The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Apologies for the long absence from the blogging scene. There has been a lot happening on the non blogging aspects of life. For one, I should soon be heading back home. No, I have not been laid off as yet but my company seems to have a charming policy for me. It allows me to spend the sweltering summers in India and the freezing winters in UK. My company is renowned for such employee friendly policies.

As I write this post, The T20 World Cup is in the semi-final stage and India, as described in most of the popular media has made an unceremonious exit from the tournament, a train of thought, I firmly disagree with. In my opinion, the Indian team played impeccably well and I will attempt a short review of some of the classiest performers in the team to prove my point.

By the way, if anyone ever comes across a sentence which uses the phrase 'ceremonious exit', then please let me know.

Suresh Raina - I think he performed marvelously and we should not be misled by statistics. He is a performer par excellence and for him the World Cup was a stage, a grand stage to showcase his art. The only issue was that someone should have informed this great artist that this was not the World Cup for Belle dancing, which, had it been, he would have won hands down considering the awe-inspiring dance steps that he regaled the audience with while facing bouncers from the West Indian and English fast bowlers. No prizes on guessing on who would be winning the next Nach Baliye contest. As he gyrated all around the wicket, I think I faintly heard Dhoni shouting from the stands,

"Raina....in kutton ke saamne mat naach"...but it was a tad too late, Basanti..er..Raina had already begun his performance...

Ravindra Jadeja - This guy is a true hero. No longer would terminally ill patients need to petition the government to grant them the right to euthanasia, nor people contemplating suicide take to drastic measures to end their lives. All their misery and suffering can be alleviated by simply watching this master play an innings of cricket. He guarantees you a peaceful death out of sheer boredom. If only the poor chap could have held his wicket for some more time in the match against England, we were assured of a victory as the English players were sure to concede defeat to escape from the grotesque torture that Jadeja was imparting upon one and all in the name of batting. The below is what one of my dear friends Nilabza, had to say about him:
"He should be fed to pigs. Country seller, Olokhi pecha ekta, Dekteo shala ta shutki bepari laage , Gu khawrar dol" (Jinxed Owl that he is, looks like a vendor selling smelly dried fish , Pack of shit eaters)

I leave it to your imagination to visualise this.

Yuvraj Singh - His attitude and facial expressions makes you feel guilty of the fact that you are not paying him special taxes for the huge favour he seems to be doing to mankind by playing cricket. If arrogance and conceit were to ever procreate, my assumptions are that their offspring would have shocking similarity with Yuvraj. Yuvraj was once considered one of the best fielders in world cricket. Even today his fielding is a captain's delight. So what if the captain is now from the opposition teams. The manner in which he let go the ball off the last delivery of Harbhajan's over should be a lesson for any kid but one should remember that there is no easy path to such success. Such finesse can only come from a correct mixture of nonchalance, callousness, irresponsibility and more importantly the ability to withstand pressure of trivial issues such as the fact that you are representing your country. It comes after a lot of practice and IPL matches.

Ishant Sharma - He was once a bowler who bowled with fierce pace and aggression and scared the wits out of classy players like Ricky Pointing. That was becoming too passe and predictable I guess. So the Indian think tank had a new role for him in this tournament. They said, "Ishant tu Zombie banega" and boy did he play his role to perfection !! Of course his stint with the Kolkata Knight Riders team just before the world cup helped a great deal in his preparations.By the time he came into the tournament, he had well perfected the art of bowling like a top notch imbecile and seamlessly slipped into the role expected of him by the team management. BCCI must be complimented for creating this well-oiled machinery that churns out players with such unique repertoire of skills.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni - Last but certainly not the least of the awesome performers was our great Kapitan Kool. But the temperature of his coolness has steadily been decreasing over the past couple of months to have now reached a sub zero level.

Initially I thought that he was suffering from some bowel clearance problems which can understandably make any person irritable, but the lowly mortal that I am, I had got it completely wrong. Under the sheet of ice with which he came up to address press conferences, was a great thinker and strategist at work.

