tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40555639884308251372024-03-05T12:59:56.245+05:30View from Beneath your Skin[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.comBlogger112125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-8000714365830826442012-03-08T08:59:00.002+05:302012-03-08T09:01:46.201+05:30Resurrection<span style="font-style: normal; "><b>9/3/12</b><br /></span><div style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; "><span ><br /></span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span ><i>Because 9 + 3 equals 12...</i></span></div>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-47053538276632777212011-05-10T13:33:00.002+05:302011-05-10T13:48:52.982+05:30Intermission<span class="Apple-style-span" >Call it a lack of inspiration, ennui, inertia, a dearth of ideas or quite simply, just a mental block, but the fact of the matter is that we’ve hit a wall here and it’s impossible to move forward at this point. It’s been this way for a while now and even though I haven’t really expressed this feeling, its presence has been as unmistakable as that of a fly on a television screen. This isn’t your fault any more than it’s mine. Circumstances beyond our control. That’s really all it was.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" ><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" >And so I guess what I’m trying to say is that we should go our separate ways at this point. Maybe for a few days, more likely weeks, perhaps months... To put it a little more succinctly, I only know that now isn’t the time. Now would be a better time to go get some popcorn, perhaps a cold drink or even make a trip to the loo. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" ><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" >Normal programming will resume soon. </span></div>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-5137476256301678362011-02-21T11:03:00.007+05:302011-03-26T03:05:14.399+05:30The league of the disgusting out in full<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The tenth edition of the Cricket World Cup began over a month ago, but it was on Tuesday that the </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >business end </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">of the tournament actually commenced. “Business” in terms of the quality of cricket on show as well as obviously, the increased match ticket prices, ad revenue rates etc. <span style="font-style: italic;">For the record and to quote Graham Swann, I do believe that by removing the Associate nations from the World Cup in subsequent editions, the ICC will be removing the “World” from the World Cup.<br /><br /></span>But moving on, with said business end in motion, the first quarter final between Pakistan and the West Indies petered out into a foolishly one-sided ho-hum so-not-worth-it squash. <span style="font-style: italic;">Really, there’s nothing more that can be said about that particular match.</span> And then this Wednesday rolled around. India V/s Australia. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Big One. </span>The media, general public and the people that call themselves experts painted it as a “revenge” match. Revenge for what? For a game that took place eight years ago (WC 2003 finals)?. I’m certain commentators and sportscasters have described other Indian wins over Australia as revenge for that drubbing by 125 runs in Johannesburg all those years ago. And yet, they haven’t had their fill.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Ok. Sports rivalries often use the word “revenge” repeatedly (England-Argentina matches where England wins are <span style="font-weight: bold;">still </span>referred to as revenge wins), so I’ll let it pass.</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span>While on one hand, the buildup to the game was quite well handled online (<span style="font-style: italic;">more specifically, on </span>Cricinfo), television and newspapers had already started talking about an India-Pakistan semi-final. Talk about jumping the gun. Regardless, match starts. Sways back and forth. The four-time champions get off to a solid start until India hit back. The home team looks like restricting the Aussies to a low score. Ponting has other ideas and hits a gritty 100. India get off to an okayish start but lose Sehwag early. Solid partnerships. Clatter of wickets. Last recognised pair at the crease with 70-odd still required. Sensible batting and cool heads prevail and India earn a well-deserved win. <span style="font-style: italic;">All good so far</span>.<br /><br />That’s when the bullshit begins. A cable news channel that has over a period of time become my most loathed television channel (nope, it’s not <span style="font-style: italic;">India TV</span>) immediately runs with these screaming banners about how “India thrashed Australia”, “Aussies taught a lesson” and most indescribably, “Ponting plays dirty”. <span style="font-style: italic;">I later discovered that what they were referring to was a moment in the game where the ball was in the air and Ponting attempted to catch it and “did”. He wasn't sure if he had caught it so it went to the third umpire, who ruled that it had bounced before it was caught. So, not out. The system works. Why that equals Ponting playing dirty, I’ll never know.<br /><br /></span>And then the bile overflowed in cyberspace. I guess this is what Fear Factory referred to in the track <span style="font-style: italic;">Cyberwaste</span>. <span style="font-style: italic;">It's probably not, but the lyrics fit in perfectly in this case. </span>Anyway, before long some of the nastiest and sickest shit was splattered all over the entire gamut of the social networking universe. From pathetically over-exuberant chest-beatings of triumph to atrocious and bitter little rhyming four-liners, schadenfreude spewed in the form of status updates and tweets. After a while, it just got puerile, shrill, crass and disgusting. </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">To think that some idiots actually mocked Brett Lee who ended up with a bleeding head after diving to stop the ball.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />Was it a collective outpouring of an anti-Australian sentiment? <span style="font-style: italic;">Perhaps in light of all the violence being doled out to Indians in Australia</span>. <span style="font-style: italic;">If so, that’s bullshit. Far more Indians have been beaten up, killed and raped in the United States of America than in Australia. But the Americans don’t get any such reaction. </span>Was it an overly raucous and boorish display of disbelief that India actually won? Or was it just a widespread display of what bad winners we really are? <span style="font-style: italic;">Bad losers are one thing, but bad winners just stink. With bad losers, you know why they’re acting like shitheads, but with bad winners... What the hell is their excuse?<br /></span><br />But, what’s done is done. Bad karma caused by being a bad winner follows you around. It better not screw up India’s chances at the trophy. If it does, it’ll be those TV channels’ and those people’s fault. They can write their moronic four-line poetry then.<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-47140952464053475732011-01-27T12:04:00.004+05:302011-01-27T14:28:10.039+05:30(Reprise)<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">This post was originally going to be titled “Your truth, my truth, <span style="font-style: italic;">teri maa ki</span>-.....”. Catchy ain’t it? Anyway, it’s been over two-and-a-half months since I last posted, as the more astute (or bored enough to check regularly... you decide) among you would have undoubtedly noticed.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">This one’s going to be extremely scattered and all over the place. Bear with me.<br /><br /></span>And that is the sad state of my present blog-rust. In fact it’s so bad that I’m still a fair bit from even starting up on the point of this particular post and yet, I’ve run out of things to type. Let me try and trace my footsteps. Right. Here we go.<br /><br />Circa October 2010, I hit upon the idea to try and save up and make a trip to Australia to catch a Big Day Out show in Perth. Why Perth? <span style="font-style: italic;">I haven’t a clue</span>. And when those plans went from musing to actual planning, I got home to check out airfare and just happened to check my mail first. Total coincidence. What I saw on my screen blew me away and scorched my retinae. Could it be? Fuck going to Australia. This is what I’m going to be doing, I told myself. Watching almost every single band I love perform at one place (and that too on the edge of the earth) would have been awesome, no doubt. But the subject matter of that email I saw referred to something that was happening in my own backyard. On my own turf.<br /><br />The decision wasn’t exactly difficult and my bank account was extremely grateful to me. Every single day leading up to this particular thing was no more than a stepping stone — something to do till the day rolled around. Weekends were immaterial. The holiday season wasn’t important. </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">New Year’s Eve didn’t mean diddly squat. </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> I was waiting for my own personal big day out.<br /> <br />And then it came.<br /><br />January 13, 2011: THE PRODIGY live at Palace Grounds, Bangalore!<br /><br />The extent of foolishness that went on before and after the show is something that’s far too much to go into. It’ll require a separate post. And yes, the show <span style="font-weight: bold;">was</span> blindingly good. But amid all the mirth-making and coming to life of something for which I’d been waiting so long, were some extremely profound moments, one of which will help this clumsy post lurch a little closer to its point.<br /><br />I believe it was some time between very late in the night on the 12th and very early in the morning of the 13th, when (for some unGodly reason) we were sat around discussing a particularly prickly topic in the subcontinent. That’s right, kiddies... The K-Word. So one of my cohorts begins detailing a particularly self-righteous, moralistic and over-simplified rant he’d heard in the very recent past. That got me thinking about how a ton of people ardently believe in these supposed universal truths that are based on debatable, inconclusive and flimsy grounds.<br /><br />An example. “The Indian Army is always bad” is a favourite universal truth among hot topic activists, armchair pundits, media students and so on and so forth. I’m not even going to go into the extraordinary lengths to which these people go to justify the senseless massacre of innocent villagers, policemen etc. at the hands of “disenfranchised parties”. <span style="font-style: italic;">To ensure that I get to my point in the near future, I am going to refrain from indulging in a self-righteous rant of my own about this issue. How lucky you all are!</span><br /><br />Moving on... there were two such “universal truths” (albeit nowhere near as conflicted) that I’d been mulling over the last couple of days. The first has to do with cowboys. We’re all familiar with the shouting and yelling that greeted the release of <span style="font-style: italic;">Brokeback Mountain</span>, with all these dissenting voices belly-aching about how it was wrong to portray cowboys as gay. Dig deeper and we found that conservatives in Utah (for instance) thought it went against “traditional families”. Someone as cool and macho as cowboys can’t possibly be portrayed as being homosexual, Cletus, his maw and the entire deep south yee-hawed. And then, Hollywood, as you all well know, has nearly always without exception, propounded the idea of the cool, smooth-talking and the epitome-of-all-things-masculine cowboy. It’s the <span style="font-weight: bold;">WILD </span>West, not the Mild West, after all. <br /><br />But wait, just a damn second.<br /><br />Who the hell decided that cowboys were so cool? And the next inevitable question is, if cowboys are so cool, why aren’t goatherders considered cool? Why aren’t farmers considered cool? Why don’t kids get plastic combine harvesters for Christmas? Why don’t they dress up as millers for Halloween? The real cowboys are often lazy layabouts who take naps while their cattle graze and then herd them back and that’s the end of their day. Historically, I believe cowboys were cowards too. I mean who the hell goes with a revolver and shoots people armed with nothing but sticks and maybe bows and arrows? And then tries to act like the victim and complains, “Damn Injuns got me” or something like that.<br /><br />The other “universal truth” is far more newsy and far more fun. For time immemorial, I have seen men, a majority of whom were British, go on and on about this particular institution (I suppose it would be a fair way to describe it). The level of understanding of this instition that you possess defines just how much of a man you are. If you have little to no comprehension of it, you are roundly pilloried and mocked. If you call the institution stupid, you see the scrawniest of folk jump up in its defence with fire in their eyes, all set to defend their institution and its way of life. And honestly, this aforementioned institution is fairly simple to understand. Simple enough for a wee kid to understand.<br /><br />It is for that reason that I don’t get why a guy who has been a virtual legend in his field would be stupid enough to cling to that particular institute and its supposed exclusivity... So much so that it would cost him his job. Give me a moment while I find a suitable way to dispell this "universal truth". <span style="font-style: italic;">How do I put this? Err... Let’s try this</span>.<br /><br />To put it very simply:<br />OFFSIDE IS A FOOLISHLY SIMPLE RULE!! There is no glory in claiming that you understand it and that imply that women don’t. Even <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leg_before_wicket">LBW </a>is a harder thing to understand than your fucking offside. <span style="font-style: italic;">Keep in mind that I’m not talking about refereeing or umpiring, where you need to watch carefully to see if it is in fact offside or LBW. I’m talking about knowing how it works.</span> So to all of you who still think that offside is the holy grail of masculine understanding, I say this: If you really want to be smarter or show the world that you’re smart and they’re dumb, try and work out how <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duckworth%E2%80%93Lewis_method">Duckworth-Lewis</a> is calculated.<br /><br />Spare a thought though for poor Andy Gray. Take a bow, son. What a stupid way to get fired.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">A surreal return to VfB for sure, but worry not, normal service will be resumed soon.</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-78582303510625207602010-11-10T10:14:00.012+05:302010-11-12T14:40:33.897+05:30Why, Lord? Why do You do this to me?<span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">One stupid week has hardly ended that another starts up in full earnest</span>.<br /></span><div style="text-align: right; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">— Md Hasan Kamal (allegedly)</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span></div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">I won’t spend too much time on this section, suffice it to say that you can refer to the last blog for a recap on what I’m on about. So Obama comes to India. He shakes hands with Ashok Chavan (</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">who is soon kicked the F out off his job as chief minister</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">). He does good business (</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">worth a few billion dollars, I believe</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">). He makes awkward and oh-he’s-so-shy faces while his wife busts a move with some kids. He meets some students, who seem to confuse politeness with fawning over someone. He namedrops </span><a style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._R._Ambedkar">Dr Ambedkar</a><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">. After 40-odd hours of waiting, he mentions “Pakistan” leading to an outbreak of nitwits across India high-fiving each other.</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"> Why? I don’t rightly know.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">He supposedly makes the sternest statements he has made against Pakistan.</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"> It’s gotta be true right? Especially if television news channels have said so. I honestly fail to see how saying, “</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">Terror havens in Pakistan are unacceptable</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">” is at all stern. Never mind sternest. I’ve known pint-sized toddlers to be sterner than that. </span><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">He then says “I look forward to a day when the UN Security Council includes India” and the gathered MPs clap politely. </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">Meanwhile, the news channels and sadly even papers have gone to town with “</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">Obama supports India as permanent member</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">” and “</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">Obama wants India in UNSC</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">”. The usual shrill gallery of morons on television shriek about what a great day this is for India.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">What can I say? Barack Hussein Obama, you are a bloody genius. It is a well established fact that the people who inhabit this country (or the geographical group of kingdoms that it once was) are gullible simpletons. </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">The smart ones pack their bags and head overseas. The smart<span style="font-weight: bold;">er</span> ones stick around and outsmart us simpletons (Suresh Kalmadi, take a bow). </span><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">The British knew this. The Mughals knew this. And the Americans know this extremely well. And so, what better than a goodwill trip, in name at least, to strike up a truckload of deals for the betterment of the American economy? </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">At this point I feel compelled to ask, “Remember Union Carbide? Remember Bhopal?”. But what’s the point? Measly issues like these and the intrusion of American foreign direct investment into the agriculture and retail industries are best kept tidily swept under a rug or left unheard even as hundreds gather at places like Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to yell about them. </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">I may not be a fan of the Communist Party of India(M). However, kudos and massive respect to people like Abdul Chowdhury, who went and made their views heard in a non-violent manner. </span><br /><br /></span>It irks to me go on about this, so I’ll make a quick beeline to the actual point of this post. I was reminded of an episode of <span style="font-style: italic;">My Wife and Kids </span>around three days ago when I went to take a highly pointless and redundant exam. The episode is about the Kyle family taking a trip to the beach, where patriarch Micheal is relaxing on a beach chair, enjoying some time off from his hectic daily life. Suddenly, he spies his son Junior skipping around in a ridiculous manner in an equally ridiculous costume. Which is when he gazes skyward and dolefully asks, “Why, Lord? Why do You do this to me?”.<br /><br />Maths has been a well-known stumbling block for me in the past and so, I turned up for my exam with all the relevant formulae memorised and set to be implemented. The last thing I wanted was for anything to dislodge even a single formula from the front row of my head. And things went according to plan, right? <span style="font-style: italic;">Why the hell would I be typing out these words if they had? Pay attention. </span>So anyway, I get my passport out, get a clipboard with a confidentiality agreement and start filing it up. There’s a 150-or-so word passage about how you will not reveal anything about the exam to anyone. And you have to write this passage out in your own handwriting. Brilliant. So I’m doing that when I make the mistake of looking up.<br /><br />When identical twins are toddlers or infants or maybe even children, their folks often dress them up in identical clothing. It’s fun, quirky and in a few cases, perhaps even cute. The only time identical twins dress alike as adults is at some sort of twins carnival, on comedy TV shows and in pornos. <span style="font-style: italic;">Best not to ask for details about the latter because I’m basing it on what I was once told by a tempestuous man, whom I consider a good friend. </span><br /><br />And as I look up, I see two guys at the reception desk. One was looking the other way, but they both wore a beige t-shirt with this red whoosh across one shoulder. I figured, hell, maybe they both work at the same place. Who knows? It was only when the guy with his back to me turned around that I realised that the two had the same face. And the same t-shirt. And the same jeans. And this is ridiculous, but they also had the same Reebok Classic shoes. Later on, because of the over-enthusiastic air-conditioning there (<span style="font-style: italic;">I couldn’t feel my fingers after a while</span>), they put on the same damn jacket too.<br /><br />Hilarity ensued momentarily as one of the invigilators checked the identification details of one member of this diabolical duo and frisked him (<span style="font-style: italic;">for unauthorised materials</span>), and then proceeded to tell the other one that she’d just checked him. She also asked why he was back for another inspection. <span style="font-style: italic;">Call it my fundamentally suspicious nature in top gear or whatever you will, I am convinced that those clowns planned to cheat. But how?