Monthly Archive for March, 2006

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Washington DC Bloggers Meet

Published on March 12, 2006 in Blogmeets. 21 Comments

The Washington DC Bloggers Meet held in the food court of Union Station was a grand success. Guerilla reporters of famous newspapers ignored the meeting instead choosing to cover breaking stories in Fallujah. Noone called themselves “elite” , noone arrived claiming to be the “real DC” bloggers, noone hit on anyone and the meeting went off peacefully.

Michael Higgins, the amazingly plugged-in blogger whose knowledge of India has to be seen to be believed, came in prepared with small table signs, a “happy birthday” cake and a present for the Ravikiran Rao, who was driving down with Arzan from New York. (I am hoping Michael puts up the complete list of attendees with links—so I am avoiding a full rollcall here). Hands were shaken, introductions exchanged, beer was consumed, chicken tikka masala was devoured (well at least I did) and war stories were exchanged.

Yes Mithun-da was discussed. EM’s tattoo was not. Liberterians Libertarians came up. Libras did not.

Arzan made a compelling case for putting Adsense in my posts so as to cover hosting costs. Incidentally, I hope my readers will not mind if I put a few ads tastefully around —right? Right? Yo hoo….

Chetan gave me a card of appreciation for my blog—-which was a very sweet gesture that melted my heart. And as it usually happens when someone does something so nice, I ended up ogling him for the duration of the time we came back via metro.

To my relief, he did not take my picture.

Till the next time—which I hope shall be sooner than expected.

[Update: Chetan blogs about the meet here and Michael does so here [Pictures here]

Love Sweet Love

Published on March 8, 2006 in India and Politics. 157 Comments

A series of bomb blasts in Varanasi. Hindu temples, railstations—the standard targets straight from the Jihadi desktop manual. Nothing new….well hold on there is.

Me. I am new this time.

While previously, I used to call Jihadis as “low lifes” and “scum” and wished that they be subject to “Ashfaq”ing without any lube, I have since changed my stance based on comments on previous posts convincing me of the errors in my perception.

Terrorists are people too. Just like child molesters, the Nazis and Sanjay Kapoor. Many of them were not hugged when they were kids, some had delinquent mothers who would cook them broth in pressure cookers (which is why they use them now for bombing purposes), some grew up watching Ravi Shastri bat while others were fed a staple diet of Manoj Kumar–resulting in a pathological hatred of India and a tendency to say “Aajka din bara mahan hain” at the drop of a bomb.

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Blank Noise Blogathon

Published on March 6, 2006 in Causes. 44 Comments
The Blank Noise Project is having a blog-a-thon on March 7th, 2006 to spread awareness of street sexual harassment.

Leaving aside my objections to BNP and its branch of militant feminism, the cause is worthwhile and some posts, which transcend street harassment and talk about sexual harassment in general are worth reading— making you uneasy and at the same time stunning you into silence by their explosive nature.

There is not much for me to say about this topic that has not been said more eloquently and more fervently elsewhere. However one wonders—do blogathons really help the harassed woman on the streets? Do roadside Romeos read my blog? And would reading this change them in any way?

Goodbye Sourav

Published on March 4, 2006 in Cricket. 94 Comments

Goodbye Sourav Ganguly.

It hurts me to say this. You still had it in you—I would not have said this a few months ago with such certainty. But you showed heart and fight in the Pakistan series despite all odds. You refused to make inflammatory press statements at a time your opponents were trying their best to rub your nose in the ground—instead choosing to let your performances speak. You, the quintessential arrogant man, even pleaded to be allowed to play.

Yes, that’s how much the game meant to you. And your two fighting innings in the last Test amply demonstrated that your cricketing abilities have also not atrophied away.

And while those arrayed against you (a middle-finger-swollen coach who demands absolute authority, tolerates nothing but the presence of only yes-men in his presence and begrudges your wallet and a pathetic ex-wicketkeeper whose shriveling existence on this earth is only justified by how many careers he can destroy and how much of his weight he can throw about as a man of authority), have taken to spreading canards about how much money you made as a captain (not proven) , how you browbeat the last coach into submission (denied by John Wright), and how you faked injury (again disproved)—-you have maintained a dignified silence. Which has raised your stock– a stock that had so spectacularly fallen in the last few years.

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Budget Mysteries

Published on March 1, 2006 in Comedy, Economics and India. 41 Comments

We never celebrated Valentine’s Day growing up. But that doesn’t mean our Februaries were fallow. Because we always had the Union Budget.

A little background. My father is (was, he is retired as of March 1) a professor of Economics at IIMC and my mother is a Masters in Economics from the University of Rochester. Thus watching the budget was a family ritual—-Baba would be taking down notes, Ma would be engrossed in the proceedings while I counted the seconds as to when this torture would end.

Its not that I did not like the Budget—-but that was only because following the Budget, Baba would be asked by newspapers for analytical articles and then there was the occasional television/radio interview where Baba would explain to the laymen the inner workings of the government’s fiscal policy in the same gentle tone that he used to teach me. Except that he did not threaten to stop explaining when the other panelists disagreed. He almost always did that with me. Of course to be fair to Baba, the panelists did not throw temper tantrums.

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