His decision to make practice sessions optional before both the crucial Super 8 matches speaks volumes of his wisdom and far sightedness. Could we have seen the grand Raina-Gambhir Hopping show otherwise ? Continuing with Zombie Sharma in spite of RP having figures of 1/13 of 3 overs and his extraordinary decision to send in Jadeja ahead of Yuvraj and Pathan are what legends are written of. The media is calling him rude but then they fail to see his benign nature which was in full display while he batted. He did everything possible to do away with the tag of being an aggressive batsman which the media again had foolishly added to his reputation over the years. He hit just four boundaries and a single six in the entire tournament which goes miles to show his kind nature and concern for the opposition. After all winning is not everything; there is something known as humanity too which is so much more important than a mere game of cricket.

In light of the above, I think we should stop being unnecessarily emotional about this whole issue and learn to see beyond the obvious. There is inherent greatness in the Indian cricket team way beyond the comprehension of ordinary cricket fans such as me and you. We would never stop watching India play, no matter what we think of their performance. So lets get on with it. There is a series to lose in West Indies. Cheers !!

(Thanks a lot to Anjali for kicking me out of my laziness,,,,....)

Dot Kaun ?

A writer's block is more painful than normal constipation. While there are many churans and molasses to loosen the blockage in the gastro-intestinal tract, a thought blockage has very few laxatives. One of the toughest jobs, I find, is to come back and complete an unfinished blog entry.Many of my blog entries thus have to undergo abortion owing to the callousness of this mental obstinacy.The idea of this post was to pen some quick reviews of the websites of the leading regional parties and never has the word quick been so humiliated. But as they say, better late than never, so here it is...........


Samajwadi Party (http://www.samajwadipartyindia.com) : Its the great visionary party which has correctly identified English as the root cause of underdevelopment in India and has promised us that they will do all in their power to root out this evil.
And Computers ....oh my God....that wretched thing which is gobbling up all Indian jobs......Probably the Indian IT industry generating 60 billion USD is actually a major ISI ploy to destabilise our economy. Thank God for Mulayamji else we were all headed for certain doom. The brilliant manifesto also highlights the plight of bullocks and cows who have lost their ploughing jobs to the mean tractors and are thus ending up in the slaughter house. Now this is what we call tackling the recession by the horns. Meanwhile the General Secretary of the party Mr.Sanjay Dutt has been warned by a District Magistrate for making amorous advances towards the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Mrs.Dutt, his staunchest supporter meanwhile not surprisingly is busy buying clothes in London.
The homepage of their website correctly shows the socialists of today showing the right way to the socialists of yesteryears:

Nothing of much interest within the website unless Jaya Bachchan's phone number interests you. The photo gallery has some nice quips though. For e.g one photograph shows Mr.Yadav flanked by two armed commandoes and has the heading "Words of Wisdom" with the caption "Samajawadi Party will never concile with any other party".
It does not matter that there is no word such as concile in English. He is against the whole language anyway.


Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (http://dmk.in/) - With a sincere urge to know the reason why Mr.Karunanidhi always wears dark glasses, I googled for it. The probabilities expressed ranged from a permanently rotating eye ball to a venereal disease because of which he cannot face the world eye to eye. Utter nonsense, my point is, why would a politician need a venereal disease to not be able to face the world ?
Anyway the homepage of their website seemed pretty boring and unsophisticated till something caught my attention. In much the same way that the Ramsay Brothers would have calligraphed their latest flick 'Chudail ki Dysentry', the wise designers of the DMK website too have added a similar link that reads 'Midnight Arrest' in a font seemingly dripping with blood. But the fun is when you click the link. I would not spoil your fun by describing it in words. Have a GO yourself and experience the maturity of the world's largest democracy and yes do try clicking the Skip option in the page.
The remaining sections within the website were completely outdated or irrelevant with the election manifesto of 2004 being the latest link in the chronological links.
As regards their policies, well that is not important as long as the Sri Lankan government is fighting the LTTE.