<br /><br /></span>As I was mulling this over, I see a middle-aged gent stumbling into the waiting room, where all these shenanigans were being played out. He wasn’t particularly odd by himself, but wearing a sweater, a jacket and a ballaclava (<span style="font-style: italic;">monkey cap, if you prefer</span>) in Mumbai seemed a little excessive. <span style="font-style: italic;">The temperature was around 27°C at the time. </span>Odd, but not overly so, I reasoned. After being informed that he has to leave his bag in a locker outside, our man informs the invigilator that he will be requiring his medication during the course of the exam. She says okay, leave them with an invigilator and you can take them.<br /><br />I must admit that I felt a pang of sympathy when I saw the poor guy pulling out strips of tablets from his bag. All those strips together seemed to reflect the colours of the rainbow. <span style="font-style: italic;">Yes, there were that many</span>. He takes off his ballaclava and jacket and I notice that he has another item of clothing on his person — some sort of well-padded back brace that velcroed together around his mid-section. The invigilator looks at him with an utterly gormless and puzzled look. “What is that?” she asks him. “Yeah, I need it,” he says to her. <span style="font-style: italic;">Good answer, I think to myself.</span><br /><br />Obviously, it’s a security hazard. For all you or I know, these fellow could’ve been a suicide bomber. A terribly unwell suicide bomber, but a suicide bomber nonetheless. <span style="font-style: italic;">I did feel at that point all that beefed up security during the O’s visit had affected my brain.</span> She notices a zip on the left side of his back brace and asks him to unzip it. Another handful of tablet strips emerge. But he’s not done. There is still another zip on the right side.<br /><br />Meanwhile, a girl walks towards the reception desk. She was seated right at the back so I presume she was one of the early ones. <span style="font-style: italic;">Good on her. </span>Dressed casually and yet in the sort of today’s-not-a-day-to-chill way that people tend to dress for an exam. Like some idiot shining a laser pointer in your eye, something very very disconcerting elicited a sense of mild distress from my retinae. A bright blue flash of leather, maybe pleather caught my eye and I looked floorward. The familiar three stripes of Adidas confirmed my suspicions. The girl was actually wearing football boots. Well, <a href="http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/38/5/642.1/F1.large.jpg">blades </a>to be precise. <span style="font-style: italic;">Can’t afford a pair of shoes, floaters, sandals or slippers, so I’ll wear football blades? No, it’s not an elitist thing to say.</span><br /><br />I didn’t have time to contemplate the possibility that she may have just come from a game or that she may be off to play after the exam, because she was soon on her way back from the reception desk and about to have a run-in with Medicine Man. <span style="font-style: italic;">At this point, I don’t think I could even remember the <span style="font-style: italic;">Pythagoras Theorem. </span>And even if I did remember it, the shenanigans that were about to unfold before me would have surely sent ol’ “x² = y² + z²” to the deep recesses of a pit that stores all the things I’ve forgotten, like checking the BEST timetable for Chirmi.<br /><br /></span>It unfolded like one of those set-pieces Monsieur Wenger and Se</span><em>ñor </em><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Fabregas regularly mastermind. Medicine Man unzips the right pocket and moves away from his chair and into the aisle just as Bladesy returns from the desk. Bladesy’s stray right foot lands on Medicine Man’s right foot. He grunts <span style="font-style: italic;">loudly </span>in anguish and twists around, sparking off a mini eruption of even more tablet strips that fly everywhere. In the melee, one of the twins gets pushed and he bumps into the invigilator. While Bladesy and Medicine Man exchange apologies, the incredulous invigilator sees the twin who bumped into her and... <span style="font-style: italic;">I wouldn’t say ‘bellows’; that’s a bit extreme... </span>she screeches in a loud, whiny manner, “How many of you are there?” Needless to say, the twin had no response and neither did his brother who emerged from the toilet area moments later. The invigilator has clearly had enough so she follows up her rhetorical question with a series of questions that are even more rhetorical (<span style="font-style: italic;">if that was humanly possible</span>)<span style="font-style: italic;">.<br /><br /></span>“Don’t you have any sense? How old are you? Who told all of you to come here dressed like this?” <span style="font-style: italic;">Sharp. Searing. Brutal. </span>I think it was safe to assume that she was alluding to them being dressed the same way and not passing judgment on their dress sense. Regardless, I’m sure I saw tears well up in the verbally assaulted twin’s eyes as his brother came to comfort him. I missed the rest of the episode because just then I was asked to go into the CCTV and microphone monitored testing rooms to take my exam.<br /><br />Right, I thought to myself as I walked past the scene of the crash, as it were and begin jogging my memory. Now standard deviation, I began to recall, is </span><i>σ = </i><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">the square root of—... Blank. <span style="font-style: italic;">Goddamnit. God-frickin’-damnit!</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Why, Lord? Why do You do this to me?</span></span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-15737211937920141952010-11-05T14:41:00.002+05:302010-11-05T18:26:59.387+05:30Big F'N Deal (!)<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">You know it’s a slow day in the news media biz when the main story is deputy CM and the (hitherto believed to be non-existent) missing link between humans and bulldogs, <a href="http://www.timescontent.com/tss/photos/preview/120257/Chhagan%20Bhujbal.jpg">Chhagan Bhujbal</a> saying, “I am the host of the meeting. Why should I give my passport details?”. The sad thing however is that it isn’t merely a slow day, it’s been an extremely slow week (if not fortnight). So much so that it’s really no fun reading the newspapers any more.<br /><br />Being as it’s such a slow time, there’s only 2 stories that everyone’s yelling and screaming from the rooftops about. The first is that delightful <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adarsh_Housing_Society_Mumbai">Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society</a> story, where the media actually seems surprised that Mumbai’s political top-brass (allegedly including human-bulldog hybrid) is complicit in claiming apartments that were meant for war widows. Plus, the building itself is unauthorised in that it is a security risk (too close to defence installations) and it violates environmental regulations. <span style="font-style: italic;">I got bored of this story in no time. Kick out the corrupt politicos and bring in even more corrupt bastards to replace them. That’s the general way things go.<br /><br /></span>The other story that has been dominating is quite obviously all the hullaballoo about Barack Obama’s trip to India. Let’s for a second put aside all this “visiting my role model Mahatma Gandhi’s country” and the “paying homage to the victims (of the November 26 massacre)” stuff. Let’s also put aside all these fanciful dreams and hopes (that verge on the delusional) that India has about this visit — the Security Council seat, a better defence deal, solid backing against Pakistan. <span style="font-style: italic;">Forget about it. It ain’t gonna happen.<br /><br /></span>Here is what is going to happen. There’s a reason Obama’s on his way with two full plane-loads of “captains of industry” — CEOs, MDs, GMs and the ilk or so I’m told — and there’s a reason the first (and arguably, more important to them than Delhi) stop is India’s financial capital. Keep in mind that the American economy is yet to recover from the debilitating recession. Business ventures in India could prove to be just the ticket for many firms feeling the pinch. Then of course, there’s the fact that looking like you’re best pals with India could help turnaround Obama’s sagging popularity. <span style="font-style: italic;">At least among the Indian-American voters</span>. Finally, the third plus of this trip for Obama and possibly the most significant from a strategic standpoint, will be the message it will send out to China.<br /><br />But that’s it.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Stories about how XYZ Road is being spruced up for his visit or how ABC cops are taking some precautions before the visit have bored the hell out of me already, but the worst is probably that stupid one about some hotel making an Obama platter. Big f'n deal. I was never even interested in that shit, so being bored is out of the question. Like I said, it’s a slow time for news.<br /><br /></span>Speaking of which, I’ve often wondered whether certain foreign celebrities enjoy such a thriving Indian fanbase to merit an almost daily update on them. Alright now if it was people like George Lucas, Jackie Chan, Sylvester Stallone or I don’t know, Bono... people who are EXTREMELY well-known in India, it would make sense. But what makes Eva Longoria so important and why is she plastered across papers nearly everyday for some banal reason or the other. How her relationship with her husband is so healthy, how she used to be bullied as a kid, how she is thinking of getting a driver’s licence, how she.. <span style="font-style: italic;">I don't know</span>... bought a bloody hamster or something. As far as I know her only claim to fame was being in <span style="font-style: italic;">Desperate Housewives.<br /></span><br />And the other is Lady Gaga. I’ve heard that her music is quite popular abroad, but I didn’t know it was all that big here. Now either both of them have a really hardworking PR team in India or I’m living in a completely alternate reality to the rest of India.<br /><br />P.S - Which is probably more than evident given how much I fume watching the Indian version of <span style="font-style: italic;">Masterchef</span>. Why is it that there is literally no TV show that we, Indians can replicate (or rip off) without making it cheap as hell, given that most shows we rip off are pretty cheap to begin with? <br /></span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-966205582981915452010-10-21T14:08:00.004+05:302010-10-21T15:17:45.313+05:30What’re you trying to prove?<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Ad-libbing lyrics in songs is one of the more fun things one can do in a group, especially a drunken group. Now whether it be at Fuzz Club/BLEACH or at Yorks or even General, some of the most hilarious times I recall were usually right after some particularly funny ad-libs. The classics of course, were the “B-sides” that involved mainly AJG and me (and often an army of others) turning songs by Rage Against The Machine, System Of A Down, Disturbed and countless other bands into paeans to cheese and ham, brioche rolls, sleeping till late and some other less-than-complimentary concepts attributed (perhaps unfairly) to a friend of ours.<br /><br />Then there were the General Sessions© that featured musical tributes to chips, Johnson’s stupidity, <span style="font-style: italic;">gaathia</span>, all-night <span style="font-style: italic;">dandia</span> and other such essential elements of life to the music of Bon Jovi, Metallica, Godsmack, Limp Bizkit and such like. The purpose of this exercise was not because we were devoid of original ideas. In fact, far from it. We enjoyed these songs and wanted to put a new twist on them. A customisation to suit present company. And it was a hoot. It was never for commercial gains or success either.<br /><br />The major success one gained from this ad-libbing was being able to elicit laughter. If you did a particularly funny rhyme, your target got laughed at and if you’re ad-lib was lame, you were the one being laughed at. Everyone was a winner. And at the end of the night, each original track still had its dignity. Even professional bands ad-lib. Some change their own lyrics, some borrow lyrics from another band’s song and throw them in, just to get a pop out of audiences. But none of this is done with a view to making oneself seem cool or to make money. It’s always just about making a good time slightly more special.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Which is probably why I was mildly irritated (initially) and damn near apoplectic a few minutes later after listening to a song by another one of those dime-a-dozen products that America keeps churning out of its cookie-cutter of shit. </span><br /><br />When I watched <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120888/">The Wedding Singer</a> </span>over 12 years ago, a song that plays at the very start of the film caught my attention. The song had that typically 80s vibe which made it catchy as hell and it got stuck in my head like a fishhook. Being an 80s classic, of course the theme was rooted in that era — it’s a song about hitting on someone, nothing particularly lewd or crude. Playful, more than anything. It was years later that a cover of that song by a nu-metal band, blew my mind. While preserving the playful theme and flow of the original, the song was now harder, edgier and rocked way way harder. <br /><br />Now we return to 2010. A few years after Dope had “<span style="font-style: italic;">had their way now, bay-bayyyyyy</span>” with Dead or Alive’s track, some unoriginal dipshit (look at his name if you need further evidence) called Flo Rida decides to get himself a piece of the action. <span style="font-style: italic;">Don’t get me wrong. I love covers that are vastly different from the originals, as long as they are a reflection of the spirit of the original song</span>.<span style="font-style: italic;"> One such cover is </span>Terrible Lie <span style="font-style: italic;">(Maynard James Keenan’s version of a Nine Inch Nails track)</span>.<br /><br />But back to Flo Rida now (what’s next? A reggae act called Mass Achu Setts?). So if it’s not bad enough that he wants to have a name like that, he decides to mess with a classic. In the process, he ropes in a woman (with probably the most ghetto-ass name out there) called Kesha (or is it Ke$ha?). And they go and turn <span style="font-style: italic;">You Spin Me Around (Like a Record) </span>into a song about oral sex. What the hell, man?<br /><br />“<span style="font-style: italic;">You spin my head round, when you go down-down?</span>” Are you serious? Then after “Ke$ha” has finished singing that line, Mr Rida jumps in with something that sounds like “<span style="font-style: italic;">hibidi jibidi dibidi doo, hibidi jibidi dibidi foo” </span>(I shit you not. If you don’t want to take my word for it, assail your ears and listen to it. It actually sounds like that). What he probably meant was something like “my ride’s so dope, my bling gives me hope, come play with my rope”. It’s horrific that people can get away with something like that. I’m all for songs about sex, sure. But not every song needs to be about sex. And these fuckwits killed the spirit of the song by shitting all over it for nothing but commercial purposes. Songs about fucking sell. It wasn’t something special done at a live show or among friends.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">And I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to tell me that I have a bias against hip-hop. You’re going to tell me to stop taking lyrics so seriously because “the song is great to dance to”. </span>Well first of all, I don’t think the song is hip-hop at all. There’s hip-hop and there’s pop music, both of which are genres that know where they stand and do their thing. I may not be a fan, but they believe in what they’re doing. Hip-pop is the category that this cock-sucking cover falls under. It’s got all the “bling-bling, guns, bitches and hos” stereotypes from hip-hop and the manufactured fakeness of what passes for pop (not talking about the late MJ here) today.<br /><br />As for the point about dancing to it, go for it, dance to it. I don’t think it was ever my contention that you shouldn’t dance to it. I was merely railing against the uninspired, unoriginal, lame way Mr Rida (or the person who writes his “music”) decided to turn one of the most playful songs ever into just another piece of drivel about fucking. And there’s so much of it out there already. Just what are you trying to prove? That you have a dick?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Answers may be sent to the usual address</span>. <span style="font-style: italic;">(I really hope he or ghetto-ass name woman reply)</span><br /></span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-66451684989930936882010-10-17T13:57:00.005+05:302010-10-21T14:22:05.963+05:30My thoughts on Shite and Cack<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">It was May 2007 and I was in the middle of my first journalism-related internship, when I was asked to write a 600-or-so worder on the freedom of expression in the face of books being burnt and stuff. Naturally, conventional word limits are far too stifling for my requirements and so, I welcomed the idea of getting a few more words to play with. Long story short, the article was researched and typed out. It got printed. A good time was had by all.<br /><br />Four or five days later, my boss at the time comes in with a hardcover book with a glossy dustjacket. Presumably it had to be reviewed. From afar I thought it was a graphic novel, due primarily to the fact that minus the black and white colouring of the dustjacket, the packaging resembled that of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman:_The_Killing_Joke"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Killing Joke</span></a>. The signs looked good since I’d just written a piece on graphic novels a week ago. Arriving at the area where I was designated a seat, my boss hands it over with a smirk that turns into a grin and finally erupts in a raucous belly-laugh. <span style="font-style: italic;">What the hell?</span> I didn’t really pay much attention to her reaction as i reached for the book.<br /><br />She said she’d read a bit of it and it was hysterical. Hysterically bad that is. <span style="font-style: italic;">So it’s not a graphic novel then, given that I’m yet to read a truly <span style="font-weight: bold;">BAD</span> graphic novel. </span>My mild sense of disappointment was then brushed aside by my curiosity to see what the hell that book was about. So, without reading the title of the book fully, I turned a few pages and began browsing through it.<br /><br />Two pages in...<br />Four/five days after my book burning article...<br /><br />I realised that this was the book that should’ve been burned. Maybe it would have shut the little cretin up. You hear me, Aditya? I’m talking about your poorly slapped together selection of “poetry” in three languages called <span style="font-style: italic;">My Thoughts in White and Black </span>(I can’t find a link for it anywhere). That’s supposed to be the title of the book, by the way. Sounds a whole lot more like the title of an uninspired blog. The Marathi poems, I will concede, read quite well. All seven of them. The rest of the tripe comprises Hindi poems that read like they were taken from a primary school textbook. Don’t even get me started on the “<span style="font-style: italic;">Once I saw a cat; It was very fat; Because it ate a rat; Then it went and shat</span>” type rhymes you’ve put down.<br /><br />But I gotta hand it to you. Getting Granddaddy to have it published was a masterstroke. It actually looks like a credible book. What did he do to get such a high quality printing job? Did he send his goons to threaten the publisher? What happened after it was published? Did he threaten the publisher against ever publishing anything in any language other than Marathi? What about threatening a nationwide strike if any North Indian ever read it? <span style="font-style: italic;">I could go on forever, but the sad thing is it’s only a mild exaggeration of that whole family’s twisted way of thinking. </span><br /><br />Now I know you’re going to ask me this, so you might as well get it out of the way now. That book was released over three years ago. So why am I ranting now? Well I’ll tell you why. Many reasons. Inertia primarily. But today happens to be the day that Aditya’s illustrious (cough cough) grandpa is going to declare him as their political party’s youth wing’s leader. (<span style="font-style: italic;">It’s amazing. These are the same geniuses who give shit to the Congress and call it a dynastic party</span>)<br /><br />Just a week and a half or so ago, the Shiv Sena’s scion (that would be Aditya, of course) saw fit to burn copies of a book that is part of the Bachelor of Arts syllabus at the University of Mumbai. The book, for those of you who don’t know is <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Such_a_Long_Journey_%28novel%29">Such a Long Journey</a> </span>(which was also made into a film some 10-11 years ago. Anyway, the book is set in 1971 and does critique the politics of the time. Also for some more trivia, it’s written by Pastry’s uncle (Who is probably going to see some spiralling sales now. <span style="font-style: italic;">You know how well banned books sell</span>). <br /><br />Anyway, Aditya has his goons burn it and then gets the University’s spineless vice-chancellor to ban it from the syllabus. Straight away. Banned. None of the usual “we’ll consider it”. Just BOOM! Banned. <span style="font-style: italic;">It’s amazing how the bureaucracy is at its most effective at the most inappropriate times. That’s Bureau-CRAZY!!!! </span>Roll your eyes as much as you want. I’ll wait.<br /><br />Done? Okay. So the funniest part of this whole saga is that young Aditya hasn’t even read the book. Take a moment to laugh it up. He claims that people told him that it sullied the name of his family and party. <span style="font-weight: bold;">WHAT’S LEFT TO SULLY, SON?</span> Your party is a group of thugs, bullies and saffron supremacists. Most recently, ol’ Grampa Thackeray tried to shut down a reality TV show because it had two Pakistanis in it. He said and I quote, “We can’t let this green poison into our country.” <span style="font-style: italic;">Nicely done, Sir.