Hillary Clinton Award for Best Wife, 2006:

Winner: Suzanne Khan, wife of Hrithik Roshan.

Reason: When Hrithik was doing the scandalous, totally vulgar and Indian-culture-destroying kissing scene with Aishwarya Rai , a lot of people would have been asking as to how Suzanne Khan, Hrithik’s wife would be feeling about this wanton display of celluloid lust. If she had been any other wife, then she would be burning with jealousy and either throwing pots and pans or calling her lawyer. But then Greatbong Award Winners are not like “any other” people.

Here is what she did:

Ask Hrithik about his take on the entire issue and he says, “It’s preposterous, people are unnecessarily making a big deal. Some sections of the media just love sensational headlines. While doing the scene, all I knew was that I had to answer the challenge set by Sussanne.

She said, ‘If you are going to do the kiss, make sure it’s the best goddamn kiss in the world.’

Eventually, both Sussanne and I loved the kiss.”

Can you imagine that ! A wife encouraging her husband to give another woman the best kiss in the world and then sitting back and enjoying the spectacle ! Now for all ladies who are reading this, it’s things like these that show how much you love your husband (as opposed to giving him a tie or a perfume gift set) in addition to making you eligible for a Greatbong Award.

Renuka Chowdhury Award for Best Husband, 2006:

Winner: Viren (not his actual name)

Reason: In an article on Indian lesbians in the Telegraph, we encountered Viren: an unfortunate husband whose wife is a raging lesbian. While the usual husband would have cursed his misfortune and moved away from his alienated wife, Viren has acted otherwise. And with such amazing selflessness and a façade of happiness (for the sake of his wife) that it is difficult not to get moist. In the eyes.

There are some, though, like Persis’s husband, Viren, who support their wives’ sexual orientation. Viren, while claiming to be very happy, will allow her to have sex with a woman if he is there to watch them — because, he claims, he cares for her safety. “It’s okay as long as it doesn’t disturb our family life — as long as I get my meals on time and my extended family doesn’t get to know about it,” he says.

To an outsider, the couple professes undying love and trust. And yet, Persis repeatedly stresses the warmth and “unconditional love” that she experiences in a woman’s arms. And the sex with a woman is “incomparable,” she says. “Only a woman can know my erogenous zones,” she says, smiling at a sheepish Viren, who, recently, witnessed one such ecstatic encounter between Persis and a German tourist in Goa.

Touching ! This man only wants to watch his wife make love to another woman because he is concerned about her safety, despite how it breaks him to see these distasteful acts. Such devotion to one’s wife’s well-being would melt the heart of even Renuka Chowdhury. It has certainly melted the Greatbong’s which is why Viren is the Best Husband of 2006.

Let’s all stand up and applaud.

Sushma Swaraj Award for Best Moral Guardian, 2006:

Winner: Mr. Dwivedi

Reason: On dreary thunderous nights, when the howling wind and the insistent rain beat on my windowpane like a ghost army thumping the gates of an enemy castle, when all the lamps have been extinguished by the cold breath of darkness, I rest in peace knowing that even on nights such as these there are still brave men awake and ever vigilant , protecting me from the terrors of the outside world.

I am talking about crusaders like Mr. Dwivedi, who according to this article has been fighting against each and every injustice he has encountered in his life through the weapon of litigation: Dharmendra’s second marriage, MF Hussain’s paintings and Hrithik Roshan’s kisses, thus protecting us from the depredations of debauchery.

Thank you sir for bringing libertines like Hrithik Roshan (who seek to suck out the saliva of Indian culture) to justice. Now if you could only litigate against Uday Chopra and prevent him from acting in any other movie, you can wrap up this award for next year too.

Carolus Linnaeus Award For Proper Taxonomy, 2006:

Winner: JuxtConsult

Reason: Carolus Linnaeus is the father of taxonomy or the science of classification. In a world full of information, proper taxonomy is essential if we are to make any sense of what’s going on around us. This year’s award for taxonomy goes to Juxtconsult for their study reported here that confirms something that many of us had doubted for some time.

Indiatimes.com and worldsex.com complete the list of top five websites for adult content on the web.

In other words, Indiatimes is now formally classified as an adult site on the lines of worldsex. We need to thank and award NewMedia for making the phylum of Indiatimes official. Netnanny and Cyberpatrol, kindly take note.

