Monthly Archive for November, 2010

Radia Activity

Published on November 30, 2010 in Media and Politics. 61 Comments

[This post is a somewhat longer version of this earlier post, reflecting some updates since this was written]

In Hindi movies, on which we grew up, the villain may be a politician, a policeman, a businessman or even a priest. But in very few movies, would you find a newspaperman “editor-sahaab” to be anything but a knight in shining armor who even though he might not make it alive till the intermission would never compromise on his ideals. Maybe that is why while we expect our politicians and the police to be corrupt (and they unfailingly exceed our expectations), for the person carrying a pencil and a clipboard our standards are very different.

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Bring Laloo Back

Published on November 26, 2010 in Politics. 51 Comments

As the Indian Bramhanical-industrial-complex exults at the defeat of Laloo Yadav and his “Osama Bin Laden as election mascot” comrade Paswan let me say, with a loud voice, that this is all a conspiracy. Against Dalits. Against people who eat fodder. Against high-carb milk sweets. Against generous ear and nose hair. Against people who like to watch Mamta Kulkarni dance.

Voting for development? What’s wrong with you people? Voting for performance? You gotta be kidding me.

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The Great Indian Loot

Published on November 20, 2010 in Politics. 95 Comments

Dil ka darwaja khulla hai Raja,
Aath roj ki tu chutti leke aaja. [Main Khiladi Tu Anadi]

Madhu Koda. The Reddys. Yedurappa. Adarsh. Suresh Kalmadi. Telgi. Raja. As one swirls one’s spoon on the surface of the murky alphabet soup that is Indian politics, the letters arrange themselves for a while, floating on the surface. Wisps of smoke twirl up. Then with a whiff of blown air, the alphabets rearrange themselves, new names are formed, and the old ones vanish into the depths.

The tragedy of Indian corruption is not just its Dolly Bindra-n scale but the way each outrage is buried by increasingly bigger outrages. If today we wonder, in stunned silence, the “1 G 2G roji suno ji one two ka four four two ka one” telecom bandwidth allocation lafda which, with its number of zeroes, has surely made a case for using a log-scale to represent scam-amounts, most of us know that in an atmosphere of “karta hoon main woh jo tum bhi karo ji” it will be months, if not weeks, before this is eclipsed by something even bigger.

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The Big B

Published on November 16, 2010 in History. 61 Comments

Growing up in the 90s, most Indian males fantasized about the day they could bring Pam Anderson home as their bahu—-she all sharmili in her red Baywatch-bikini colored sari, her mangalsutra gleaming in the diffused light, coming to the room with a glass of milk.

And then she would bend down and touch our feet.

Well at least bend down.

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An Open Letter

Published on November 9, 2010 in Politics. 130 Comments

Dear Mr. Obama,

Thank you for visiting India. Thank you for considering us worthy of the honor of hosting you. Thank you for dancing to our humble music. Thank you for allowing us to buy USD 10 billion worth of your goods, unlike the poor Pakistanis who get them for free. Thank you for allowing us to create 50,000 American jobs—we cannot tell you how honored that makes us feel. (Take that Pakistan !). Thank you for promising to support us for a seat in the United Nations Security Council using the same ambiguously “some time some day when the time is right and under appropriate conditions” language mothers use when they don’t want to say no to a child asking for an expensive gift.

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