</span><br /><br />So as I was asking earlier, what is it you are trying to protect, Aditya? Your party sucks. I’m sure your mother is a wonderful person, but I’m afraid I can’t say the same about your granddad or your dad. I’d add your uncle to this list, but I’m quite happy that he could very well be that catalyst to destroy your archaic and backward Sena. You have a chance to be great. Hone those skills. Get back to writing. Put out a book on the back of the quality of your writing and not who your grandpa is. Don’t get sucked into this xenophobic, communal cesspool of hate that’s been in your family for so many years.<br /><br />All I can do is to encourage you to break out!<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Note: I doubt you’ll pay any heed to my advice, but what the hell? It was my duty to tell you. Now I’m gonna exercise my right to wait patiently and watch as your Sena and its “legacy” slowly burns to the ground like Ravana will later this evening. Happy Dussehra! </span><br /></span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-58597634726675148392010-10-09T15:35:00.004+05:302010-10-11T10:33:06.383+05:30ReMatriculated<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">It’s been over a decade (more than 11 years even) since I first saw a film called <span style="font-style: italic;">The Matrix </span>during its third or fourth week in cinemas. For curiosity sake more than anything, really. I didn’t know cyberpunk from skapunk, it’s safe to say. Back then, people who had seen it, all back and said, “Oh, you have to watch it!”. Hmmm. Next, I’d obviously ask what it was about. Far too often have people told me that I simply <span style="font-weight: bold;">had to watch</span> some film and I did. It was only after I’d actually spent my time, money and patience on the film that I wished that someone had had the decency to actually tell me what it was about.<br /><br />I won’t bore you with the entire Hall of Shame. Only the top five.<br />5) <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108001/">Rudaali</a><br />4) <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1038919/">The Bounty Hunter</a><br />3) <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060959/">Daisies</a><br />2) <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0240515/">Freddy Got Fingered</a><br />1) <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100234/">Close-Up</a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">There’s probably some others that’ll come to me in the dead of the night, but for now I would have to say that’s my top five for this category.</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">With this quintet of films and its ilk, I just wish someone had actually shared with me a rough idea of what the film was about before I decided to part with my time, money and patience</span>.<br /><br />With <span style="font-style: italic;">The Matrix</span>, all I got from people were these extremely pointless responses like “Dude, it’s trippy” and “That’s a mind fuck” and tonnes more such vacuous descriptions. Of course then you had the real geniuses — those masters of description — whose response to my question was to lean back, look like their eyes were following an imaginary fly all over the room, flay their arms outwards and move extremely slowly to avoid said fly. There were quite a few of them who did that. (<span style="font-style: italic;">God bless </span>IMDB<span style="font-style: italic;">. I no longer rely on fools for a plot summary.</span>) The only thing that came anywhere close to the same neighbourhood as a real answer<span style="font-style: italic;"></span> was a simple curt “It’s about human batteries”. I see... errr.. what? And that was where the curiosity stemmed from, because if you recall the promos and trailers around that period, they were equally vague. Intentionally so.<br /><br />As I went into the cinema hall, I was sure it would end up being just a snazzy action film that people wanted to read too much into. It would be one of those things that people would want to sit “interpreting”, when all they were doing is creating something in their own head.<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>(Requiem for a Dream <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">a good example of this phenomenon. It’s a superbly edited and shot film, I won’t deny that. But at the end of the day, there is very little that’s open to interpretation. It’s all sitting there in front of you.</span>) <span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span>The little shot of the Warner Bros. studio and the Village Roadshow logos were bathed in a lovely colour of green and their texture looked odd too. Like it was in binary code or something. <span style="font-style: italic;">Fancy. </span>The Heart o’ the City hotel. And then soon after came that unmistakeably calm yet ominous voice with some unique intonation, topped off with a lovely sophisticated and lyrical lilt (which over the next decade would turn its owner into a superstar).<br /><br />“Lieutenant, you were given strict orders...”<br />And the lieutenant clearly tired of all the redtape and hierarchy in the system, fires off a crack about not wanting any of that “juris-my-dick-tion crap”. And besides, he’s already sent some two more units of the city’s finest to apprehend the suspect.<br />“No Lieutenant, your men are already dead...”<br /><br />How did he know? Because he was Agent fuckin’ Smith. He knew everything. <span style="font-style: italic;">I’m going to have to do a tribute post one of these days about Hugo Weaving. I’ll call it </span>From violent bowling to violent vendettas. <span style="font-style: italic;">I love it.<br /><br /></span>Anywho, I was really getting into this film. It was slowly making sense. It was coming together piece by piece. Keanu Reeves’ stoic (<span style="font-style: italic;">when I’m feeling less charitable, I’ll say wooden</span>) acting worked perfectly with his role. Lawrence Fishburne was reinvented as people across the world forgot all about <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-qqKjYlYVg">Cowboy Curtis</a>. Joe Pantoliano never disappoints. Ever. And an androgynously pretty Carrie Anne-Moss paved the way for the tough-as-nails but head-over-heels-in-love female character in cinema (something Megan Fox failled at miserably in <span style="font-style: italic;">Transformers 2</span>).<br /><br />That’s the actors done. The story is phenomenal. Full stop. Let’s put it this way, the story and universe opened a door to a room for me. And that room is now one of the most important and vital rooms in my life — cyberpunk. I’d never have read William Gibson, Philip K. Dick, Greg Bear, Bruce Sterling or any other cyberpunk books had I not seen and been totally sold on <span style="font-style: italic;">The Matrix. </span>There’s the unbeatable soundtrack that came out when I was just discovering acts like Rage Against The Machine, Rammstein etc. Then there’s obviously the action. More on this later.<br /><br />Fast forward around just over three years and I was jumping around all over the place when I heard that they were going to put out not one, but two sequels in 2003. I went on the second day. Didn’t fancy going alone on Day 1 and going on Day 2 gave me the chance to meet Captain’s whacky European pals. I still recall the anguish I felt when they left that film at such an excruciatingly painful cliffhanger. Convincing Captain to sit through the credits was another task and a half. This was made more tedious by the fact that even the drivers for Keanu and Carrie seemed to have their own makeup artists and stunt coordinators. For what seemed like an eternity, these credits rolled and rolled and rolled until at last... the screen went black again. A teaser trailer for the final film in the series. Idiotically compelling “OHHHHH!!! DID YOU SEE THAT?” moments carried on into the night.<br /><br />Later that year and on the day before the final chapter of the trilogy was released, LT, B and I couldn’t sleep and so we watched parts of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Matrix</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Revolutions </span>and what is probably one of the finest animé compilations out there, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Animatrix</span>.<br /><br />Around 10 hours later, as little Santi painted the sky in beautiful hues and enquired about whether she’d see Neo again, everything had come together full circle. All the loose ends had been tied and for the first time, the credits began rolling over an instrumental piece of music from the film’s score. The mood just seemed right. There wasn’t the “FUCK YEAH!!” adrenaline rush of the first one (complimented by Rage’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Wake Up</span>). There wasn’t the “Ohhhh man, the final part is going to KILL!!!” of the second part (Rage again. Only this time it was <span style="font-style: italic;">Calm like a Bomb</span>). There were vibes of completion, of closure and the melancholic finality of it all.<br /><br />It’d be the first time in a while that a number of people I knew would be going to sleep at night, without flicking over ideas of what would eventually happen to Neo and the gang. There’d be no more heated marijuana-fuelled (seems like an oxymoron) discussions about what the final outcome would be, while one person would just sit quietly, nodding and rolling up. The bulletin boards would no longer speculate about storylines and be scattered with “exclusive” leaks.<br /><br />Nostalgia trip over and long story short, I watched the trilogy over the past coupla days again after a long long time. Only this time, it was in High Definition. So all that action I was talking about earlier looked even more eye-popping. The blue tinges and hues (in Film 1) and the green tinges and hues (in Films 2 and 3) for one, REALLY stand out in HD. But, good graphics don’t mean good film (or video game even). That’s true.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Matrix Reloaded</span> was a blip after the first film and <span style="font-style: italic;">Revolutions</span>, while it certainly was better than the second film, just seemed to lack something. Something I couldn’t put my finger on and haven’t been able to, to this very day. But keep in mind that matching the original film’s quality would be nigh-on-impossible. Sure, you could throw in better (technology-wise) action sequences, but the perfect synergy between story and dialogue was something that I could never imagine the Wachowskis topping.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Think about it a second. Most of the dialogue is either very good or frickin’ superb. There’s only one crap line in it. Imagine that. 136 minute-long film. One crap line. You know the line I mean. Hehehe. No? Well it’s... nah... It’ll spoil the fun. So I’ll move on.</span><br /><br />What I’m trying to say is that individually, the sequels aren’t as good as the original, but as a trilogy, it blew (and still blows) my mind. Someone once told me that the first film had the amazing ability to fill your intellect, whether it was the size of a thimble or a bucket. Truer words have yet to be uttered. And more than any of that, to me, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Matrix Trilogy </span>was <span style="font-weight: bold;">my</span> trilogy. Everyone has a trilogy. For a tonne of people, it’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars </span>(4,5,6). For some (<span style="font-style: italic;">I won’t be judgmental</span>), it’s even <span style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars </span>(1,2,3). Some swoon over the <span style="font-style: italic;">Lord of the Rings Trilogy </span>and nowadays, even the <span style="font-style: italic;">Twilight Trilogy.<br /><br /></span><span>But, this was <span style="font-weight: bold;">my </span>trilogy and in HD, so much more so.<br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><puts on="" his="" looks="" then="" finally="" upwards="" at="" the="" sky="" and="" flies="" off=""><span style="font-style: italic;">*puts on a pair of shades... looks left, then right, then upwards and flies off*</span><br /><br />“whee.. whee.. whee.. whee.. whee.. whee.. </puts></span>COME ON!!!!” </span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-83423964065606436052010-10-08T01:31:00.002+05:302010-10-08T10:03:49.890+05:30How do you sleep at night?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> 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mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; line-height: normal; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I had set out intending to write a scathing and insanely vitriolic attack against a regional party in Maharashtra, but unique circumstances have compelled me to make my attempt at hitting out at a pan-national piece of shit. Any guesses? Come on... give it a shot (this one’s for all the Indians out there). Who is the biggest piece of shit you know, on television anyway? Who enjoys using the misery of others to his own gain and that of his television “news” channel (big hint there)?<br /><br />I’ll cut to the chase. The person in question is <a href="http://karthik3685.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/contender-1-for-worst-indian-journalist-arnab-goswami/"><span style="color: blue;">Arnab Goswami</span></a>.<br /><br />To set the scene and despite Goswami and his channel’s assertions, Omar (in a speech before the state assembly on October 6) did not question the status of the heavily debated state of Jammu and Kashmir. What the J&K Chief Minister did in fact say in his speech, was that a solution needs to be found “that is fair to the three regions of the state (<i>Indian Kashmir, Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir and what I imagine is No Man’s Land</i>) and the neighbouring country”.<br /><br />With me so far?<br /><br />Okay. He added in a later statement (<i>and this is the interesting part</i>) that the state had never truly merged with India, but it had merely acceded to India. Sure enough, if you check the <a href="http://www.jammu-kashmir.com/documents/instrument_of_accession.html"><span style="color: blue;">Instrument of Accession (Jammu and Kashmir)</span></a> and I have, on October 26, 1947, Maharaja Hari Singh acceded to India, but not like Junagarh and Hyderabad that merged with India.<br /><br />These are facts.<br /><br />Put them together and what you have is the Chief Minister of J&K merely quoting his history lessons. Given the fact that opposition parties all across the world find absolutely any reason to rebuff or slam the ruling party, it was no surprise that BJP members protested and were up in arms. To its credit, the Congress stood by Omar (once in a while, they do something right). And here is where Goswami steps in. Trying to be sensationalist and grab eyeballs is great, but when you do that at the risk of national integrity, you are a traitor, Goswami. No two ways about it.<br /><br />We’ve just come out of the Ayodhya verdict (<a href="http://viewfrombeneath.blogspot.com/2010/10/growing-pains.html"><span style="color: blue;">see previous post</span></a>) and this jerk sees fit to make a mountain of a molehill. His news channel carried this ticker all day about how Omar had “gone too far”. <i>Wait a second. Was Omar some lapdog of yours whose gone and pissed on your lap, Goswami or did you just not have any other topics for a discussion show to do today? </i>Then, in said discussion show, he assembles a posse of speakers (two of whom including <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sajjad_Lone"><span style="color: blue;">Sajjad Lone</span></a> were remotely sensible). There’s a BJP spokersperson who obviously lays into Omar.<br /><br />What was interesting though was as the “discussion” progressed, Goswami’s problem with Omar’s speech evolved too. <i>I’m not being cynical for the sake of it. I know exactly how much discussion Goswami actually does. There is no one on the planet who loves the sound of one’s own voice as he does. My former resident editor will testify to this fact. </i>From having a problem with the “status” Omar supposedly conferred on the state, to him flip-flopping on his stand (again, with ropey evidence to put his case forward) to saying he was just trying to extend his political career, Goswami struggled to clutch at straws. <i>I smiled.<br /><br /></i>But, unhampered by a lack of facts on his side, Goswami chose to keep repeating his opinions again and again, hoping (<i>nay, praying</i>) that someone would say, “Yes, you’re right. Have a biscuit.” But no biscuit was forthcoming. Meanwhile, his channel’s ticker continued to flash a message saying that if viewers objected to the content, they could lodge a complaint with the <a href="http://nbanewdelhi.com/"><span style="color: blue;">National Broadcasters Association</span></a> and sure enough, the website was provided.<br /><br />Upon visiting the website, you find out under the appropriate tab how one can go about complaining. 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mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} </style> <![endif]--> </p><div style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" align="center"> <table class="MsoNormalTable" style="" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr style=""> <td style="padding: 0cm;"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">A complaint must be made in writing, either in English or Hindi, and must include the following:</span></i></p> </td> </tr> <tr style=""> <td style="padding: 0cm;"><br /></td> </tr> <tr style=""> <td style="padding: 0cm;"> <ul type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0); line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Copy of the complaint letter sent to the broadcaster; </span></i></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0); line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Copy of reply received from the concerned broadcaster ; </span></i></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0); line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Name and address of the broadcaster. </span></i></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0); line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Specify the news item, programme </span></i></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0); line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Date, time and channel of broadcast.</span></i></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0); line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Short summary of what the complainant is aggrieved of, in particular what precept of the Code has been breached (detailed in the section “What can I complain about?” of this booklet). </span></i></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0); line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">All relevant documentary or other material, if any, in support of the complaint</span></i></li></ul> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </div><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: trebuchet ms;">Redtape rules supreme once more. Does the National Broadcasters Association actually believe that Goswami’s channel will send me a reply about how they could be so brazenly irresponsible and go so far out of their way to try and rake up tension in the country? If they do, then the association must be more foolish than the concept of Argentina trying to qualify for Euro 2012.<br /><br />In conclusion and on the off-chance that Goswami reads this diatribe I would love to have a talk with him. It’d be short. Extremely short. I’d marvel at the fact that he asks people the most obtuse questions and then ask him just how he sleeps at night. No, really... How does a person like that sleep? <span style="font-style: italic;">Perhaps he talks himself to sleep. Hyuk hyuk. </span><br /></span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-33886038895249546462010-10-03T14:12:00.007+05:302010-10-04T11:35:51.346+05:30Growing pains<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I haven’t written very much (hardly even a word) about the two most burning issues in India yet and it’s not been only due to laziness. I figured they’re getting enough attention from other sources, so why me bother? Right? Well, yes and no, it’s just that now the time seems right to offer comment. But first... the good news. No wait, the good news will have to wait a second. Let’s have the </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >AWESOME</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> news first.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Err... I’m actually lost for words. For the last few days I’ve used the most outlandish metaphors, similes and general statements to describe this news, and now I seem to have blown a literary fuse. I haven’t the words to embellish this outstandingly wonderful good news. I’m still reeling from it, y’see. Reeling from the fact that I haven’t been on a self-destructively fun holiday in a while, with the exception of monkeying around with LT, but that was more of a babysitting assignment (</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >hyuk hyuk</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">). So Bengaluru and New Delhi it is. January. To see The Prodigy. That is all...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Now onto the good news. The Commonwealth Games (to be referred to from this point as simply CWG) look like they’ll actually happen. Well, they bloody well should, given that today’s the opening ceremony. I know what you’re thinking. ’Twas only a matter of time till I too jumped on the CWG-bashing bandwagon? No. Be patient and read (</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >and besides, I’m fighting a tight deadline, targetting wrapping this up before the ceremony starts, so I know how the CWG peeps feel</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">).</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The reality of the situation is that while the enduring image of these games, to me at least, should have been the awestruck faces of little kids watching a 100-metre race or some long (or high) jump action or the pole vault event or anything for that matter. My theory is that the more kids who find themselves more enamoured by a long-ass fibreglass pole than a wooden bat, the better our nation’s level of athletics will be. But I digress. If the kids don’t turn up, then I’d have hoped that the enduring image would have been the victory dance or celebrations of a new star. Someone who’d just broken a long-standing record. Someone who’d picked up a stack of medals.