Published June 10th, 2008
in Censorship and Silly.
Our Indian way of life is under attack once again. And if you thought a bomb at the bus stand or the rising price of petrol or the deteriorating law and order situation were the biggest challenges to our national well-being well you obviously have been thinking with just your brain.
Cause they are not.
A new menace is here, an insidious agent of malignancy that creeps silently into your bedrooms (and yes even offices when the boss is not around). Assuming the form of electron streams, it activates pixels on your computer screen with certain poisonous RGB values which, before you know, sap you of your morals, your humanity and also more than a bit of your energy.
Continue reading ‘Stop That !’
Published June 27th, 2007
in Censorship and Politics.
By now all of you must have heard of the vibrating condom ring scandal that rocked Madhya Pradesh. For those who did not : Hindustan Latex had created a battery-operated vibrating condom (Crezendo) which offended the moral police in Madhya Pradesh because they felt it was a “sex toy” and since adults should never play with toys, they wanted it , predictably banned. What particularly piqued my demented mind was how this problem was brought to the attention of the minister who campaigned passionately against Crezendo. From his words on CNN-IBN
yeh prasn is liye utha hain kyon ki ek vidyarthi mere paas aaaya aur kaha ki yeh vibrating ring lekar hostel ke andar vidyarthi iske upayog kar rahe hain aur iske marketing ho rahee hain. vidyarthi agar parne ke samay main is prakar ki vibrating ring ka upyog karta hain to main samajhta hoon ki yeh kisi ke liye chinta ki vishaaye ho sakti hain.
Which means that one day, our honourable minister, in the course of his peregrinations, was accosted by a student whose complaint was not the unavailability of books in the library, or of placement opportunities or the need to upgrade campus facilities. No. His complaint was that some students had vibrating condoms on their walking sticks. Displaying sagacity of the highest form, the minister realized that if “vidyarthis” are racked with repeated eruptions from battery-operated enhancements while studying (parne ke samay), a generation of young men will be created solely dependent on automation for even the simplest of tasks, unable to use their hands.
Continue reading ‘That’s Vulgar’
Published May 15th, 2007
in Censorship.
Monkey Jain of the Vishwa Bandar Parishad (VBP) was frothing at the mouth as he and a bunch of simians he was leading vandalized the zoo. Taking a break from flinging his own excreta at a panda bear, Monkey Jain explained the reason for his agitation, all the while violently tweaking his own nipples in anger.
Continue reading ‘Animal Crackers’
Published May 3rd, 2007
in Censorship and Silly.
Here’s the deal, the conscience keepers of India. No matter how hard you try to beat the loonies in the obsessively offended category, you will lose.
Hands down.
To be fair, you played a good game. Here was Richard Gere, washed out has-been from Hollywood, who gets carried away by lust at an AIDS rally and kisses Shilpa Shetty with as much romantic grace as a bear pawing at a bee-hive. Quick on the draw and eager to show the world that we can beat the other loony countries with our desi looniness, a Jaipur court issues an arrest warrant taking into account what the judge perceived was the “highly sexually erotic” nature of the kiss.
The magistrate, who viewed the video footage of the programme, observed that the attitude of the two film personalities was “highly sexually erotic†which had “transgressed all limits of vulgarity and have the tendency to corrupt the societyâ€. He said Shetty’s attitude was “cooperative†and she never restrained herself, but kept inviting Gere for the kissing episode which stretched on for a good while.
Needless to say, so erotic was the scene that the upright conscience-keepers came to a very quick decision.
Continue reading ‘Jumma Chumma: Iran Thrashes India’
Published February 14th, 2007
in Censorship and Silly.
The tension in the city was palpable as the “Vivah Raath” (marriage chariot), manned by the fighting wings of the Bajrang Dal, (the Dharma Sena [not to be confused with a certain “Kumara” i.e. bachelor Sri Lankan cricketer] and the Durga Bahini [not to be confused with Mamata Banerjee’s followers]) rolled through town.
As they shouted anti-Valentine Day slogans and made a bonfire of cards and cute red teddy bears, I caught up with a particularly ferocious activist who declined to give his name, insisting we address him as simply “Bajrangi”.
Continue reading ‘Tu Hi Tu Bajrangi Re’
Published January 14th, 2007
in Censorship.
In Bhubaneswar, a voluntary organisation Kalinga Sena, organised a demonstration and burnt the effigy of Gautam Prasad.
“His (Mahatma Gandhi) disgrace is India’s disgrace, the disgrace of one billion people of India. We are staging a protest against Gautam and we demand capital punishment for him,” said Kalinga Sena President Hemanth Rath.
[Source]
Continue reading ‘Aaj Ka Gandhigiri’
Published November 7th, 2006
in Bollywood, Censorship, Pop Culture and Silly.
I normally do not post twice a day but such is the situation that I have to break all rules, interrupt regular programming and bring you breaking news.
Rakhi Sawant, India’s wonder girl, has become one of the first persons to be charged under the new Domestic Violence Law for women, a law that people thought was meant to bring violent husbands to book.
Continue reading ‘Breaking News—Do Rakhi Do’
Published October 10th, 2006
in Censorship and Technology.
In a landmark legal strike, the Aurangabad bench of the Mumbai High Court has “directed the Maharashtra government to issue notice to Google for the alleged spread of hatred about India by its social network service ‘Orkut’. [Times of India]
Laying aside useless litigation on issues like murders, rapes, property disputes (which some say take decades to resolve due to court backlog), the wise men in black coats seem to have at last gotten their priorities right by spending their time taking action on an issue of the greatest national importance: the “Down with India” communities that flourish on Orkut like flies on cowdung.
Continue reading ‘Bad Bad Orkut. No Donut For You’
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