Monthly Archive for October, 2011

Ra.One—the Review

Published on October 30, 2011 in Reviews. 78 Comments

The way the state of Bollywood is right now, superstar vehicles, provided they are marketed and distributed right, are assured of making money. The number of people who will sing hosannas even if Shahrukh Khan (or Salman Khan for that matter) stands in front of a blank screen and recycles through all his fixed facial expressions (which is what most of SRK’s recent movies have been) is so insanely large, that his producers (in this case himself) know that anything with his presence in every scene and aggressively marketed by him, is guaranteed to be a mega-hit, if not break records at the box-office.

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Memories of Kali Pujo

Published on October 26, 2011 in Memories. 69 Comments

We Bengalis don’t really celebrate Diwali.

What we do observe is Kali Pujo.

This is precisely what we were told growing up in Kolkata. Kali Pujo is for Bangalis.

And Diwali is for “Marawaris”

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Bill Da Mamla Hai

Published on October 25, 2011 in Politics. 34 Comments

It has been an eventful few weeks for the anti-corruption juggernaut in India. One of its mastheads was dealt some fauladi mukkas, another had a shoe thrown at him and yet another found some pesky travel receipts turning up in the wrong place. Now if only half this drama had taken place in Big Boss’s house, life would have been bearable.

It was inevitable that in an effort to “Kill the Bill” the powers-that-be would come after each of the agent provocateurs with pliers and blowtorch (ala “Pulp Fiction”) and that in their ranks, would be unearthed a plant like Mr. Orange of “Reservoir Dogs” (Swami Agnivesh). The strategy over the past few months, has been simple: dig till something turns up. And since none of us have lead blemishless lives, one could, given the resources available to the authorities and to the sympathetic sections of the press, always uncover something that would be embarrassing—if not spurious air-travel bills, then definitely songs on your hard-drive that you do not have receipts for.

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Retire? Never.

Published on October 23, 2011 in Cricket. 21 Comments

There are the greats.

There are the legends.

And then there are those sportsmen who transcend labels, those who represent something greater than merely excellence in their respective disciplines.

Jessie Owens. Mohammed Ali.

And Shahid Afridi.

For me, and dare I say for many others, Afridi is not just merely a ball-biting, pitch-scuffing, boom boomer that wears the jersey of our next door bomber.

He is the very anthropomorphism of its foreign policy.

Like when he sticks out his crotch after getting a wicket, Afridi becomes an emphatic visual metaphor for the Pakistani position of ”Yeah so we are going to support the Haqqani Network and other terrorists, so what you going to do about it eh?”
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Of Bodyshops and Bestsellers

Published on October 15, 2011 in Book and Technology. 56 Comments

So here’s what happened. Narayana Murthy, the big chief at Infosys, complained that the standards of IIT students were going down and held coaching schools responsible. Nothing particularly earth-shaking about this pronouncement, in every generation, those that have grown old have complained “when we were your age, things were so much better.” Chetan Bhagat, thought-leader and best-selling author and an IIT alum himself, felt sufficiently piqued by this to retort that he who runs body-shopping company should not comment on the standards of others. Such a rap-battle, of course, generated a lot of heat and light in the popular media. Of course then Mr. Bhagat’s new book released to glowing reviews and insane sales and he kind of apologized for his previous statement and all was right with the world again.

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