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">All my scepticism and cynicism aside, I never thought it would be </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://sikhsangat.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/common-wealth-games-bridge.jpg">that</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> image. You know the one I mean. Maybe I believed that somewhere, at some point, the authorities would actually get serious about more than lining their own pockets. It’s possible. You’d have thought that they would have considered the potential for embarrassment in front of the whole effin’ world. Maybe? The thought had crossed my mind. That’s when it hit me. </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suresh_Kalmadi">Kalmadi</a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">’s corruption is not something I wish to discuss (although you have to wonder how Rs 70,000 crore or 700 billion could be so shamelessly pilfered) but it’s glaringly obvious why the CWG village was in such a squalid state.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The sports authorities in this country have always treated our athletes like shit. There’s no way of sugar coating it. Unless they’re cricketers or someone who’s (despite the shitty facilities and management) gone and won a medal somewhere — then there’ll be loads of fawning and photo opportunities. But for the majority of athletes, they’re horribly ill-treated and so, Kalmadi probably thought, “Hey, athletes are athletes. Who’s gonna notice if I pocket the money meant for them and let them slum it out. Besides it’s only 14 days. Fuck ’em.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">No Mr Kalmadi, fuck you. Corruption is one thing. Stupidity and arrogance is quite another. Claiming that these Games would be bigger and better than the Beijing Olympics is the single most moronic thing you could have ever thought of. Never mind the fact that you actually said it. And also, when you’re in the wrong, accept it. Don’t act so Goddamn brazen. Please.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Getting back to the international humiliation aspect, a lot of people are upset at the sort of outspoken criticism that India has been receiving from all quarters. Some are even questioning why the world hates India. The first thing to do is not cry and feel sorry for ourselves. Instead, use it as a reality check. Yes, the organising committee really screwed up. The government did drop the ball on this one. A lot of people made us, Indians look extremely stupid (</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Like the dumbass who said foreign standards and our standards of hygiene are different. WTF?</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">). And finally, the brilliantly understanding cricket board decided to schedule an India-Australia series at the same bloody time.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">But if we are to harbour dreams of rising out of this Third World Country status and being taken seriously as a world power, scrutiny and indeed, criticism is inevitable. It’s been around forever. Remember Prince Phillip in all his princely majesty looking at a fuse box that was faulty and proclaiming, “Oh I do say Lizzie, this fuse box looks like it was put together by an Indian. Narf narf narf.” To which, I’m told the Queen replied, “What have I told you, Phillip? You call me Queen.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">In fact, it’ll be worse than ever when the world sees we’re trying to assert ourselves. The criticism will go from “Oh, you’re so filthy” to “Your momma” type insults. Being so thin-skinned and crying about it isn’t the way to go. And sure, our momentum has been hit by this fiasco. But that’s alright. There’s still time. And usually, the really malicious insults have a way of coming back to bite people in the ass.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Slight detour: I was on a Prodigy bulletin board the other day, when I saw a thread about the upcoming India tour and in one of the entries, some user whose avatar picture depicted some sort of eagle in the foreground with the St. George’s Cross in the backdrop. He had written something along the lines of “Are the lads sure they want to go there? What if the stage collapses like? Heh heh”. Not very nice, but okay. On Saturday, a burst water pipe causes part of the ceiling of the visitors’ changing room at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light to come crashing down, leaving Manchester United homeless. Karma? Maybe. That’s why I’m not going to tempt a Karmic bite in the ass by saying something like “Stadium of Shite”. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Also, a shitty build-up doesn’t necessarily mean crappy Games, right? They could end up being quite good actually. India could get a massive haul of medals. Some new stars could be born. Who knows? And now that the CWG is hours from getting underway, I plan to put my support behind it. There’ll be enough digging around and heads rolling after they’re done, anyway. I just hope the right heads roll and not some scapegoats.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Speaking of scapegoats, God, who has often been blamed for so much bloodshed, animosity and bigotry in this country I call my home, probably breathed a sigh of relief this Thursday. Not for the sakes of our livers though (it was the first of three back-to-back dry days), but because the nation finally showed a bit of maturity. It hinted that maybe it’s citizens are growing up. Maybe there’s more than black and white (or in this case, saffron and green). Yes, the Ayodhya verdict where the land was split three-ways, was a little controversial, but it was brilliant to see most people saying, “Yeah alright then. It’s the fairest decision.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Sure, the petitioners are going to appeal to the Supreme Court, but that’s what a democracy is about. Go for it. Appeal. HOWZZAT!!! (</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Poor taste, I know</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">). But answer me this: how many people were killed in communal riots after the verdict? Zero. Despite the fact that the media in its overzealous reportage seemed like it was almost goading people to fight (and one newscaster actually looked dismayed at announcing that there was no violence), no one took to arms. I liked that. It filled me with hope. A feeling that despite the fact that there are still creases in our system, the ironing process has begun.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">And after the CWG, we’ll suddenly wake up and realise something. Two things. Who the fuck cares about the Commonwealth anymore and why the crikey-fuck are we trying to preserve the history of colonialism?!?</span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-85968396044652738022010-09-23T13:10:00.007+05:302010-09-23T16:30:23.381+05:30System Reboot<span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" >doof doof doof doof doof<br />thish thish thish<br />doof doof<br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Check 1, 2... Check...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">ffsssshhhhhhhhhh </span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">*a smoke machine belches out a thick cloud forming a near-opaque mist*</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">It’s that tingly few seconds after the last support act of the evening has wrapped up. The drumkit’s been replaced, but you can’t see it because of that curtain. Sure, you can hear the mammoth sound the drumkit makes during a simple soundcheck, but you can’t see a thing, save for a tiny bit of smoke slipping out from below the curtain. If the weight of expectation, impatience and curiosity could be transformed into a physical object, it would most likely bring the curtain down to the ground and with it, smash the stage in half. Which is fair, considering this is the first show of a whole new tour, in support of a whole new album.<br /><br />“I hear they’ve changed the musical style completely,” you hear one voice pipe up. A deeper voice rebuffs, “Yeah, but it’s not all that drastic a change... I hear”. Hmmm... That’s neither here not there. “The band’s changed its ideology though for this album. They’re less shrill about their viewpoints and more refined when it comes to putting them across,” squeaks a little voice. Is that a good thing? If it ain’t broke, why fix it?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">You ask yourself questions, knowing full well that you don’t have the answers. But the answers are only a matter of a few seconds away. “What have they changed for this tour? Have they changed costumes, stage placements or props? Are there some new band members? Has the old guard been replaced? Will they still do that extremely childish-but-fun thing where an effigy of some idiot is set aflame on stage at every show?” Each second drags on and on and on...</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Until the curtain rises...</span><br /><br />Pompous? Perhaps<br />Self-aggrandising? Slightly<br />Overly indulgent? Possibly<br />Typical <span style="font-style: italic;">View from Beneath</span>? You betcha!<br /><br />Welcome to VfB version 5.0. Or Vv5-... no wait a minute!! VvV, if you REALLY wanna be cool (<span style="font-style: italic;">that is frickin’ awesome, if I do say so myself — Ed</span>). It’s the first design revamp in over two years and I think it’s pretty cool. How the content will differ after this four-month hiatus, remains to be seen. In fact, that’s for you, the VfB Massiv’ (formerly known simply as the VfBers) to tell me. And now, on with the show.<br /><br />Given that there’s a glut of terribly bitter bile waiting to be spilled, let’s kick off this new era on a positive note. In the time since my last communiqué, I managed to acquire an absolute beast of a computer. *Leans forward and kisses the starship-looking mofo of a black and white CPU* <span style="font-style: italic;">Oh. A speck of dust. Best get rid of that. There we go. </span>So as I was saying, I finally have a machine capable of playing every single PC game available today (not counting old ones with backward compatibility issues *sniff* <span style="font-style: italic;">Full Throttle</span>) and I decided to make the most of playing a tonne of different games. FPS, RPG, RTS and all the other little abbreviations you can think of. I binged like there was no tomorrow.<br /><br />But just like a womaniser, who after years and years of fucking all sorts of women gets that little moment of clarity, that epiphany if you will and goes back and knocks on the door of his one true love, I too had my epiphany. So the womaniser goes and knocks on his one true love’s door. Most often, she’ll let him in and agree to talk. Or they talk on the porch. It’s all good. Mushy shit follows and they end up in each others’ arms, slobbering all over the other and marvel at the fact that their bodies still fit so snugly together like jigsaw puzzle pieces.<br /><br />And then there’s those times when the one true love introduces our womaniser to her husband, who introduces himself with a finger-crushing shake of the hand. Obviously, he has a solid well-paying job and no vices whatsoever, as our womaniser nervously thumbs the top of a hastily ripped open pack of cigarettes in his pocket. If that wasn’t a big enough kick in the crotch of our womaniser, this guy who just happens to be in good physical shape, is a devoted husband, a doting father and a generous and gentle lover (the womaniser can only assume). The best part comes when the one true love politely requests our womaniser to leave, because the family needs to pack and head to the airport as their perfect little child enters the room to politely say that he has completed his homework for the week and the next and then jumps into his father’s arms. The perfect husband and father has, after all, planned a vacation in Galapagos Islands. As you do.<br /><br />In a related scenario, the womaniser knocks on the door and finds that his one true love is dead. Okay, that’s not quite as funny, but you get my point. Fortunately for me, my one true love was neither dead nor in the arms of some guy with a laptop who was going to take it the Galapagos Islands.<br /><br />In fact, my one true love had gone and gotten herself an almost complete makeover. The proud owner of what can only be compared to a body sculpted by angels, one true love hadn’t lost a shred of the intelligence and wit that I’d fallen in love with so many summers ago. Gorgeous, smart as ever and so understanding (no backward compatibility issues here). <span style="font-style: italic;">Sigh</span>. Thank you for coming back into my life, <span style="font-style: italic;">Monkey Island. </span><br /><br />This series by the infinitely talented team at LucasArts, originally launched in 1990 (so you can imagine what the graphics must have been like). I played <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_Monkey_Island">The Secret of Monkey Island</a> </span>at the start of 1999, if memory serves and I played the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_Island_2:_LeChuck%27s_Revenge">sequel</a> soon after. I remember how I laughed at the dialogue and some of the inane things that happened. Even with those blocky as hell graphics, the changes of expression were noticeable and added so much (surprisingly) to the experience. The games and indeed the series, were essentially point ‘n’ click adventures. It was a crisp and compelling storyline laced with memorable characters that kids could get into, combined with the kind of wit and satire that would make adults chuckle, that made the <span style="font-style: italic;">Monkey Island</span> franchise such a tour de force.<br /><br />The series was responsible for getting me hooked onto other point ‘n’ click adventures and later, full-blown role playing games, where a story-driven narrative (as opposed to bang! bang! driven narrative) had me hooked. Kudos Bioware for <span style="font-style: italic;">Knights of the Old Republic </span>(obviously), <span style="font-style: italic;">Mass Effect</span> and the delectable <span style="font-style: italic;">Dragonage: Origins</span>. These restored my faith in gaming in an age when (without a sliver of offence meant, I assure you) games like <span style="font-style: italic;">Manhunt</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">GTA: San Andreas</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Bully</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Rapelay<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span>(utterly disgusting concept) and their ilk were all out to garner controversy by alienating gamers rather than draw in new gamers and watch the community multiply. <span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><br />Anyway, it all came back full circle when I got hold of the Special Editions of the two <span style="font-style: italic;">Monkey Island </span>games I’d mentioned. Totally revamped graphics (with the option to switch back to the classic look at the touch of a single key) and smooth voice acting make it seem like a new game, but the humour and wit that drives the story forward is classic <a href="http://dirtymartini.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/old-skool.jpg">old-skool</a> stuff. While I’m sure the idea that something related to Lucas was going to be involved in retouching up a classic (RE: All the belly-aching about <span style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">Indiana Jones</span>), must have sent alarm bells ringing across the world in the minds of all sorts of fanboys (big and small), it’s incredible that the game’s charm and beauty has been preserved, while dressing it up for the 21st Century.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Sigh.</span><br /><br />Right, well, seeing as how I’ve just gone on and on and on with the good stuff, I’ll leave you to bask in the warm and tingly sentiment expressed so far. The unpleasantness shall commence in the next post.<br /><br />(<span style="font-style: italic;">Note: To you lazy members of the VfB Massiv’ who seem content to read this stuff on Facebook, I urge you to actually see the </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://viewfrombeneath.blogspot.com/">new look VfB</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> and tell me what you think.</span>)<br /></span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-68689786236587006562010-05-12T13:50:00.002+05:302010-05-16T04:10:12.407+05:30The Human Salt<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Usually, salt in one's wounds isn't the pleasantest of things. Salt, as you all well know, stings like a mad hornet in your ass if it enters a wound. Take for instance, the extremely common example of having a cut and finding sweat running into it. It stings. A lot (depending on the nature of the cut). Now in a far more painful and sadistic example, imagine a fistful of salt being rubbed into a gash in your flesh. That hurts like crazy, but fortunately, I've never had to experience it.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I can only imagine that it hurts like crazy</span>.<br /><br />Now, I haven't decided to hammer out this post to discuss the pain inflicted on your self by the salty injection into your blood. I'm looking at the obnoxiousness of it all. Salt in a wound is the equivalent of someone who barges into your home uninvited. Maybe you don't even know the person. But he/she storms in and proceeds to spend a few moments just barking at you about how screwed up your home and your life is. He/she will then spend the next few moments screaming at you about your faults and things that went wrong in your life. (<span style="font-style: italic;">Think about salt in your wound if you will. </span>"<span style="font-style: italic;">Yes, I bloody know I've got a massive gash in my arm. I don't need to be reminded of it by you hurting me more, salt")</span> The person will then swing into action with a tank of acid and throw it all over your home burning your possessions, your memories and your personal effects.<br /><br />And for what? Just because he/she is salt.<br /><br />And this salty individual won't tell you the obvious problems politely. Oh no, this person is hell-bent on screaming about everything. And it's not a pleasant scream either. He/she possesses the shrillest, most eardrum-ripping and piercing voice known. (<span style="font-style: italic;">That's why it stings so much more</span>) Naturally, at the end of it all, you feel violated, angry and yearning to slap said person upside his/her head. Pushed enough <span style="font-style: italic;">as you would with salt,</span> you usually end up wanting to introduce his/her lips to the barrel of a shotgun and tell him/her to pucker up.<br /><br />This brings us very neatly to who I believe is The Human Salt... (<span style="font-style: italic;">I won't go as far as to say, Devil Incarnate</span>). I have seen/met a number of people who irritate me. <span style="font-style: italic;">I'm sorry, but I'm a bit judgmental that way</span>. A lot of people make me angry as hell, but very few people make me seethe as much as The Human Salt. A number of people have pointed out the obvious to me, made foolish arguments to me and expected me to buy them, given me idiotic rationale and excuses (like for instance claiming never to have heard of a CD that they were lent, when it went missing and suddenly appearing with it a few days later). Still, that doesn't so much as hold a candle to The Human Salt.<br /><br />I remember being extremely irked by the loud, self-aggrandising pomp of this person during the lunch break of a Test match between India and Sri Lanka in the first half of the 2000s. My dad and I laughed about how irritating he was. Flash forward to today. He is the toast of a television channel, run by the most narcissistic man on television today. I'm not going to even discuss the horror and wholehearted practice of urinating on the face of journalism that this narcissist indulges in on a regular basis. I'd rather get onto blasting this specimen whose identity I'm sure you've guessed by now.<br /><br />That's right, The Human Salt is none other than Boria Majumdar. Google him and see how many hate sites come up. The man is without the shadow of a doubt, the most irritating and obnoxious person on television today. (<span style="font-style: italic;">Just for the record, second place is in the safe hands of a rival news channel's number one reporter</span>) Now I've heard tales of Majumdar's influence in sports circles and the wealth of knowledge that he is. So fuckin' what? I've met a lot of reporters who can squeeze a quote out of ANYONE related to their beat at any time of the day. I happen to work with a couple of such people, who also happen to be the humblest and least obnoxious people I know.<br /><br />Wealth of knowledge? I'm a bloody wealth of knowledge... And there are numerous people I know who possess far more knowledge in their heads than I could ever imagine, who are gentle with its dissemination. Even when they know I'm wrong and they're right. I fail to see how yelling and screaming shrilly on television makes any point whatsoever. More so when you have someone on the next channel conveying the same point in a far more docile manner.<br /><br />You have an exclusive, you say? You have an exclusive spot on my wall, is what I'd like to tell you. An exclusive shooting range devoted only to you. (<span style="font-style: italic;">I really hope you read this and scream on television about how you're getting death threats. I'd laugh my ass off, since this is anything but a death threat</span>) It's a plea to you, Boria. Please stop hurting my ears with your high pitched high decibel tripe. And please stop burning my retinae with that smug "I smell my own farts and they smell like roses" look on your face.