Bahujan Samaj Party (http://bspindia.org): This was the first image that greeted me on their website

Can you blame the chap Afzal Guru now ?

I was initially impressed by the honesty displayed by the party in the website when I saw downward arrows against the Leadership and Achievement links. But I soon realised that the arrows only meant the presence of more links rather than being indicative of their performance in those areas.
The party highlights a very important demographic fact below:

As you can see, according to BSP, there are billions of Untouchable poor people in the country. Now since the Iron Lady is not to be questioned unless one wants to be turned to Rust,I did some elementary mathematics. Considering that the entire population of India is around 1.2 billion, it would mean that all of us Indians would need to be Untouchables to fulfil this observation. In a sense that is quite a progressive thought which would lead to huge savings in the defense expenditure of the country because of the simple reason that No One can Touch Us now.
The website per-se is quite okay. There is all the information you want as long as the information concerns Mayawati. Rest are all 'Comming Soon'.


Biju Janata Dal - No websites. After they cunningly dumped the BJP, they are now extremely wary of any web-designers.


All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (http://www.aiadmkallindia.org) - I wonder why a regional party, with a presence in only one out of 28 states, needs to have the 'All India' tag in its name !!But then I guess the party cadres have always been motivated by bigger sized entities.

Another boring and very poorly designed website. There was such a lack of material in the site that I actually opened their manifesto and would you believe what I found in it :

Jaya Ho...Jaya Ho...!!!!


Shiv Sena (http://www.shivsena.org) Bala Saheb needs a nail-cutter immediately. The sharp finger jab at you from the homepage is not very welcoming to say the least but then what place does decorum have in Shiv Sena anyway. Again a very rudimentary website in terms of content with the picture of two Thackerays taking nearly the entire page. Four of the five links do not work and the only so called material in the site is in the form of embedded You Tube videos. What is more surprising is that the website is not in Marathi !! Some MNS workers came to know of this and damaged a few cyber cafes in protest.


Janata Dal(Secular) (http://www.janatadalsecular.org.in)
Led by a man who has the unique capability of falling asleep even in his sleep, this party is really fighting for survival in this election.

A pretty professional website though you may initially confuse it for that of a restaurant but then on second thoughts, I think, all politicians have a great talent for cooking; the common ingredient in whatever they dish out is shamelessness of course.

A visit to the Join JD(S) section would clearly eliminate you and a large chunk of population from their membership because each such aspirant must be a 'habitual wearer of hand-spun and handwoven khadi'. Now that is what we call wearing patriotism on your sleeve.The entire website has a distinct and all pervading green and a little analysis has confirmed that the colour actually started transforming to its present tinge soon after the BJP government came into power in Karnataka.

Thats it guys. Let the dance of democracy continue. I hear that Rakhi Sawant wants to judge the show and marry whoever wins it.

So who takes the credit ?

For months now, I have been hearing of the Economic Depression and Credit Crunch. As financial crunch and me go back many moons, I never paid much attention to it until I heard politicians committing billions of dollars to help resolve the crisis. I wondered whether I could be a beneficiary too if I presented my case well enough and thus I started reading ........

The following is a short summary of a few terms which can help laymen like me understand what the hoopla is all about :

Sub-prime crisis: This is the mother of all reasons. People bought new homes with borrowed money, like most do. Then they did not like repaying like most don't. Banks wrapped up these loans in nice packages and resold them other banks and financial institutions. This concept of packaging actually originated in India as shown here and was silently plagiarized by the Americans.
What goes up must come down.
Yes brothers, this sad truth applies to economy as well.
So the prices of houses which had sky-rocketed fell big time and soon the whole world realised that the United States of America had sold shit to them.......once again.
One of the first to be crumble was the British bank, Northern Rock. Couldn't have chosen a more inappropriate name I say.

