).

To quote the article on Bhandarkar vandalism, "If politics is not to be confused with morality play, democracy has the quest for power, deal-making and horse-trading as the very stuff it survives on."

Why is our mass understanding of liberal democracy slipped to this level? Why have our minds become such mush? Because our minds feed on garbage. And the trash-can we mostly roil in is Bollywood itself - its dangerously over-simplified please-everyone sold-out take on the world actually going on to define the world-view of many of us.

Alam, that is why calling garbage garbage is not about elitism - it is about preempting simplistic world views. Mass violence relies on simplistic rationality which can draw clear lines between us and them, and be ignorant and hence undeterred by the antitheses to the offered theses of offence and victimhood.

The tables have now turned on these very icons, esp. SRK, who for years has "captured the imagination" of the nation with festering garbage and appeased and fawned over a two-bit demagogue like Bal Thackrey. Even now, SRK cya's, the I-am-a-pathan bluster gone, and is reportedly feeling so-Enid-Blytonley "awful" that the Thackreys "misunderstood" his statement rather than call them gundas on their face. Don't blame him - even a helpless Rushdie had to dole out a pitiful apologia for his Muslimness.


SRK & Big B, my sympathies. But you sold your souls to the devil for empty fame and you have to piggyback others through it now and then. It is all a part of the system that so exalt you and your droll mediocrities.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

An inflexion in our weak state history?

The following step to detain 1200 Shiv Sainiks is going to be a definitive moment in our history.

The point is not MNIK, Khan, Pakistan, the Thackreys and their fumbling crises of Raj and Rahul. The point is can disagreement of opinions be translated into violence and gundaaraj?

Since the decades, we, the people, have been held hostage to bandhs, bans, rioting masquerading as "popular" protest, fueled by the petty interests of politicians and religious bodies, because of a spineless weak state. In fact, the only police action heard so far in these cases have been the arrest of the victim for disturbing the peace and sensibilities of the community the gundas have claimed to represent.

The state action reminds me of the watershed Whiskey Incidence where the US government had to assert its newfound federal authority by sending troops to collect the taxes due to it.

Let us hope, despite the deepest roots of our cynicism digging into the cracks of our faith in the state, that the state stands tall against this institutionalized violence this time and set a similar precedence as President Washington set a long time ago. Protest in a democracy has its definite peaceful channels; otherwise it negates the very tenets of fundamental rights which the system stands on.

The Congress has the numbers to stand tall right now. Its actions from here will go a long way to give credit to its stated intention of making a change.

My song in Goa

Love the video.
Just ignore that lame Al.


Lyrics from here

Hot sun beating down
burning my feet just walking around.

Hot sun making me sweat
'Gators getting close, hasn't got me yet

I can't dance, I can't talk.
Only thing about me is the way I walk.
I can't dance, I can't sing
I'm just standing here selling everything.

Blue Jean's sitting on the beach,
her dog's talking to me, but she's out of reach.

She's got a body under that shirt,
but all she wants to do is rub my face in the dirt.

Cause, I can't dance, I can't talk.
Only thing about me is the way I walk.
I can't dance, I can't sing
I'm just standing here selling.

Oh and checking everything is in place,
you never know who's looking on.

Young punk spilling beer on my shoes,
fat guy's talking to me trying to steal my blues.

Thick smoke, see her smiling through.
I never thought so much could happen just shooting pool.

But I can't dance, I can't talk.
The only thing about me is the way that I walk.
I can't dance, I can't sing
I'm just standing here selling...

Oh and checking everything is in place
You never know who's looking on
A perfect body
with a perfect face - uh-huh.

No, I can't dance, I can't talk.
The only thing about me is the way I walk.
No, I can't dance, I can't sing
I'm just standing here selling everything.

But I can walk.
No I can't dance.
No no no I can't dance. (begins to fade out)
No I said I can't sing.
But I can walk.


Sunday, February 07, 2010

Popping the youtube cherry

My first video upload in youtube.

The brilliant waiting scene from High Noon.



Item-bomb


From Indian Express (Link)

Implying that Ms. Kaif has, so far, not been appearing as an item in her movies.

Right.

Katrina to play a bit role would be more appropriate, if you ask Pranab Mukherjee. (Hazard Warning: Do NOT ask Mahesh Bhatt!!!)

Please also note that according to the report, Kat would not play the role (as opposed to a hole) of "an" item girl, but the generic idea of "item girl" in its entirety. Plato would be proud.

How do you pop a cherry? - Love Uncle answers

Love Uncle: I guess you would have to smear some butter on it and then microwave it for ten minutes.

(Long pause.)

But why would you want to do that?

Never-seen stolen script from a XXX

Scott and Wendy are a couple. One day Scott returns home while Wendy is watering the plants. They have sex. Daniel and Amanda are their neighbours. Amanda watches Scott and Wendy have it and then goes and has it with Daniel. Amanda and Wendy meet at a supermarket where they have some profound conversation, like how they can't have enough of it, for five minutes which ends in a lesbian dalliance. Scott has sex with Amanda; Wendy has sex with Daniel.