<br /><br />Is that too much to ask? Stick to writing about the history of a bail or the first time in recorded history that someone ever threw a small spherical object at someone else. That way I don't have to feel like I'm going to need surgery everytime you feel the need to screech about something. I don't come and screech in your face, do I? I blog. You could try doing that. Maybe you have one. I wouldn't know since I want nothing to do with you.<br /><br />Regardless, I guess what I'm trying to say is that the above is just an example of some of the range of painful emotions that i undergo when the thought of The Human Salt even enters my synapses. Seriously though, so the Indian team got knocked out on its collective ass in this T20 World Cup. They played like fools. Don't act like they owed you something, Boria. And get all shrill about it and rope in former players who will say whatever you want just to ensure that you shut the hell up.<br /><br />I don't want to be mean to you, but I'm compelled to do so since you won't meet me halfway. You won't tone down your bullshit and so, neither will I. I'm sure you have your legion of "fans". Meet them, hang out with them. But for God's sake, get off the tube. By the way, BM, do you know your initials also stand for Bowel Movements. Intentional? Perhaps.<br /><br />I'm done now. It's off my chest. I feel much happier. Especially since this was post number 100 on this here blog. Tooooot!<br /><br /></span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-391085389310095782010-05-05T19:27:00.003+05:302010-09-23T13:01:01.100+05:30SOS (Same ol’ Situation)<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I write the next few words in the expectation that you, VfBers have read or at least watched the <em>Lord of the Rings </em>trilogy. If you have, then it’s brilliant, because you will actually get what I’m trying to say. If you haven’t then, you should. Why? A) You will read/watch/both a brilliant story about a fantasy universe and B) You will totally get what I’m about to rant about. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Nevertheless, here goes... The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ent">Ents</a></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, whose turf was invaded by Merry and Pippen — who hoped to rope them in for the war on orcs and Uruk-Hais — held a long board meeting. Hours later, Treebeard came to Merry and Pippen to inform them that the meeting had been held and they had decided that... Merry and Pippen were not orcs. That’s right! Fuck whether or not they would go to war. They decided that Merry and Pippen weren’t orcs.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Why is that relevant? Well, it’s relevant because that is exactly what our judicial system has coughed up. Now, frequent readers of this blog (that in my personal opinion, is a surefire thing to read and make yourself look busy at work) will know of my love for playing cricket. I was told that this year’s Media Cup was shifted because the Ajmal Aamir Qasab (26/11 terrorist) verdict would be delivered on May 3. So mediapersons would need to do a lot of work over the weekend. Fair enough.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">May 3 came. And there I was, watching it all unfold on television with the jarring loudness of Times Now, the cluelessness of CNN-IBN, the indecisiveness of NDTV and the sheer moronic behaviour of India TV. Seventeen months after the horrific attacks and months (i think more than 12) since the trial began, the judge put down his judgment.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Qasab, he had said, was guilty.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">What?</span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">What in blue blazes? </span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">We saw him kill civilians and policemen. We saw him hauled up from a car that him and his homie had hijacked. It was established that he was guilty! I thought the trial was to decide just how guilty he was. Maybe I’m naive that way, but honestly, what in blue blazes?!? I can’t say, “What the fuck?” because it’ll probably be seen as contempt of court. Seriously though, Mr Court McKenzie... What gives? He’s as guilty as guilty can be. We know that. Where’s the verdict.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Oh, that’s been postponed till Thursday. Tomorrow. Why?</span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Just say it, chief. “Hang the fucker!” Besides, it’s not like doing anything to that pawn is going to stop terror. Qasab was a barely educated fellow picked up and promised his share of virgins in heaven if he killed and maimed in India. Just yesterday, a Pakistani-origin fellow in New York was picked up for setting up a car bomb in New York City. Now, tell me that country isn’t the world’s biggest breeding ground for terror. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Sorry, I’ll return to what I was saying. Death penalty. Afzal Guru has been on death row for ages (for attacking Parliament). I havent’t even heard of a thread being brought near him, leave alone a noose. So, why should I believe Qasab will be hanged? Well, let’s say he was hanged. What would it prove? What point would it make? None! Killing brainwashed fools merely speeds up their martyrdom. And so, dear Mr Justice McKenzie, I implore you not to give him a quick exit tomorrow. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Make him suffer.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Subject him to being made to work as a slave at the residence of every person he and his cronies harmed. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Make him stand at the side of a road holding a garbage can all day.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Make him clean out our sewers. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Force him to be the guy that biological weapons are tested on... I mean cosmetics, hehehe</span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Freeze him in cryo and defrost him regularly so he can be tortured.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">And then freeze him again for 10 years or so.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">But for the love of all things sacred, don’t kill him... It’s too easy an exit.</span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-11671424133167208692010-04-29T12:35:00.004+05:302010-04-29T13:46:59.132+05:30Tiptoeing on the in-between<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">How many of you remember Val Venis? Not the WWE-era Val Venis, but the WWF one. Not the member of </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Censor">Right To Censor</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> but, </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.therealmccoys.com/images/signed/wa01540.jpg">this</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> guy. The faux pornstar character, who was supposed to act all ladies’ man-like and was supposed to preen, posture and pose to put on the impression of being irresistible to women. In WWF-world, it was still humorous to see him put on a deep voice and try and seduce women with the narrowing of his eyes and a pelvic thrust here and there. Over the years, that tired routine made me cringe. A lot.<br /><br />Of course, pro-wrestling or sports entertainment is devised to tell its stories through exaggeration. And so a character like that would be perfectly acceptable. However, I cannot for the life of me, work out why a character like that would be acceptable as a cricket presenter. Sporting some ridiculous tight and gaudy-looking shirt with the top four buttons undone to show off his <span style="font-style: italic;">heavage</span> (a word I learnt recently. Apparently, it means man-cleavage), some ghetto-as-hell gelled-up hairdo, slouched in his arm chair and making eyes at the camera like he were Don Juan de la fuckin’ Nooch.<br /><br />But then, maybe I’m being too harsh. Sameer Kochhar does have a few good qualities... a philanthropic side, for one. He is the only man to make Arun Lal, Shonali Nagrani and Archana Vijaya (<span style="font-style: italic;">Revisit <a href="http://viewfrombeneath.blogspot.com/2008/06/enough-is-enough.html">this</a> if you need a brush-up</span>) seem like good presenters, who know what they’re talking about. Kudos for your selflessness. Sacrificing your own dignity, so others look good. Anyway, long story short. IPL-3 drew to a close a few days ago.<br /><br />There’s a number of good things about that fact. Not least of which is that we don’t have to see Kochhar trying to be Val Venis (unless he moves to a different channel) for at least another year. With Modi or without Modi, that remains to be seen, but it’s not for another year. No Citi Moments of Success for another year. No more people with poor eye-hand coordination trying to take catches and dropping them spectacularly in a bid to win themselves a cheap phone. No effin’ DLF Maximums for a year!<br /><br />The other upside is that we can finally get back to some real cricket. It’s a shame that it’s again of the T20 variety, but that’s fine. <a href="http://copypest.wordpress.com/">The Lord of Pestilence</a> reminisced recently about the magic of the 5-day version of the game. It’d be nice to have some more of that but for now, T20 will have to suffice. That it is <span style="font-weight: bold;">international</span> T20 obviously makes it better. The players aren’t playing for some cement manufacturer, hirsute newspaper owner or stylishly gaudy liquor baron. They’re playing for national pride.<br /><br />We stand right now on the thin line between a big-money, glitzy and yet ultimately meaningless tournament and a far less money-addled, less glitzy but slightly more meaningful tournament. (<span style="font-style: italic;">T20 champions of the world doesn’t mean shit. ODI and Test championships matter, to me at least</span>) It’s an exciting place to be standing — this thin border between the past and the future. Let me tell you why.<br /><br />Looking back at the IPL, I can do so with perspective. Sure, for a large part, it was entertaining enough. Some shades of brilliance did shine through in the batting, bowling and (to a much much much lesser extent) fielding departments. A few outrageous shots and insane catches were all good to watch. However, a lot of this for me at least, was tainted after the whole Income-Tax department swooped down on IPL Inc. It got to a point where matches were being watched closely with viewers conducting detailed analyses of the tournament among themselves... Not about the state of the match, but about which matches had been fixed, how much did one think they’d been fixed for and so on. It was like 2000 all over again, as </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><a href="http://copypest.wordpress.com/">The Lord of Pestilence</a> also points out.</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><br />At the same time, looking forward, optimism overpowers all else. Watching Afghanistan playing for the first time in a major international tournament is something I really really want to see. Will they be able to pull off any major upsets? <span style="font-style: italic;">If so, I tip India as being the team that will be turned over by the Afghans.</span> Will they qualify for the next round? Could they, just maybe do a Kenya and get to the semis? Given the unpredictable nature of T20 and the power of momentum, could they, just maybe have a hope in hell of becoming finalists? Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself but that’s a team I plan to follow as long as it’s in the tournament.<br /><br />Another clash I’m looking forward to is how people who played in the IPL fare against those who (for one reason or another) didn’t. Should they meet, I believe this time around’s India-Pakistan match, more than some in the reason past, will be the ultimate grudge match. Of course, like I said, optimism overpowers all rational thought.<br />Rational thought suggests that there’ll be a ton of one-sided contests.<br />Rational thought suggests that there’ll be at least one utter mauling of a minnow.<br />Rational thought suggests South Africa will ballz it up again.<br />And so on and such like.<br /><br />And then, you feel a sense of happy anticipation when rational thought and optimism come together and you realise there’ll be no MRF blimp, no DLF Maximums and no exaggerator-in-chief Danny Morrison (God-willing). You realise there will be the commentary brilliance of David Lloyd, who won’t feel compelled to call every shot “amazing” or “fantastic”. You realise there will be some very good performances and really tight matches. And best of all, you realise there’ll be the distinct lack of that stupid Spanish horn and... Sameer Kochhar.</span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-35061652636342509812010-04-20T02:02:00.003+05:302010-04-29T12:35:41.629+05:30Mrs G and Dr S, you really dropped the ball<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">This isn't Montreal...</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">We're not talking about a legacy of over a decade...</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Our protagonist doesn't have a very long history in the business, as it were<br />He doesn't even put opponents in the sharp-shooter...<br />Our antagonist isn't a scheming businessman... Far from it...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">And no matter how loud I scream this phrase, even until my lungs burst, it will never reach the ears of the people in power. So, I will do my shouting here, in my sanctuary. It's not going to be pretty. It's going to go against a lot of my faith in the only party I feel can make a difference to India and rise above petty politics. But it has to be said. Mrs Gandhi and Dr Singh, listen the fuck up...<br /><br />YOU SCREWED SHASHI!!!<br /><br />Do I need to repeat it? No? I will anyway...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">YOU</span> SCREWED SHASHI!!!<br /><br />Don't blame the opposition. Your opposition comprises bigoted communalists, archaic fossils, racists, sociopaths and murderers. And there are plenty of the same in your own party, don't deny it. But, in order to show yourself as blameless, you scapegoat Shashi Tharoor. Keep your nose clean and then go on the offensive. Of course, he's just a casualty of war, right? He's merely a fall-guy, so you can go on the offensive and get the upper hand in your squabbles with the opposition?<br /><br />Backing a man who could've made a difference to your cabinet and Indian politics, in the face of all criticism, would've shown some gumption... some backbone. What you've done, is merely to consolidate the fact that as long as your surname is Gandhi or you suck up to someone with that surname (I refer not to the Mahatma, I talk about the Nehru-Gandhis), you can be in the Congress.<br /><br />I was watching a talkshow a few moments ago, which actually prompted me to get on to the computer and vent my spleen. And on that note, I saw the editor of a magazine that I find to be a little hit-or-miss, making a very good point. "In Congress, you need to be a survivor," said Vinod Mehta, editor, <span style="font-style: italic;">Outlook</span>. He was also of the school of thought, like me, that Shashi was a mere scapegoat. I disagree, Mr Mehta, I believe in the Congress, you need to be a domesticated animal who bows to every demand of the Gandhis.<br /><br />Rahul Gandhi, for instance, has for a while been trying to portray himself as this charismatic politician. It would not surprise me if Rahul's mommy saw Shashi as a threat to Rahul's delusions of being the most charismatic and dumped him at the first opportunity. The people voted him into power. And here, you are cutting him down. Nice. You could've stood up to the dumb-ass opposition, but no, here you go towing the line.<br /><br />To make matters worse, the aforementioned talk-show included that insufferable socialite (that's right, a socialite) Shobhaa De, who saw fit to pitch in about how inadequate a minister of external affairs Shashi was and how good his ouster was. What's the matter, Shobhaa? Facelift falling off? Or has Mrs G offered you a Rajya Sabha (House of Lords, FYI lukethenuke) seat? Or have you run out of bullshit to write about and those Paris trips don't quite do it anymore? Okay, those were spiteful. Answer this. Do you know shit about what Indian politics needs right now? Clearly not, because you were just commending the sacking of the type of irreverent and non-<span style="font-style: italic;">neta </span>type we need.<br /><br />But, I wouldn't expect you to know that.<br /><br />I've been tingling with irritation since the news filtered in that Shashi'd been asked to step down and it got worse after watching that show. Lalit Modi is a piece of shit (sue me if you want, you piece of shit). Shashi spelt, to me at least, hope for a new breed of leaders. You cannot compare the two, just because they happen to be involved in some way or the other with the IPL.<br /><br />I don't see enough members of the public backing Shashi or forcing a referendum or something to get him back as minister for external affairs. People still have heebie-jeebies because he's a two-time (nearly) divorcee, courting another woman and speaks his mind (sometimes foolishly). Hey, I'm allowed to hope, aren't I?<br /><br />I hope enough people get behind Shashi.<br />I hope Shobhaa sticks to being a socialite (which is all she ever was and will ever be; no one gives a rat's testicle about your take on France's fashion or anything else you have to talk about)<br />But what I really really hope is that a man of the stature of Dr Manmohan Singh can shake off the Gandhi monopoly and kick Rahul out on his ass.<br />Else, I'm backing the Sena from now onwards...<br /><br />In summation, I think the best way to put it would be as follows:<br />Dr S and Mrs G, get your act in gear. There'll be time to suck up to the Americans later. Show some backbone, because if you dont, remember forever: YOU SCREWED SHASHI!!!<br /></span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-49281473051466173482010-04-18T03:50:00.003+05:302010-04-29T12:35:29.085+05:30With apologies to...<span style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;">... Jishnu Dasgupta, Sid Coutto and Wesley </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">(</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;">I’m sorry but I do not know your surname</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">There’s no easy way of saying this, so I’d like to preface this post by saying that none of this is meant to be hurtful or malicious, but it is something that needs to be said. So, here goes. They say that the mighty French football team at the 2002 World Cup faltered and fell apart not so much as a result of being crappy. It wasn’t that they did so appallingly because the opposition was mind-blowingly better.<br /><br />Napoleon didn’t lose out in Waterloo because he was a poor tactician. Goliath wasn’t slain by David because the latter was a champion fighter. The United States didn’t get ripped to shreds in Vietnam because the US Army was a shoddy armed force. The one thing that I can really put my finger on that is common to all these vanquished parties that I mentioned is their complacency, which led to their fall.<br /><br />Similarly, I honestly believe complacency ruined Friday night for me. Yes, to a large extent, my own complacency did so too. I did take it as a given that a night with <span style="font-style: italic;">x</span> performing at <span style="font-style: italic;">y</span> venue would be a guaranteed awesome night. I got complacent and was ultimately shown up by a decidedly mediocre and — <a href="http://www.cricinfo.com/ipl2010/content/story/454634.html">to quote Gautam Gambhir</a> — ‘ordinary’ night.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">To digress ever so slightly, I recall an orthodontist of mine in New Delhi over 12 years ago, Dr Vinod Verma (whoo hoo, I’d been killing myself to remember his name) said something that’s still stuck in my head. I was on one of the chairs there getting a tune up on my braces (yes, I did have braces; hence, my wonderfully shaped teeth today) and one of his assistants was working on this boy’s biters, rippers and gnashers. His dad — one of those typical businessman-types, who would probably have given his son a lame looking beige and orange toy car on his birthday instead of a nice red one, because the former cost a rupee less.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">He looked disdainfully at the assistant and then at Dr Verma and said, “I don’t want the assistant working on my son. I came to your practice because I thought you would do it.” The assistant walked away a little hurt and after the man left with his son, Dr Verma said, “They think that because they pay a man, they own his soul.” Made sense then. Still does today.</span><br /><br />So no, I do not believe that just because I pay a cover charge or a ticket fee that I own the artiste or venue management’s soul. Yet at the same time, I do believe I’m entitled to a certain quality of entertainment and service respectively. Let’s deal with the latter first. Dealing with the franchise that it was and with staff like Wesley (who is among the hardest working and yet, politest waiters I have ever seen), you would have thought that the Mumbai chapter of that rock music-themed restaurant/bar would put up a better show.<br /><br />Sadly not. Poorly managed seating-standing coupled with insipid food (a far cry from what the food used to be like). Complacency.<br /><br />But, I didn’t really go to that place for the food or the ambience. I went for the music. One band I’d heard good things about but never seen live really (apart from some semi acoustic show at a rooftop Bandra restaurant). I’d heard nothing but good things about them hitherto. We’ll call them A. Then there was a band I’ve seen live lots of times before and they’ve never failed to please. We’ll call them B. And band C, we’ll call them Pentagram.