Fannie May and Freddie Mac - No, they are not McDonald Burgers. Actually two naughty banks who gave money to anyone and everyone who wanted to own a home. Yes even Barbie doll houses were financed. After all America is known to help build homes worldwide. Take architectural marvels of Iraq such as this for example.


Lehman Brother's Diwalia Bumper : It took 159 years for the collapse of this giant financial institution as they filed for bankruptcy in October 2008. In India, anything started jointly by brothers usually lasts till the brothers get married and thus such situations never arise.
On the day, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the worth of its shares had dropped 90% from its previous day close. Just ten more percent and I could have bought the company myself. Now before you start heaping praises at me for my business acumen, I must humbly say that I actually spent four of my formative years (read Engineering) in the state of Gujarat and we all know that when a Gujarati says he is going to the market to buy rice and oil, he actually means commodity trading in the stock market.
Okay now you can heap the praises.

Merrily Lynched : Within a day, Merril Lynch, another financial bigwig, was taken over by the Bank of America in what Wikipedia describes as 'distressing circumstances'. Just for your trivia, Merryl Lynch was ranked #1 by Forbes for 'stock picking and estimate accuracy' in 2008 and #3 by the Wall Street Journal in a similar category. It also won the Best Research House of the Year Award. How profound!
If only the Lehman guys had spent some time researching a good buyer for themselves. They finally landed with a company called Nomura which means No-Head in quite a few Indian languages.

Tata Bye Bye AIG - American Insurance Group. Wow ! Thats the only expression I have for this magnificently employee friendly company. Imagine this. You belong to the worst performing department of your company and your misadventures have caused colossal losses to the company to the extent that 80% of the company stake had to be sold to the Government for the company to remain solvent. In any other company, you would have been fired with Oxy-Acetylene up your soft posterior orifice.
But not in AIG. This marvelous company, which got Rs 8500 crore from the government to settle its bad debts actually paid the employees responsible for this downfall a very small sum of Rs 825 crore as bonus !! Now that is what I call a Dream Company.

Millions of people worldwide have been left unemployed as a cascading effect of the gross incompetencies of these so called Financial Gurus. Whole countries such as Iceland, Latvia and Bulgaria are going down under the impact of this crisis which is the worst since the Great Depression of the 30's. The figures in the stimulus packages cause temporomandibular joint dislocations (My sister is a doctor you see!).

But this is one laughter where there is no joke.

Happy Easters to all of you. The Lord would do well to resurrect one more time.

Delhi 6 - A case of twisted ankle at the touch line

Guys, this is my first attempt at movie reviews. Actually had written this for passionforcinema.com. Thus you may find an uncharacteristic civility in the tone. But as the PFC guys did not print it, you all are to become my victims.

Imagine having a whale of a time with your family in a one of those fascinating fairs with lots of rides, bhel puris and 'Maut ka Kuwa'-motorcycle shows.
You are up on the merry-go-round and just as it is about to make that jaw shattering drop, the machine stops. Everything comes to a standstill and Arundhati Roy climbs all the way up a ladder to where you are sitting and gives you a tight slap. Before you comprehend whats happening, she slaps you again and starts an half an hour monologue on the problems faced by farmers due to the Narmada Dam and berates you for your audacity to have fun when people out there are suffering. Well thats pretty much how I felt while watching Delhi 6, so ridiculous was the sudden and completely unnecessary smattering of morality upon the poor unsuspecting viewers who were all having a gala time.

The story had begun awesomely well. The earnestness of the camera while shooting the lanes of Chandi Chowk along with all her nuances gives you a genuine feeling of warmth and belongingness. The characters are full of life and truth and the ensemble cast deliver crackling performances. Rishi Kapoor in yet another superbly measured performance as an old friend of Roshan's father, Deepak Dobriyal as the lovable Jalebi-wala Mamdu, Pavan Malhotra and Om Puri as two warring brothers and the exceedingly beautiful Bua, Aditi Rao Hyadri all turn in superlative performances to significantly raise the bar of the movie. I thought the pick of the wonderful cast was Vijay Raaz as the despicable local policeman who made me cringe with the profanity he brought into his character.