Finale: They all have sex together – except for Scott and Daniel.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Going to Goa

If there are no last minute change of plans, I should be, in another twenty-four hours, in Goa for a three-day get-together with the IIMB gang. I will be the only bachelor there and so am stacking three books in the bag because I expect to be left alone for long periods: I know what the sun, the sand and the water does to your libido.

I am reading a little after a long time. Among Others, I finished Mohd. Hanif's 'A Case of Exploding Mangoes' a few weeks back. I moved on to one of my favorite sub-continent author, Mohd. Hanif's 'A Wasted Vigil'. And now I am halfway through Daniyaal Mueenuddin's 'In Other rooms, Other Wonders'. (A reading by the author of one of the stories here)

Good. Better. Best.

I might have rhapsodized for pages about Hanif and Aslam here if I had not moved on to "Other Rooms." Other Rooms is simply, without a doubt, the best literature in English I have ever read on post-colonial subcontinent life. I will stop here, as this is not about the book. But I will definitely read this collection twice again this year. It's that good.

I am carrying with me to Goa Dead Man Walking, Paddy Clark, and Midnight's Children.

Monty Python: Novel Writing reported Live

Listen to Michael's excellent imitation of live sports commentator.



Transcript

Novel Writing (Live From Wessex)


Anouncer:And now it's time for Novel Writing, which today come from the west country on Dorset.
Commentator:Hello, and welcome to Dorchester, where a very good crowd has turned out to watch local boy Thomas Hardy write his new novel "The Return Of The Native", on this very pleasant July morning. This will be his eleventh novel and the fifth of the very popular Wessex novels, and here he comes! Here comes Hardy, walking out towards his desk. He looks confident, he looks relaxed, very much the man in form, as he acknowledges this very good natured bank holliday crowd. And the crowd goes quiet now, as Hardy settles himself down at the desk, body straight, shoulders relaxed, pen held lightly but firmly in the right hand. He dips the pen...in the ink, and he's off! It's the first word, but it's not a word - oh, no! - it's a doodle. Way up on the top of the lefthand margin is a piece of meaningless scribble - and he's signed his name underneath it! Oh dear, what a disapointing start. But his off again - and here he goes - the first word of Thomas Hardy's new novel, at ten thirtyfive on this very lovely morning, it's three letters, it's the definite article, and it's "The". Dennis.
Dennis:Well, this is true to form, no surprises there. He started five of his eleven novels to date with the definite article. We had two of them with "It", there's been one "But", two "At"s, one "On" and a "Dolores", but that of course was never published.
Commentator:I'm sorry to interrupt you there, Dennis, but he's crossed it out. Thomas Hardy, here on the first day of his new novel, has crossed out the only word he has written so far, and he's gazing off into space. Oh, ohh, there he signed his name again.
Dennis:It looks like "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" all over again.
Commentator:But he's...no, he's down again and writting, Dennis, he's written "B" again, he's crossed it out again, and he has written "A" - and there is a second word coming up straight away, and it's "Sat" - "A Sat" - doesn't make sense - "A Satur" - "A Saturday" - it's "A Saturday", and the crowd are loving it, they are really enjoying this novel. And it's "afternoon", it's "Saturday afternoon", a comfortable beginning, and he's straight on to the next word - it's "in" - "A Saturday afternoon in" - "in" - "in" "in Nov" - "November" - November is spelled wrong, he's left out the second "E", but he's not going back, it looks like he's going for the sentence, and it's the first verb coming up - it's the first verb of the novel, and it's "was", and the crowd are going wild! "A Saturday afternoon in November was", and a long word here - "appro" - "appro" - is it a "approving"? - no, it's "approaching" - "approaching" - "A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching" - and he's done the definite article "but" again. And he's writing fluently, easily with flurring strokes of the pen, as he comes up to the middle of this first sentence. And with this eleventh novel well underway, and the prospects of a good days writing ahead, back to the studio.

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Dalrymple on Jaipur Lit Fest

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/jan/17/my-week-william-dalrymple

...
et it is amazing how incapable literary geniuses can be of the simplest activities such as arriving at an airport in time or catching connecting flights. Applying for visas and filling in forms seems to be a particular problem for men and women who effortlessly win Nobel, Booker and Pulitzer prizes. Each year, at least two or three forget to apply at all, throwing the whole festival into confusion.
...

One of the things people like best about Jaipur is that we are completely egalitarian. There are no reserved spaces for grandees, no green room or specially roped enclosure for our authors – they mingle with the crowds and eat with them on a first-come, first-served basis. Salman Rushdie, who made his first public appearance in India since the publication of The Satanic Verses, as well as Bollywood stars such as Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan, have all mixed in the crowds without bodyguards or VIP enclosures. In as hierarchical a country as India, this is all rather radical.

...

t is this egalitarian ethic that excites the Indian press much more than the literary aspect of the festival. Last year, there was a flurry of press when Vikram was seen eating on the ground as there was no space for him on any of the dining tables, and when one senior Indian literary editor found herself joining the queue for the ladies behind Tina Brown.

But the biggest excitement of the last year was when an Australian volunteer usher rather peremptorily asked two beautiful young women to move out of the aisle as they were blocking an exit, apparently unaware that the women in question were the adored Bollywood goddess Nandita Das and Julia Roberts. To their great credit, both women moved immediately and without complaint.