<br /><br />A, for some reason I don’t really know, were abysmal. It’s even worse when the band you’re watching think they’re the cat’s whiskers. But really... Honestly, A... go back to the drawing boards. B realised that they’ve been complacently putting up the same routine day-in-day-out. It doesn’t work if the audience doesn’t really give a rat’s ass and would rather get a beer than listen to some childish “sixth grade Michael Moore logic” sociopolitical rants from an act that really ought to know better. That’s some more complacency right there. Change the routine and ditch the clichéd skit you put on every time, B and don’t for God’s sake, make the mistake of imagining yourself to be Rage Against The Machine, because you are not. That still doesn’t forgive the distinctly flat show put on.<br /><br />Pentagram though, were incredible.<br /><br />But I couldn’t help thinking that the show overall was a massive waste of time. I complacently believed that it would be as good as always. But then B probably went in with the belief that the crowd would be as receptive as always. Just as A probably believed that everyone was going to love their music as much as the small group of sycophants they deal with (or fans of the previous band they were in), did.<br /><br />An unsatisfactory night begets an unsatisfactory post.<br /><br />Prost!!<br /><br /><br />(sorry)<br /></span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-31500014655748250422010-04-03T12:20:00.005+05:302010-04-04T18:07:15.408+05:30Bleurgh in the Gaudy Age of the Grotesque<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I was taught at a young age that you should only fill your plate with as much as you can eat. (<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">The phrase </span>“<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">having too much on one’s plate</span>” <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">rings a few bells I’m sure</span>). Always serve yourself a little less rather than a little more; after all, there’s always second helpings, I was told. Made sense. Wasting food is a terrible thing to do.<br /><br />The scene with putting food into your mouth isn’t very different. It’s quite an obvious one really. I was taught never to stuff too much food into my mouth. What, you may well ask, as I once did, defines “too much food”? If you can’t shut your jaw or chew with your mouth shut, you’ve got too damn much in there. It’s a basic rule of a thumb. Also, even if you do end up stuffing your face, you have to be a man (or if you’re female, then be a lady) about it and attempt to chew. Cover your mouth with your hand if you have to, as you gnash down on the massive slab of pizza or whatever to break it down. Similarly, if you shove smouldering hot food into your mouth, it’s your own damn fault.<br /><br />Do whatever you have to, but you never spit food back onto your plate. It’s neither done nor acceptable (I believe) in civilised society.<br /><br />Just a couple of days ago, I was feeling a bit of a dry mouth and throat coming on in the searing heat and popped into a restaurant that I used to frequent (considerably less so in recent times) and ordered a cold glass of watermelon juice to rehydrate myself. I looked around and sitting at a table, a couple of tables away from mine, was this guy whom my brain instantly tagged as a student-type. Spiked hair, beads around his wrist and neck... the usual Mumbai “Pink Floyd and Psy-Trance are rocking, dewwwd” stereotype.<br /><br />Now, this lad has before him a plate of fried chicken drumsticks. (Interesting aside: I’ve always found chicken drumsticks to be the clumsiest food known to man. They’re awfully messy, awkward, that cartilage gets into your bite and ruins the taste — <em>I used to be a non-vegetarian</em> — and generally, they’re just a pain in the ass.) So, our man attempts to shovel one rather large and wieldy drumstick into his mouth, as his glazed eyes (probably due to a lack of sleep and excess marijuana abuse) follow it into his mouth.<br /><br />He’s clearly bitten into too large a chunk, bitten off more than he can chew, as it were and it’s evidently quite hot as indicated by his almost spot-on impression of a gorilla in heat. Ptooie! He spits a glob of flesh and bone shards, laced with digestive juices, back onto his plate and throws back a glass of water down his throat gasping and panting. Meanwhile, I swear I saw that flesh and bone glob twitch a little while on his plate, oozing searing hot oil (as indicated by the steam rising from it). A few customers glared at the lad in disgust, while others tutted and some shook their heads. The waiters, for their part, looked on unperturbed and went back to discussing how Waiter A didn’t pay up after betting 50 bucks the previous night, on a team (that lost) in the IPL. <br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">I’d promised myself I wouldn’t lower myself and deign to write about something as trivial as the matter I’m about to delve into. It’s a dumb topic to blog about, I’d told myself and I wasn’t going to write about it. Sadly, I happened to witness this incident and so, here we are.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">I couldn’t help but draw parallels between the binge-and-purge display put on by Stereotype Boy and the way celebrity news is digested (or not) by the masses. With the advent of <em>Twitter</em> and its hashtags and whatnot, nearly everyone has now been empowered to chip in with their two cents about anything and everything. The fact that 70-odd percent of tweets (<em>I read this somewhere... I can’t remember where</em>) pertain to people who are ‘famous’ is a reflection of this binge and purge mentality. Can’t get enough of the Cheryl-Cashley Cole saga, Eva Longhoria and her active sex life and other similar tripe about who’s fucking whom and so on and so forth. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">And then, purging in the form of tweets, protests etc. in a bid to </span><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">enlighten the world with their views about how things <strong><em>should </em></strong>be. </span><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">In the past week — perhaps a shade less — everybody and their uncle has emoted about why an Indian tennis “star” (more on that in a second) should marry a Pakistani cricketer serving a year-long ban. She’ll still represent India, say the soon-to-be-married couple, so what’s the big deal? </span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"><em>I’m getting impatient so I’ll deal with that “star” part first. Sania Mirza is <strong>not</strong> a tennis star. Read that again if you want. Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Michael Chang, Goran Ivanisevic, Martina Hingis, Ana Ivanovic, Maria Sharapova, Lindsay Davenport and so on are tennis stars. Andre Agassi (so what if he wore a wig and was on coke?), Steffi Graf, Roger Federer, Martina Navratilova and Serena Williams are tennis <strong>super</strong>stars. Winning a couple of WTA tournaments that most of the big names didn’t take part in, does not a star make. Neither does a world ranking of 24 for a wee while. </em></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Sure, you could turn around and say, “Who the hell are you to say she’s not a star? Have you ever won Wimbledon?” Fair question. And I reply, she hasn’t won Wimbledon either and neither the fuck have you. Winning a Wimbledon Junior Doubles title is good. But that doesn’t make you a star. Winning an Australian Open Mixed Doubles title is also very good, but everything Bhupathi touches in mixed doubles inevitably turns to gold. </span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Next you’ll say, well, she’s the best Indian women’s player ever. To which I will retort, well, that shows that we suck and need to start improving, not glorifying middle-of-the-roadness as stardom. We’re getting sidetracked here, but the bottomline is... she’s no star. Just a good player.</span></em><br /><em><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span></em><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Anyway, she’s getting hitched. I’m very happy for her and Shoaib Malik. Whether she continues to play tennis or not, whether she changes nationality or not, whether she goes to live in Dubai forever or not is really none of my effing concern or anyone else’s. So she broke off her engagement to someone else, Shoaib allegedly broke off a wedding. Maybe he’s a user of women. Maybe he isn’t. I fail to see why a) it is anyone’s concern but their own and b) why people should invest their time chipping in with their opinion about the issue.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Why the family of the allegedly ‘used and discarded’ first wife should air their grievances on air. Why the geriatric head honcho of a dying party of hooligans (that’s right, I said it) should see fit to pass judgment And why the general public at large should feel it to be their moral responsibility to advise the duo on what they should do. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">But that takes me back to the binge and purge theory. When you stuff yourself with so much info and ‘news’ about these people you claim not to care about, but can’t stop gossiping about, you’re bound to end up puking or spitting up at some point. Or maybe one morsel of info that you stuff down your throat is so damn hot that it burns your mouth and you spit it out (spit out that half-digested morsel with your own salival inputs). And what happens then? You end up looking stupid. Not to mention, spitting half-eaten food back onto your plate is pretty damn grotesque.</span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-70394278890731737692010-03-30T12:47:00.004+05:302010-03-30T17:47:09.425+05:30Cowardice in the Gaudy Age of the Grotesque<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-style: italic;">I’m pretty pleased with myself.<br />2008 was one of the slowest years for </span>The View<span style="font-style: italic;">.<br />Only 16 posts and most of them sucked.<br />That’s not why I’m pleased.<br />I thought the </span>Gaudy Age of the Grotesque<span style="font-style: italic;"> series would be a two-parter.<br />A trilogy at the very most.<br />Now, we’re already staring down the barrel of part five.<br />BANG!<br /><br /></span>It was at the end of another woefully mismatched contest in the IPL between the Mumbai Indians and Deccan Chargers that the broadcasting channel decided to show some “exclusive” footage of that night’s post-match party. There’s this </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: trebuchet ms;">new concept</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> they have of a party (in the city in which the match was played) every night at the end of the match with random celebrities preening and posing for cameras and hob-knobbing with cricketers, team owners and socialites. I hear they also have ramps and fashion shows by designers who couldn’t quite make it to a normal fashion show. Presumably, the cricketers model their wares. Or something. I don’t know.</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />And so, on this so-called exclusive footage was a television presenter with horrible facial foliage, who is described by a colleague of mine as a <span style="font-style: italic;">choosa hua aam</span> (sucked-out mango). So this mango man walks up with his cameraman and microphone to IPL Commissioner (that name still makes me laugh; makes it seem like he’s on Raw or Smackdown) Lalit Modi and Sushmita Sen, who acts in films and adopts little girls. So, mango master asks some inane questions that are fresh out of the training manual for banal TV presenter-style chit-chat.<br /><br />After gushing about Sachin was her favourite cricketer, Sen proceeded to answer mango mania’s next query about which team she supported. Some nit-witted giggly joke about being a neutral supporter was followed by—... You know what? This doesn’t really capture the essence of it at all. Let’s try again.<br /><br /><excerpts><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Mango Masala:</span> So Sush... *<span style="font-style: italic;">cracks one of those ‘Eyyyy’ smiles</span>* Are you enjoying the cricket?<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Sen:</span> Oh my, yes... of course *<span style="font-style: italic;">trying hardest, it would seem to convince herself</span>* It’s... great.<br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Mango Masti: </span></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Yeah? *<span style="font-style: italic;">absolutely shocked by that response</span>* Wow, that’s great. Do you have a favourite cricketers? </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Sen:</span> Well, let’s see... *<span style="font-style: italic;">rumbled, she realises she needs to come up with some name</span>s*. I have a lot of favourite players *<span style="font-style: italic;">phew, she sighs, that was a close one, but it’s best not to take chances, so who’s that guy everyone knows... errr... he’s on hoardings, tv and errr...</span>* But my all-time favourite is Sachin Tendulkar. He’s just... great *<span style="font-style: italic;">phew, home and dry</span>*<br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"><br />Mango Mahal: </span></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Yeah? That’s... great *<span style="font-style: italic;">if it’s not a Citi Moment of Success, or a Karbonn Kamal Catch or a DLF Maximum... it must be great</span>* Which team are you supporting in the IPL?<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Sen:</span> *<span style="font-style: italic;">bloody hell, what is this, a trial? what where those teams called again, she wonders briefly, grins</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">and notices that creepy Modi leching at her from off camera</span>* Well, you know I... just like your commissioner Mr Modi, I too am a neutral supporter<br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Modi:</span> *<span style="font-style: italic;">ain’t got nothing to do or say... wait, camera’s turning towards him and so he grins</span>*<br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Sen:</span> I usually select the team I’m going to support after the match has started *need to know who’s winning to then support them... wait, that came out wrong... backtrack* and I always back the underdog.<br /><br />At this point, Modi clears his throat and gets ready to open his mouth. The guy was adept enough at inducing thousands to cringe in the first couple of IPLs, but he has been nothing short of an</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> utter embarrassment in this particular edition. First off, he has the most moronic speech-writers. Either that or he writes them himself and they’re very very poor. Secondly, at every match, he runs around the stadium in a bit to sit next to every vaguely famous person at the ground and ensures that he is shown doing so onscreen. And some member of the commentary team, usually Ravi Shastri (you too have become such an embarrassment) will announce in a regal manner, as his heart beats proudly in his chest, “The commissioner, ladies and gentlemen... Lalit Modi” or some shite like that and Modi’ll smile and wave at the camera. It sickens me.<br /><br />Honestly, watching the IPL is an emotionally traumatic process. Ads. Interruptions. That stupid Spanish horn. Modi. Shilpa Shetty. Some would call it Emotional <span style="font-style: italic;">Atyachar. </span>(<span style="font-style: italic;">Bud-dum thish</span>!) A television show called <span style="font-style: italic;">Emotional Atyachar</span>, which is basically a copy of the American show <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheaters">Cheaters</a> </span>as I’ve been reliably informed, recently received a strongly-worded call from the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. It’d take too damn long to go into just how dodgy the concept of the show is so I’ll make it ultra ultra brief (Go me!). Boy/girl suspects partner is cheating, gets TV channel to plant spycams, microphones and decoys to administer “loyalty test” and show all footage to boy/girl who suspects partner, followed by a final showdown.<br /><br />No, it isn’t the dubious moral leanings of the show that invited the MNS’ wrath and threats of violence. One of the girls who suspected her boy friend of being a dirty no-good rat, said “Bombay” instead of “Mumbai” on the show. This led to the threat, which was followed by extra care by the <span style="font-style: italic;">Emotional... </span>people to never let anyone say “Bombay” again and a ticker across the screen apologising for the mistake. Ok. The Shiv Sena a few days earlier attacked the nearly 130-year-old <a href="http://www.bnhs.org/">Bombay Natural History Society</a> for not changing its name to “Mumbai Natural History Society”. BNHS didn’t apologise or anything though. Good on them.<br /><br />Which brings us back very neatly to mango mambo, Sen and Modi. To recap, Sen had just said that she supported the underdog and...<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">Sen:</span> *<span style="font-style: italic;">underdog eh? so, by that logic...* </span>And so today, I was a Deccan Chargers supporter<br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Modi:</span> *<span style="font-style: italic;">jumps in over-enthusiastically* </span>Nonsense, she supports Bombay!</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />Did you hear that, MNS and Sena? Lalit Modi said Bombay on TV. I don’t see your goons trying to break down his door, smear ink or paint on his face and tear his clothes up. What happened? Got scared that he might have security guards, who might have an automatic weapon that might be unloaded in the heads of your foolish followers? What’s the matter, o protectors of Mumbai and its culture? Doused your drawers at the thought of taking on Modi Inc? Happy taking on the little guy, but revealing what cowards you are when it’s time to carry your agenda to the big dog. It’s really sad.<br /><br />Keep it up and carry on beating up North Indians and then see how quickly this city goes to hell. Honestly, starting fights when people say “Bombay”? Grow up. I bet Modi just said it to show how you can’t touch him. So this then, is for you, Shiv Sena and MNS. Read as carefully as you can.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay</span> <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bombay <span style="font-weight: bold;">effin’ Bombay</span>. <span style="font-style: italic;">Jo ukhaadna hai, ukhaad le</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">abhi</span>.</span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-9306882805743306112010-03-29T11:35:00.002+05:302010-03-29T12:49:48.983+05:30Dear God, please don’t send me to hell<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Having visited four of the major stops on the <span style="font-style: italic;">Gaudy Age of the Grotesque</span> tour, the time has come to take a slight detour. Worry not, there’s plenty more subject matter that Earth 2010 has to offer for numerous more sequels to the <span style="font-style: italic;">Gaudy Age of the Grotesque</span> tetrology or quadrilogy (I’m not 100% on which one is more correct). Anyway, there’s a lot more going on in the world than merely grotesque things like those beautiful little things that happen every so often.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">For the more pedantic among you, there can be beauty in the grotesque and yes, I concede that at times, the grotesque can be beautiful, but that’s really not w</span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-style: italic;">hat I’m on about, so pay some bloody attention.<br /><br /></span>Justice is one such thing of beauty. From the way a little kid smiles when a toy or sweet or something that has been snatched from him, is returned to him and the snatcher duly punished to the relief the real mother of the baby must’ve felt when King Solomon of Bible Land weeded out the impostor mother. <span style="font-style: italic;">I assume you know the story of “Whose baby is this? Let’s cut it in half”</span>. And I’m not just talking about the justice of men, whether that be criminal justice, civil justice, parental justice, street justice etc. etc. etc.<br /><br />Animal justice is a thing of beauty too. Not a day goes by when the newspapers don’t have something about x number of animals being poached. Not a day goes by when the Internet doesn’t have a new picture of some poor defenceless animal maimed with an arrow or firecracker or something. And not a single day goes by when I don</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">’t hear a dog howl in pain somewhere in the dark dead of the city. Then there’s times when animals are provoked and they retaliate, injuring or killing humans and so they just <span style="font-weight: bold;">have to </span>be put down... or to put it as what it is, killed.<br /><br />Speaking of being killed, let me take this opportunity to make it abundantly clear that I do not revel in the joy of other people’s misfortune. </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Schadenfreude is not one of those things I consider as my hobbies. I do not wish death upon anyone and nor do I take joy in the death of anyone. I believe in justice, but I am opposed to the death penalty. So, keeping these pointers in mind, you may now read on.<br /><br />Elephants, apart from seals and beluga whales </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">(among others)</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, are</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> some of the most adorable creatures to have ever live on this planet. And they’re all essentially </span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2214/2271857989_02d5edc63e.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 232px; height: 167px;" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2214/2271857989_02d5edc63e.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">non-violent creatures until provoked. That seems perfectly rational. (<span style="font-style: italic;">I bet if you sat jabbing and prodding Mahatma Gandhi or Dr Martin Luther King Jr with a sharp object of some kind all day, eventually they’d probably snap and slap you upside the head</span>.) Maybe. Seals, elephants and belugas are subjected to some truly heinous treatment that is dished out by man.