Sonam Kapoor has such a vivacious and infectious smile that you would just wonder at what the devil had possesed Sanjay Leela Bhansali to cast her in a movie as Sawariya. But of course this was probably one of his lesser offences compared to the grave cinematic injuries that the movie had inflicted upon us in the name of entertainment. Rarely had any 'entertainment' before Sawariya left the audience beaten so Black and Blue.
However in Delhi 6 Sonam just yaps and yaps her way into your hearts and surely we want to see more of this Jhakkas girl.
Abhishek Bachchan is certainly not one of my favourite actors but he too turns in quite a pleasant performance. The American accent was quite ridiculous but was compensated for with some genuinely authentic expressions through his journey of self realisation in the midst the bustle of Old Delhi.

The love story is beautifully underplayed and most of the scenes are quite clever. The lovely picturisation of the 'Dil Gira Daftaan' song where Abhishek amalgamates his Indianness with his western upbringing is truly a viewer's delight. Special mention of the remote control scene which was soaked with original humor.

So what in the story doesn't work ?
First and foremost, the repeated usage of the 'Kala Bandar' concept which I think the director used to metaphorise the black devil residing within each of us.I believe an art of filmmaking is to convey the meaning through subtleties. However if the director assumes you to be an idiot and gives individual attention to opening up your skull and hammerring in his ideas, the comprehension is often spoilt with the brazenness of the narration.

What was working in Delhi 6's favour was actually the seeming lack of direction in its story. The moment the makers of the film thought of giving it a direction, and much worse a commercially motivated direction, the whole foundation of the movie came crashing down. The idea was to pass a message somehow to the audience but it seems no one had a clue what that message should be and by the time the movie reached its grotesque climax, it was just plain desperation in display. Someone needed to tell Rakesh Omprakash Mehra that Basanti was just not the Rang required here.
Already enough has been said and written about the climax, so I will avoid going into the details but if an award is ever announced to honour scenes which butchered a complete movie, the heaven sequence will have few competitors.I guess the Jalebi in that scene too was a metaphor signifying our knotted brains being chewed by Abhishek and his Dad.

Indian audience is open to intelligent cinema now. The success of directors such as Vishal Bharadwaj, Rajat Kapoor and Anurag Kashyap is testimony to the fact that the audience is maturing.
Delhi 6, while promising much, ends up disappointing the audience and what is really sad is that only if the director had not had the preaching attack, this one would have been quite enjoyable.

Hum honge Kaam-iyaab ek din

One more Valentine's Day came and went by and my status in all social networking sites still remains unchanged. Not that I am in any hurry to change it either but when you hear of awe-inspiring achievements of 13 year old whizkids such as this, one does tend to get a little retrospective.

While this chocolate-faced kid was excelling in his Fornication practicals, I probably at his age had not even realised the complete responsibilities of the male hand.
In those days, the Hindi film industry contributed no less to this lack of knowledge with their rampant misrepresentation of basic facts making us young minds think that if a man gets too near a woman, both would turn into head banging yellow Dahlias ! Whatever was the intelligent metaphor in this representation of sexual activity, I fail to understand even today.
However the movies have become more informative over the years and if there was an Oscar for best dialogue in a motion picture, this one which I randomly came across would have won hands down (not literally of course). It went like this:

"Jaise ek Ration ka dukan har hafte ek din band rehta hai, Ek aurat ka Pyar ka Dukaan bhi mahine me chaar din band rehta hai"

Whoa !! Now, 'Consortium of Loose Women', Please don't send me Pink Chaddis . I had nothing to do with this. Sparkling Red would more suit my personality.

(A tin of Ferrero Rocher to anyone who names the movie.....Hint: Antonym of a hit Bipasha Basu movie)

Often we hear of debates on whether sex education should be a made a part of the school curriculum but every time such a debate rages, I wonder how these guys actually plan to impart this 'education'? I mean imagine this....

