Monthly Archive for April, 2011

Top Five Richest Bollywood Fictional Characters

Published on April 25, 2011 in Bollywood. 152 Comments

Inspired by this, the basic premise suggested by author Samit Basu and another idea by Chittaranjan, here is a top 5 List of the Richest Hindi movie fictional characters, brought to you by Borbes magazine.

5. Y. Raichand

Net Worth: 50 billion

Living in a Scottish castle, commuting by helicopter, and having daily parties where hundreds of women dance in lock-step, the Raichands have always symbolized opulence, khandaani wealth and old world Indian values. Though they maintain their position in the list, primarily because of their investment in high-fructose corn syrup, sugar, heart-shaped balloons, pink cards and romance novels, it has been a stormy year with the next-in-line providing a record 17 flops (if we include his 3 identical copies on a mobile ad, it would be 51 flops), long-time confidante and business partner Kamar Singh defecting and the patriarch tweeting non-stop through it all without much of an “Idea” as to what’s going on.

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Char Ikke

Published on April 19, 2011 in Bollywood. 62 Comments

It has been a sad year for the Hindi film industry. And I am not just referring to the release of Biblical curses like “Golmaal 3″, “Anjana Anjaani” and “Tees Mar Khan.”

It has been sad because four doyens of old-world 80s/90s single-screen Bollywood passed away in the past few months and as someone who grew up watching their movies, it would be remiss of me not to raise my virtual cap to them.

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IPL The Excitement

Published on April 16, 2011 in Cricket. 63 Comments

For me the highlight of the IPL so far has been Paul Valthaty. Amidst all the millions of dollars and the often dial-in performances of the national and international fatcats, Valthaty is enough to warm the hearts of even the most cynical among us.

If the IPL has any redeeming value, it is that it provides Indian first-class cricketers, off the radars of selectors, who otherwise would be consigned to a lifetime of playing great innings in front of empty stadiums in Ranji trophy, an opportunity to showcase their skills in front of thousands.

Because otherwise this IPL, in comparison to the other three, has been tepid. I am not talking about the quality of cricket (after all, cricket is to IPL what character development is to porn) but about the masala.

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On The Jan Lok Pal Bill

Published on April 13, 2011 in Politics. 163 Comments

I have been deliberating whether to write about the Jan LokPal Bill for some time. The reason why I have dallied somewhat is because I am more than a bit conflicted on this issue.

Here though is what I am sure about. The “revolution” we just saw, started right after the World Cup and completed right before the IPL, was not India’s Tahrir Square. Not that I am belittling the revolutionary temper of those who starved on Twitter or took an hour off from their busy schedules to show their patriotism or those who made more missed calls than a heavy-duty stalker or those who flooded my Facebook inbox with invitations for “anti-corruption events” or those who turned up at the site of the struggle as if it was a Roadies roadshow or created “Picbadges” for their Facebook profiles or lit more protest candles than there are on A K Hangal’s birthday cake. When Bipasha Basu, Shahid Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra make moving 140 character oratory orgasms over Twitter, far be it for humble me to even hint that this is not something like the “Rang De Basanti Be the Change” revolution of a few years ago. Even then, comparing this to the mass uprising in Libya and Egypt or making a connection between the Indian government, moribund as it is, with the regimes that are there, is a bit like comparing Sachin Tendulkar to, let’s see. Sujith Somasunder.

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Walking With The Men In Blue

Published on April 7, 2011 in Cricket and Silly. 240 Comments

I was expecting an article from my favorite Goddess of Overbloated Things, Ms. Roy on India’s triumph in the World Cup. Since I presume she has not written one yet, let me write it for her. This is *a parody* and does not purport to be written by Ms. Roy. It is also considerably shorter than her 25-page rantings.

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Rudyard Kipling, that endearing old-world colonialist, once called cricket a game of “flanneled fools”. They don’t wear flannels any longer though, favoring tacky, garish uniforms made glossy by shining droplets of sweat from the foreheads of those who made them, in Mexico or closer home in Dhaka. What still remains are fools, namely those who believe they are watching a gentle competition between bat and ball and not a few hours of vacuous manufactured reality, whose raison d’etre is to serve as an orgiastic assertion of India’s overwhelmingly Hindu middle class’s hyper-nationalistic vanity.

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