<br /><br />So it brings a smile to my face whenever I see these subjects of the Animal Kingdom get justice. Yesterday, at the Byculla Zoo, some stoned nitwit jumped the fence and entered the elephant enclosure and mosey down towards the pair of jumbos, who were busy eating. Like most creatures, elephants immensely dislike being disturbed or interrupted when they’re eating. But said nitwit decides to ignore the signs saying “Stay Out” and ventures in anyway.<br /><br />I’m told that around Ganeshotsav (the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesha">Ganesh</a> festival), fools often get wasted and in a bid to receive blessings from Lord Ganesh, they think to themselves, “I know! Here’s the next best thing!!”. And they invade elephant enclosures at zoos to go and touch their feet. Now you can only imagine what an elephant would make of this weird guy (or gal) grabbing at his feet. Think of your reaction if a sewer rat was on your foot. You’d kick it the F away, wouldn’t you? Same thing. Accordingly, tens of people are injured or worse trying to force some blessings out of elephants, every year.<br /><br />Now back to our elephant, who was eating and who I’m reliable informed was 53-year-old Lakshmi, got mad as hell and told her food, “Hold up a second. I’ll be right back.” She charged out and walloped that sucka over the head with her trunk. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kablamis!! </span>Don’t fuck with the eating elephant, son. Sadly, the impact of the blow caused serious head injuries to the man and he succumbed on the way to the hospital. Shame. It would’ve been a lot better if he had lived to tell the tale.<br /><br />Just like animals that have been branded, probably gather at animal bars to tell each other stories about what they went through during the branding process, this guy with a massive dent in his skull would have people hanging on his every word at country liquor bars as he told them about the elephant that banjaxed his skull. That, unfortunately, was not to be. Talk about heavy-handed treatment (<span style="font-style: italic;">Highly inappropriate, I know</span>).</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />What really took the cake though, after this whole incident, was the zoo’s vet reassuring me that the elephant was fine. She should be, considering she started a movement of justice for her whole species. All hail this big ol’ four-legged Rosa Parks with a Malcolm X attitude and a trunk. <span style="font-style: italic;">Hey, that just gave me an incredible idea for an eight-part TV drama or at worst, a sitcom.</span><br /></span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-89400348321226534782010-03-24T12:29:00.005+05:302010-03-24T15:10:01.853+05:30Naïveté in the Gaudy Age of the Grotesque<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">As I kick off the fourth part — and probably not the last either — of the Grotesque series, I’d like to make a reference to a film I rather enjoy watching. It’s called </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0285823/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Once Upon a Time in Mexico</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">. I still recall my initial reluctance to watch it, but damn, is it ever good. The Depp plays Agent Sheldon Sands, a CIA agent who is in Mexico to try and bring “balance” to the country. His job is to eliminate anyone who’s either too much of a good guy or bad guy. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">In other words, rather his own words, “</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >My name is Sheldon Jeffery Sands. I work for the Central Intelligence Agency. </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >I throw </span><em style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;">shapes</em><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >, </span><em style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;">I set</em><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" > them </span><em style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;">up</em><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >, I </span><em style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;">watch them fall</em><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">There’s this book I quite like, one of the few money and finance-related books I’ve actually finished reading (A half-read<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>Economics for Dummies</span> has been lying forlornly on my bedside table looking up at me for God-knows-how-long). This book is called <a href="http://www.economichitman.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Confessions of an Economic Hit Man</span></a> by John Perkins. Written from the author’s own experiences, it details how he was covertly recruited by the US National Security Agency, put on the payroll of an international consulting firm and told to visit several developing countries and get them to accept massive World Bank loans or US Aid.<br /><br />In the process of paying them back, the countries in debt would be crippled by the loans and would effectively find themselves at the mercy of the US. Secondly, according to Perkins, the other job of economic hit men was to approach “strategically important” countries and try and broker some deal that would effectively trigger off events in those nations that would profit the US. The fall of the Shah of Iran, the Iraq invasion and even the death of Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos were triggered off by economic hit men, who in that regard were a bit like Agent Sands — throwing shapes, setting them up and watching them fall.<br /><br />I’ve had some suspicions in the past — unfounded, I used to say dismissively — but I’m more or less convinced of a few things. The first of which is that we’ve been incredibly naïve. It began with economic liberalisation in India in 1991. Well, there really was no choice as we were bankrupt around then and the IMF had to undertake the dirty job of bailing India out of the red. International trade also began at kick off around that time and with it came Nestlé, Levis, Coca Cola (which had been banned previously) and of course, McDonalds.<br /><br />On the foreign relations side of things, it began with Bill Clinton warming up to India and India returning the warmth. Then came George W. Bush and with the September 11 attacks, the War on Terror® was launched and Bush soon managed to become good pals with India. Tony Blair was already Bush’s best friend at this point. The Hyde Pact nearly split India in half, with the Left and Right of the country not taking too kindly to the US humouring and entertaining India’s nuclear aspirations.<br /><br />Soon came the Season of Change™ with Obama — a man who in his speeches opposed the outsourcing of jobs — winning the US elections and stacking his cabinet and crew of advisors with people of Indian origin. India’s really on the map now, people began thinking. Wow! Sunita Williams going into space. Of course she’s Indian, everyone told themselves. She made some statement like “I like Indian food” and the whole of this country goes into a crazy frenzy with certain people nominating the American (read that again) for national awards.<br /><br />November 26 hit Mumbai soon after. Hit Mumbai hard. Pakistan and India suspended sporting ties and all other ties and got caught in a war of accusations, with neither party willing to back down. India claimed that the state of Pakistan (and not just terrorists <span style="font-weight: bold;">from</span> there) launched the 26/11 attacks, while Pakistan countered that India was financing terror in Pakistan’s Baluchistan region. All along, random drone attacks on Pakistan, empty threats of consequences that would follow if Pakistan didn’t cooperate in the War on Terror® and assurances of justice to India flowed thick and fast from the US.<br /><br />Obama in his baritone, would talk about how India and the US were closer than ever and his <a href="http://toolnavy.com/showthread.php?t=28347">smiley-gladhands</a> in India (sometimes called Consul-Generals and Ambassadors) would talk about the immense respect Obama has for Dr Manmohan Singh and how the US is committed to Indo-US ties... blah blah blah. Raising India’s dreams of permanent membership on the UN Security Council, only to back Japan instead did not sour India’s post-Cold War love for the US. And trust in the US. And at some point <span style="font-style: italic;">Slumdog</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> Millionaire</span> and its slew of Oscars happened and idiots were convinced that the world and especially, the US loved India.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">In the last week</span>, however... that’s when things turned interesting. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Headley">David Coleman Headley</a> in American custody, admitted to being involved in the 26/11 attacks and scouting out locations for the recent Pune blast. The US refused to extradite him to India so we could interrogate him. Until recently, they refused to even let us send a team to the US to quiz him (<span style="font-style: italic;">Note: The FBI merrily strolled down to India to interrogate people, including allegedly Mahesh Bhatt’s son, who from all indications, had nothing to do with anything</span>). The final decision on an Indian investigating team getting access to Headley are still in limbo.<br /><br />Why the US would be so cagey about letting India investigate Headley’s involvement is still a noodle-scratcher at this point. But let’s look at some points here.<br />- <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Headley visited Pakistan on numerous occasions on DEA work</span><br />- <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Headley claimed to be a CIA agent, a claim that the US has neither confirmed nor</span> (more worryingly) <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">refuted yet</span><br />- <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">The 26/11 attacks brought India and Pakistan on the brink of another war</span><br />- <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">In the aftermath of those attacks, India bulked up its armoury and set up the Force One commandos</span><br />- <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">It’s all Taliban, Taliban, Taliban for the US; they’ve never been particularly keen on pursuing Lashkar-e-Tayyaba or any of the other terror outfits. It’s almost like they’re trying to sweep them under the rug. Hide them. Because-... No, that’s too whacky even for me.</span><br /><br />Who else feels that something just isn’t kosher here?<br /><br />I had written the phrase “<span style="font-weight: bold;">In the last week</span>” in bold letters above. This is why the last week turned not kosher into an all out paranoia attack. So, in this last week, the US gave indications that it would be signing a similar nuclear deal with Pakistan as it did with us. What the-...? But weren’t they just saying that Pakistan was a failed state, a short while ago? Would you really want to empower a failed state like that?<br /><br />The claim from Washington now is that no such deal was actually planned, it was more a plan to discuss new energy sources for Pakistan. <span style="font-style: italic;">Well played</span>. I’m not convinced.<br /><br />Here’s what I do think. India for a while, enjoyed naïve childlike hoop-la over receiving all these gifts from the <span style="font-style: italic;">phoren</span>, kinda like little kids go nuts when relatives from abroad — aka the <span style="font-style: italic;">phoren</span> — bring them a little chocolate bar with some snazzy logo or some Made in China toy that they’ll forever cherish. And so with the secret sauce of a Maharaja Mac (the Indianised Big Mac, for the uninitiated) dripping from Mother India’s Maybelline-lined lips onto her Prada bag, that rested on her new Levi’s that look <span style="font-style: italic;">so cute</span> with that new pair of Jimmy Choo peep-toe pair of shoes, she never saw Uncle Sam play her like a fiddle.<br /><br />While ol’ Devious Sam was giving Mommy India all sorts of gifts and presents, she never saw him handing some out to Step-Uncle Pakistan just around the corner. She never realised that when Uncle Sam sold her his A-Class Merc and sold Uncle Pakistan his E-Class, it wasn’t by mistake! It was an intentional ploy. Hollywood and the Academy was in on it. How did you miss it, Mother India? Were you so blinded by the gaudiness on offer?<br /><br />Did the bright lights and shiny pretty things make you lose focus? Or were you just being naïve? You better shake out of it soon, Mommy. Despite Tony’s submissiveness to George in modern times, the British did teach the Americans a few tricks. It’s divide and conquer all over again up in here. There’s never been a more urgent need for paranoia.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">PS: Coming Soon — Paranoia in the Gaudy Age of the Grotesque</span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-18364151548737919842010-03-20T11:42:00.004+05:302010-03-20T13:31:08.247+05:30A Towel in the Gaudy Age of the Grotesque<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Part three of this ongoing series on the grotesque deals with a towel, a small white towel to be precise. And to be even more precise, the tossing of that towel into the ring, when the grotesque takes its toll on you. Let’s stop there a second. Perhaps I’m exaggerating slightly. </span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">This sense of resignation to the grotesque I feel isn’t so much the type of towel that a boxing manager throws into the ring when his prize fighter takes a skull-crushing blow and his eyes roll into the back of his head. The manager sees it all happen in slow motion... Maybe, the mouthguard flies out of the boxer’s mouth like a comet, followed by a trail of blood and saliva. His knees are buckling and arms go limp at the side, with barely enough gas left in his tank to take another blow. His opponent is winding up and ready to unleash one final uppercut and put him out of his misery, as the manager lobs the grimy white towel in, surrendering.</span> <span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><br /><br />That’s not the kind of towel I’m talking about</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">.</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />There’s usually a neatly-</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">folded variety of towel that finds itself in the track suit trouser pocket of a casual jogger. You know the kind. They sometimes carry a water bottle, a sweatband across their foreheads, despite knowing that they’re slow as shit they’ll still time themselves to see what fraction of...of... of a YEAR they shaved off their previous time. Running up a steep(ish) slope at times, a jogger belonging to the species I described will often pull up the to the side huffing and puffing a little, swearing that the air has gotten a lot thinner. The jogger reaches into his pocket and pulls out the neatly-folded towel and mops the sweat off his face, while taking a little break.<br /><br />That’s the towel I’m referring to. And this right here,</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.newsonair.com/writereaddata/News_Pictures/PICST1820.jpg?0.8482128"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 276px; height: 203px;" src="http://www.newsonair.com/writereaddata/News_Pictures/PICST1820.jpg?0.8482128" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> is the grotesque I’m referring to. The big ol’ mammoth of a caterpillar looking thing, as you probably know, is a garland made of nothing but 1000-rupee notes being presented to Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati. It cost around Rs 5,00,00,000 allegedly, <span style="font-weight: bold;">which is an obvious crock of shit</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Remind me to get back to this</span>). A few days later, another similar monstrosity was presented to her at a rally, followed swiftly by someone from Mayawati’s party, the BSP, proclaiming that henceforth, she would only be presented garlands made of money. Fantastic stuff.<br /><br />This is the same woman who sanctioned a butt-load of statues of people (Kanshi Ram, Ambedkar etc.) to be built all across her state, including no less than six of herself. All this happens during a time when prices of essential commodities are skyrocketing and people are losing their jobs at the drop of a hat. In addition, her party members allegedly also beat up and killed (<span style="font-style: italic;">allegedly</span>) some chaps for not contributing to her birthday fund.<br /><br />To me, the goings-on in that state represent the zenith of grotesque. It isn’t only the chief minister either. I am certain that at least 90 per cent of all cases in India of major human rights violations and rampant corruption come from UP. Of course there will be those of you who will claim I’m overlooking all the good Mayawati is doing for UP and India and how the Congress is the true leach that is sucking life out of India etc. etc. That’s your opinion and you are entitled to it. I’m just talking about grotesque here.<br /><br />Like these umpteen awards shows that are organised nearly every second day and have the same dodgy ‘song and dance’ sequences and awards designed to merely give a few actors or directors or producers a bit of a leg up (glorified PR exercises) or to invite A.R. Rahman and announce the words “Oscar winner”, because <span style="font-style: italic;">we </span>are so Goddamn worried that no Indian will win an Oscar again. These horribly grandiose shows drip with money. It’s known.<br /><br />Almost as much as the IPL. Actually, they’re nowhere near how gaudily gilded with gold the IPL. But they’re still pretty lavish displays of wealth. Now the Congress-ruled state government has in its infinite wisdom (<span style="font-style: italic;">See, I’m attacking the Congress too</span>) to slash the entertainment tax on both those sets of events. And all along, I don’t see the price of essential commodities dropping. I don’t see the taxi/rickshaw meter running any slower. I don’t see any tax waivers in my salary. So why do Manikchand and Lalit Modi deserve these lowered taxes?<br /><br />It’s for those reasons and many more that I realise the futility of not accepting the all pervasiveness of the grotesque. It’s here. It’s queer (<span style="font-style: italic;">as in weird</span>). Get used to it (<span style="font-style: italic;">I guess</span>). It’s not a complete surrender, mind you. It’s just time to catch our breath. Mop the sweat off our collective face. Have a swig of water. Walk off that hamstring cramp. And we’ll resume jogging soon.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">And now, about that crock of shit</span> : Rs 5,00,00,000 translates to 50,000 notes of the 1000-rupee denomination. Correct? Look at that garland once more. Does that look like 50,000 notes to you? Even if they were folded in half? That’s still miles off target. Just look at it. I hate to imagine how much it actually cost. For now though, I am pleased about what happened in another part of the country, when a member of Parliament of the same party I believe, was presented with a similar garland of money. Supporters (<span style="font-style: italic;">not even enemies, but honest-to-God supporters</span>) ripped handfuls of money of the garland after mobbing him. ’Ave some of that!</span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-58126063373574853212010-03-13T14:18:00.006+05:302010-03-13T15:47:25.296+05:30A Scowl in the Gaudy Age of the Grotesque<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Grotesque is easy to find, anywhere you look. A large man’s sweaty hairy ass-crack hanging out. Overflowing garbage dumps near restaurants. Being 60 and dressing like you were an 18 lady of the night. Makeup on nine-year-olds. iPopularity. And such like. But, we’re talking sports and entertainment. Arguably, the most grotesque of the lot (televised and shown in over 10 countries) is pro-wrestling.<br /><br />Here’s merely one reason why — <a href="http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Katie_Vick_-_Storyline/id/5203137">Katie Vick</a>. On a show watched by kids all over the world. Yep. But then, WWF/</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">E have always had to resort to gimmickry. <span style="font-style: italic;">I’m by no means suggesting that shit like that Katie Vick thing can be justified. Don’t get me wrong</span>. But gimmicks, yes. All the fireworks, the entrance theme music, the massive screen and the video segments on it. Long and sometimes painfully long storylines. Cars being run over by other cars. People being run over by cars. Affairs of a sexual nature and so on and so forth.<br /><br />But, I realise they have to resort to the gimmickry. Can you imagine how boring it would be for people to watch two hours of oiled men in spandex just grappling each other. Match after match? Why do you t</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">hink normal wrestling sucks so much? Pro-wrestling tries to distract viewers from the actual wrestling aspect of it and throws all sorts of other things to keep them interested. Why do you think the “Divas” league in pro-wrestling was set up at all? Because they can really wrestle? Sure. Whatever you say. <span style="font-style: italic;">I’m not talking about actual women wrestlers here, like the ones who go to the Olympics</span>.<br /><br />Cricket on the other hand, in India at least (so basically 50 per cent of the world’s viewing population), is interesting enough to engage viewers for hours and hours. And this has been the case since long before the cheerleaders, the fireworks, Twenty20 or any of that other stuff entered the fray. Cricket doesn’t need things to be thrown in just to distract spectators. It’s not wrestling. Twenty20 was created as a fo</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">rmat to hook newbies and bring them into cricket and not make them dislike the sport more.<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-uYB1rsXDnMGsEEXPglIRYBeAySNXtAWsloMykxw3ZYXveqdutyvcQAWMSnmEsKqEu-oLJZRovqd2TGPRnDTa6WSB9DL5sh6dBKLyLnqiDPml22QziWp3QPCAgXss9gDISU18KzgBJIM/s1600-h/preity-zinta-lalit-modi.