Curious Kid: "Ma'am, where do babies come from"
Teacher(caught unawares) : "Ah babies...yeah right babies...where do they come from now..alright.. You know the storks......
Curious Kid : Oh cmon teacher, don't give me the stork story. My aunt had a baby yesterday and when I asked her this same question she said something about horny evenings in a car backseat with no protection"
Teacher ( oh damn this slut of an aunt). Well well..Thats not exactly how it works...A baby develops inside a female body after the successful fusion of the male sperm with the female egg "
Curious Kid : I see.
Teacher: So you understand right.
Curious Kid : Yes but what is a sperm ? What is fusion and can you females all lay eggs then ?
Teacher: Oh no no no...slow down ...Well sperms are like those tadpoles we saw the other day....only much smaller....
Curious Kid : Ah so now we have frogs too...Quite a zoo we had inside my aunt's stomach! No wonder it got so big ..So how did this sperm thinghy get inside my aunt?
Teacher: Well..right ..yes your uncle put it in there
Curious Kid : Really ? But why would he want to put the tadpoles in my aunt's stomach when they have that big aquarium in their house. He could have put it in there...isn't it.
Teacher: Tch..Tch.. No he had to put it inside your aunt for the baby to grow you see.
Curious Kid : Right. So did aunt have to eat this tadpole ?
Teacher: Oh no No .You don't eat these tadpoles ...Well ..Er..
Curious Kid : No ?? So how did it go in ?
Teacher: What ...what went in ??
Curious Kid : The tadpole ..what else ?
Teacher: Ah the tadpole ..yes .. Are you sure that you didn't see any storks near the hospital?

Or ones like this

Curious Kid : "Dad whats a condom?"
Dad : "Something which could have saved me from answering this question,son"

And we haven't even reached at the more complex questions.
But while it may be a tough task to satisfy the curiosity of the kids of this generation it is quite unacceptable to read of such news which shakes the very foundations of morality.
Ha Ha Ha Ha ....whom am I kidding...!!! Wait ...can I even use the word kidding anymore ???

Kala Ghoda Festival -55 Word Stories

The theme for this year was Cheating.
These entries were an attempt to be unnecessarily intellectual. No wonder the judges kicked me out.
The winning entries can be found here

Below were my entries:


********************************(I)************************************************

He promised her for the umpteenth time that he would catch the earliest possible flight tomorrow. The sudden realization that Ayala was already five brought a smile to Abraham’s face as he collected his coat and wished the gentlemen a pleasant evening. There was some commotion at the reception.

The autopsy would reveal five bullets.

*********************************(II)***********************************************


I promise to bring electricity and drinking water to your village.
I promise to root out corruption.
I promise to generate more means of employment.
I promise to be secular and not fan regionalism.
I promise to provide you education.
I promise to uphold the principles of democracy.
I promise you Justice, Equality and Liberty.

*******************************(III)*************************************************

Her luscious lips chained his wayward thoughts as their bodies dissolved in the frenzied heat. The mad rhythm of his hardened flesh rattling the softness of her womanhood and their wild cries of passion conjoined to create pulsating sonata of raw energy. Heavy breathing interludes.

“And……… Cut.” “Nice expressions Christina. Let’s all break for lunch.”

********************************(IV)************************************************

Sanjay was always a big hit with his nephews. He was more of one among them and his annual visits to India invariably translated to unlimited frolic and tonight was the big movie night. Yippee!
Steamed spicy sweetcorn, Samosas, tons of popcorn, gallons of Pepsi and the opening credits…………

RamGopal Varma presents ‘RGV Ki Aag’

********************************(V)************************************************

The weed fogged the path of sanity. Trees had radiant blue fishes hung by their tails while headless demons danced around the pyre of his emotions. “Bitch”. The Priest was Breaking the Law. Snakes bit hard and ladders led to infinity. He gulped thirty white moons.

Consciousness gifted him a revengeful headache. Damn fake medicines!

********************************************************************************
More information on the contest can be found here.