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 242px; height: 182px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-uYB1rsXDnMGsEEXPglIRYBeAySNXtAWsloMykxw3ZYXveqdutyvcQAWMSnmEsKqEu-oLJZRovqd2TGPRnDTa6WSB9DL5sh6dBKLyLnqiDPml22QziWp3QPCAgXss9gDISU18KzgBJIM/s320/preity-zinta-lalit-modi.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5448052183304050914" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Last night, I got a glimpse of just how bad things have become today and got a glimpse into Commissioner Modi’s nefarious scheme to kill cricket altogether. Random music playing at arbitrary intervals including two shocking theme songs (will elaborate at the very end) and a creepy — yes, that’s the best word — version of <span style="font-style: italic;">7 Nation Army</span>. Explosions going off, cheerleaders and an ass of an announcer yelling at the crowd to make some noise and demanding Mexican Waves every two minutes.<br /><br />So much hard work just to distract people from the actual cricket on display. </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Bowlers having to wait till a song was over or till the announcer was done bellowing. The match seemed to revolve around the bullshit that was going on around the stadium. </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I’ve never ever thought very highly of television advertisements in the middle of cricket matches, but after last night, I will gladly put up with them, because at least I can change the channel. I’d happily eschew the charm and atmosphere of a stadium and watch the match on TV knowing that the dumb ass announcer can’t hurt my eardrums.<br /><br />I’d miss out on impossibly long lines for refreshments with people shoving each other hard because obviously them getting their food and drinks first and getting in their seats first is the most important thing. I’d miss out on elbows in my face in my attempt to buy an overpriced cup of warm, syrupy and flat Pepsi. I think I’ll manage without that. I’d miss out on all the characters. I’d miss out on seeing people like this group of business yuppies, whose behaviour would probably make Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx’ drunken antics seem polite. Chirmi was right. “The one thing business schools or B-schools don’t teach and bloody well should, is manners”.<br /><br />Just in front of those fuckwits was an absolute legend. A skinny bespectacled guy wearing a Kolkata cap and jersey, who was a friend of the B-school boneheads (I think). His jersey bore the number 13 and his name (presumably, unless he stole the jersey)... Anuprit. This guy would get up and start gyrating as fast as he could, limbs akimbo, singing along to Kolkata’s ridiculous theme music — while actually knowing only one line. Good for him, the handicap of not actually knowing 90 per cent of the song didn’t stop him one bit. When his team hit its first six, he began shaking violently as he spasmed in his seat like some sort of localised tornado. I instinctively reached for my phone to call for an ambulance. <span style="font-style: italic;">I’m nice like that</span>. His palms turn into fists with unfurled middle fingers and within the space of 4.3 seconds, he’s flipped off everyone at the stadium. The Man with the Fastest Fingers in the East — Anuprit 13. What a legend.<br /><br />And then there was the cricket. Sure, it was good in parts. A Krappy Kolkata Kombination snuck past the Decidedly Complacent Deccan Chargers. Good match. I like watching a team snatch a loss from the jaws of victory as much as watching a team snatching victory from the jaws of a loss. This match had both elements. But it kept getting interrupted by the crowning jewels of grotesque that night.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />“<span style="font-style: italic;">Too hot too cool, </span><span style="font-style: italic;">All the king’s men </span> <span style="font-style: italic;">We rule!!! </span> <span style="font-style: italic;">We too hot We too cool, </span><span style="font-style: italic;">Aamhi Kolkata </span> <span style="font-style: italic;">We rule!!!</span>” Anuprit 13 nearly burst a blood vessel every time excerpts from this Kolkata theme music played, which it did regularly. As for the Chargers’ they had Shaan singing some song that went along the lines of “<span style="font-style: italic;">Tum paan khaaoge, Hum chaar khaayenge.... Tum paad maaroge, Hum do maarenge</span>”. Which roughly translates of course to: You eat one betel leaf, we’ll eat four and you fart once, we’ll do it twice. And these songs kept playing after every wicket, boundary, six, no ball, wide, every time the umpire coughed etc. etc. etc.<br /><br />Relevance to cricket? None<br />Distraction from cricket? Total<br />Grotesque nature of the theme songs? Extreme<br />How did it make me feel? Scowl-y<br /></span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-70412366927668154282010-03-13T12:05:00.005+05:302010-03-13T14:36:27.448+05:30A Smile in the Gaudy Age of the Grotesque<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">There was a television show once — one I greatly enjoyed through its three seasons — called </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bo Selecta</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">. It was a sketch show that took its antics to ludicrous levels of stupidity and sometimes, that’s fun. The ‘celebrity masks’ used on the show were pretty damn grotesque and one of the most grotesque ones was the Kelly Osbourne mask (and character too in fact). There was one particular sketch where the Kelly Osbourne character was trying to pimp some show and suddenly takes on this bizarre cockney voice and says something like, “Look kiddies, we got aww yow five’ritz (all your favourites... duh)!!”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">I laughed then...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">I sure as hell wasn’t laughing last night when IPL “commissioner” Lalit Modi seemed to be saying that at the IPL opening ceremony, considering the “entertainment” in store for ticket-holding suckers. Some sources told me that the Deccan Chargers management organised the opening ceremony. Unconfirmed rumours of course, but regardless, an opening ceremony there most certainly was. And amid the ceremony were “aww yow five’ritz” comprising Lionel Richie, UB40, some stupid parody act called Bjorn Again and the truly Godawful (there really is no other word) Deepika Padukone. *shudder*</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Who, it must be asked, would organise a the inauguration of a tournament of Twenty20 — a game that’s meant to be 21st Century fast, loud, brash — and invite the first three clowns to perform? And then think it’s a good idea? What percentage of the audience actually wanted to see Lionel Richie, UB40 and a joke act from Australia pretending to be Swedish? Padukone on the other hand, was just a joke. Spinning around sluggishly to some frankly foolish Bollywood songs and some Black Eyed Peas stuff. And calling Navi Mumbai “Mumbai”. Good one.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">(</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;">Call that nitpicking if you will, but to me that’s like some punk act I once saw claiming that Leeds was their favourite place in London, England</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The theme of the whole event however, was what baffled me the most. I had heard somewhere that the IPL (or maybe one of the franchises were supporting the UNAIDS programme). The curtains (?) around the stage that were inflated at the start and floated skyward and hung there and acted as a projector screen (I’m not kidding) seemed to resemble a condom cut in half. Then, each of the eight franchises were represented by what looked like large inflatable penises with their logo on them. Finally, the stage was surrounded by these people in what to the best of my understanding resembled chef outfits with a white triangular hat (that looked like a piece of cheese).</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Actually a better comparison would be Ku Klux Klan outfits, with that piece of cheese on them. Now one can only assume that these people — going with the analogy — were supposed to represent sperm cells. So you got the penises, the condom and the sperm cells running around everywhere randomly lighting up in all sorts of different colours (with some LED set up). I don’t know what that’s supposed to represent. Maybe a message of how every sperm is special and so you shouldn’t masturbate? Mr Modi, care to clarify?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">But as with everything in life, there’s always something positive to every negative and believe me, you’d be real hard-pressed to find anything positive in thousands of grown up men and women pretending to be sperm cells. But, here goes. </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.popset.com.au/images/lm/laserman01.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 266px; height: 130px;" src="http://www.popset.com.au/images/lm/laserman01.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">One particular segment of the silhouette of a drummer on a curtain (that condom from earlier) as he drummed away was rather good. Laser Man was the BOMB!! I love lasers and that performance was some unequivocally mad shit. It’s dawned on me now that it’s pretty rude to call those Nu Klansmen “sperm cells”. I think I’ll call them “little chefs” henceforth. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Lionel Richie came on at the end and performed one song called Lord-knows-what... oh yeah, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;">Dancing on the Ceiling</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">. That’s the one. Now these little chefs were positioned in straight lines from the stage over to the boundary. So if the ground was a cycle tyre, these little chefs formed the spokes. Got it? And they had to do some obscure dance where they were swaying from side-to-side while doing jumping jacks. This, to me, was more than just ill-conceived choreography. <span style="font-style: italic;">I’m doing my best not to underplay the profundity of this</span>.<br /><br />The cycle spoke thing for me, was a metaphor for life. In life, as those little chefs demonstrated, you are expected (seldom for some, regularly for others) to fall in line and dance to the beat of someone else’s drum. Painful job or relationship perhaps. And sometimes, you’re even expected to do so while dressed foolishly. Painful job that requires you to wear a chicken suit (or a normal suit and tie for that matter). Savvy?<br /><br />Every now and then somebody comes along, who falls in line, dresses foolishly as told and dances to someone else’s beat... but does it with such a massive grin on his/her face that it really makes you stop complaining about trivialities. Most of the little chefs were just going through the motions, while wondering how many bedsheets they could make from their costumes. A couple of them, whom I dubbed “happy little chefs” were really getting into it, jumping around all over the place. If behaviour or body language was in fact a window to a person’s feelings, their vigorous, energetic and really really happy movements told me that person’s face must be home to a humongous smile.<br /><br />And suddenly it didn’t seem to matter that they may have been playing sperm cells in a macabre skit also involving a giant condom and eight penises. The little chefs lighting up randomly now seemed quite cool. They had a job to do and were doing it, some with a hell of lot more enthusiasm than others. They were on the world’s stage after all. Their happy jumping jacks took away all the incredulity, irritation and disgust I’d been harbouring until then. Sachin, Warnie, Ganguly, Dhoni, Padukone and Richie all got pretty robust rounds of applause and cheers from the crowd. I saved my loudest applause for the happy little chefs.<br /><br />Bring on the cricket!</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><br /></span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4055563988430825137.post-63054007628091108662010-02-25T12:21:00.004+05:302010-02-25T14:56:13.884+05:30Twas only a matter of time<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Jasper (the old guy with the long beard) from </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The Simpsons</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> had made quite a poignant remark once while trying (the operative word is </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >trying</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">) to watch television. He’d said, “Two hundred channels; Nothing but cats.” That was me a few days ago. </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Road to Perdition </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">on one channel, some dumb ass show called </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >TMZ</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> on another channel. News channels all airing the same boring story. Some crap on the sports channels and </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >CSI </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">on another.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Two hundred channels; Nothing but crap, I heard myself say.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Of course, to be fair, there was </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Bad Santa</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> on some channel, but that wouldn’t be on until hours later. My unfathomable love for that film will be discussed at another time, in another post. Not now. Idly flipping through channels reminded me of a time nearly two decades ago, when all we had was two channels — </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Doordarshan </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">and </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >DD-Metro</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">. Today, I cannot make any sense of how only two channels were enough back then, but they were. Strangely enough.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Cartoons, news, TV shows, music shows, sports (involving India) etc. Most of the programming was quite high-quality stuff. Television shows like </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Buniyaad</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Malgudi Days, Oshin, Humlog, Nukkad </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">and so on are the stuff of legend. I saw the entire coverage of the first Gulf War on Doordarshan news in tiny bit-size packages. No </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >CNN</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> for us back then. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Then again, I probably didn’t watch too much television back then. Read a fair bit. Used my imagination a fair bit. A shit load more than some of these loser kids of today. (</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Again, a topic for a different time</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">). For instance, I played cricket — albeit with a plastic bat and ball — long before I’d ever seen a match on television. 1992’s probably when I watched my first cricket match on television. I’d never seen this sport being actually played. And they wore some pretty spiffy pyjama-style outfits, I remember thinking. Note: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Doordarshan</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> only used to telecast matches featuring India and so, the first match I saw was India v/s England. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">WACA, Perth</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Benson and Hedges World Cup</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">February 22, 1992</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Set as it was in Australia, matches started long before I woke up for school and would be done before we were done with school. Plus, there was a small highlights package which was on long after I was asleep. The day India played England (in day/night match), I managed to catch most of the match. I don’t know how. Probably skipped school or something. Can’t remember.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">With the fall of Mohammad Azharuddin’s wicket, in walked a diminutive (the word’s a dead give away) man, who seemed to be wearing a helmet a couple of sizes too big. Massive mop of curly hair and he looked no more than a couple of years older than me, I thought. I was 7. Every shot he unfurled in that knock against England looked amazing. I love that guy, I thought to myself. Saw him get out cheaply in the next match against the West Indies. It doesn’t matter, I thought.<br /><br />Over the next few years, I got more and more involved in playing the game. Signed up with a few coaching classes. Realised I enjoyed bowling a hell of a lot more than batting, but I’d kill to be able to bat like <span style="font-weight: bold;">that</span>. <span style="font-weight: bold;">That </span>of course was that little kid on TV, who was slowly but surely making a huge name for himself in a game of men. And he bowled too! To think he started off as a quick bowler, which was what I was trying to do. Brilliant. And he was singlehandedly bowling India to wins. Once in a while.<br /><br />Skipping forward, 1996 was the year the World Cup came to India and I did not miss a single bit of the action. Didn’t actually make it into any stadia, but watched all the matches on television. That was the era of cricket viewing for me, when I’d be depressed beyond belief at an Indian loss. So obviously, the semi final balls-up left me quite depressed for a while. But this little kid had the highest runs aggregate in any World Cup played till then (obviously he broke the record again years later).<br /><br /><a href="http://sachinandcritics.com/sachin_mem_moments.php">The Sandstorm Match</a> (from the legendary Sharjah encounters) happened a few years later. In addition to being a match that any Indian worth his/her salt ought to remember, this little man (as part of a montage of his shots) actually made <span style="font-style: italic;">Tubthumping</span> sound like an amazing song. Such was the effect of the cool he oozed that I still think it’s a decent song. I love that guy. Meanwhile, loud renditions of “Sa-chin... SACHIN *clap clap clap*” had been doing the rounds in stadia all across the world and the mere notion of Mr Tendulkar stepping out to bat gave the best of the best of bowlers from across the globe, mad heebie-jeebies.<br /><br />Meanwhile, just as that was happening with Sachin, batsmen from all over shuddered whenever the acronym “KP” (not that South African-English fake KP) was mentioned, followed by the phrase “... is the next bowler”. The fact that these batsmen who did shudder, could barely hold a bat and that all over, is probably more accurately described as all over Delhi’s Gulmohar Park area.<br /><br />The fact is I was a deadly accurate and lightning fast bowler.<br /><br />Ok... I was quite accurate and quick in the air.<br /><br />FINE!! I was about as accurate as Shah Rukh Khan is Venezuelan and would seem like a fast bowler only if the sole basis of comparison was Carl Hooper. Happy?<br /><br />Bloody digression. Anyway, next began the era when television sets across India and the world would be swiftly switched off when Sachin was dismissed. A family friend of ours and I almost left Lords when the little man was dismissed with a long long way to go in <span style="font-weight: bold;">that</span> NatWest Trophy. Saner minds prevailed then and we stayed on.<br /><br />Saner minds, did I say? For the decades of runs and entertainment that this man gave the world, the least he could’ve asked for in return, was saner minds. Towards the second decade of his career, every time he was injured, dismissed cheaply or caught saying something that people misconstrued, there was a hue and cry and calls for his head. It’s been the case for the longest time.<br /><br />From being called “overrated”, “tired”, “selfish” to being accused of “only being interested in records and never playing for the team or winning the team any matches”, he’s had to hear the most moronic remarks and indictments from people who really ought to know better. Former players, random armchair pundits, politicians (well, one politician) etc. It got to an era where it became “cool” to knock Sachin for every little thing.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Why did India lose in the Caribbean?</span> Sachin’s fault<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Why does the batting keep crumbling? </span>Sachin’s fault<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Why does global warming happen? </span>Sachin’s fault<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Why are India and Pakistan constantly at each other’s throats? </span>Sachin’s fault<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Why do I feel the need to blog today? </span>Sachin’s fault<br /><br />And how has he responded? Blasting bowlers from Australia, England, Pakistan, West Indies, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Bermuda, Turkmenistan, Antarctica, Mars, Alpha Centauri and even bloody Rigel-7 into oblivion. I physically cannot create a compendium of his greatest knocks, because frankly it’d take too long. Enough of the introduction and the tying in “where my life was when he did what” thing.<br /><br />There was obviously going to be someone who’d hit 200 one day in One Day International cricket. Sachin had gotten bloody close on a number of occasions. He had no other highest score or fastest score records to his name (most runs doesn’t count). Fact of the matter is even a kid from Mumbai broke the record he set with Vinod Kambli for the highest partnership eons ago. It was only a matter of time till he broke this one.<br /><br />The Don knew it, Shane Warne knew it, Sunil Gavaskar knew it, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson probably knew it, you knew it, I knew it and now, the record books know it...<br /><br />Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, the world’s first ODI double-centurion...<br />What’s left to say except, I love that guy.</span>[tRiaD]http://www.blogger.com/profile/05598956146230740326noreply@blogger.com0