President Pinocchio Musharaff Award For Honesty and Integrity, 2006:

Winner: Arundhati Roy.

Reason: Arundhati Roy exhibited a lot of integrity in 2006. On one hand, she protested against imperialism, railed and ranted against the war criminal country India exposing nefarious conspiracies of the government, campaigned for the release of convicted terrorists and protested, with never an eye to the camera or the foreign press, against the barbaric uprooting of tribals from their land. And then in a gesture of honesty that would make the Mushy General proud, she and her husband were found land-grabbing from tribals themselves for the purpose of their lavish, proletariat, non-imperialist bungalows.

Notices have been issued to some noted personalities, including film maker Pradeep Kishan, asking them to remove alleged encroachment on land of a poor tribal at Vaariaam village, around three km from Pachmarhi near in Hoshangabad, officials said.

The tribal, Vijay Singh, had submitted an affidavit before the Tehsildar court accusing Kishan, noted writer Vikram Seth’s sister Aaradhana Seth and Forest department officials Nishikant Jadhav and JC Sharma of encroaching on his land to construct road leading to their lavish bungalows on the lakeside, the officials said.

The allegations were found true after a probe following which notices were issued asking them to remove the encroachment, they said.

Honourable Mention: The Pakistani cricket board for first banning Shoaib Akthar and Mohammed Asif for illegal drug use and in a typically honest fashion, overturning the conviction once they realized that their cricket team would really suffer as a result, reminding us of the Justice Qayyum report that basically found almost all Pakistani players guilty of match fixing but punished only an almost-retired Salim Malik and non-entity Ata-ur-Rehman.

Ineligible: President Pinocchio himself since the prize is named after him. Else he would have been a shoo-in for this award for his honest book “In the Line of Fire” where he talked about how India started the Kargil war and Pakistan army showed its true strength by defeating us there.

[More Greatbong Achievement Awards, 2006 here]

“Aha I knew this would happen all along. Praise be to Allah. Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston are going to divorce. Whitney is all mine now. Bobby Brown is lucky—I don’t have to kill him any longer with a rusty drug syringe as I had planned.”

Osama Bin Laden was ecstatic. Throwing his head back carelessly, he started crooning: “Though each time I try, I break down and cry, Cause I rather be home feeling blue, So I am saving all my love for youuuuuuuuuu….”

“What the f are you talking about?” snapped Mullah Omar “Can’t I hear my favorite Eric Clapton song Virgins in Heaven without having to be disturbed by your bleatings? By the way, what does Whitney Houston have to do with you?”

Osama smiled and pointed to a print-out.

OSAMA bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, was obsessed with the singer Whitney Houston and wanted to marry her, a new book claims.

Kola Boof, a Sudanese poet and novelist, who says she was kept against her will as the terrorism mastermind’s mistress in 1996, writes in her autobiography that he wanted to give the star a mansion and make her one of his wives.

“He told me that Whitney Houston was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen,” Boof claims in Diary of a Lost Girl, excerpts of which are published in Harper’s magazine.

But bin Laden had less respect for Houston’s husband Bobby Brown, apparently talking about the possibility of having him killed.

“He said that he had a paramount desire for Whitney Houston and although he claimed music was evil, he spoke of some day spending vast amounts of money to go to America and try to arrange a meeting with the superstar,” Boof writes.

“He said he wanted to give Whitney Houston a mansion that he owned in a suburb of Khartoum.

“He explained to me that to possess Whitney, he would be willing to break his colour rule and make her one of his wives.”

Bin Laden would speak constantly about “how beautiful she [Houston] is, what a nice smile she has, how truly Islamic she is but is just brainwashed by American culture and by her husband – Bobby Brown, whom Osama talked about having killed, as if it were normal to have women’s husbands killed.”

Boof, who also says the al- Qaeda leader would “ramble on” about his favourite TV shows, The Wonder Years, Miami Vice and MacGyver, adds: “In his briefcase, I would come across photographs of the star, as well as copies of Playboy … It would soon come to the point where I was sick of hearing Whitney Houston’s name.”

“Holy shit, Osama” yelped Mullah Omar, “you used to see the Wonder Years, Miami Vice and MacGyver…..no wonder you hate Western culture. But I didn’t know you read Playboy…you old sod. But who is this Kola Boof, your mistress? I thought you only got lucky with your cousins and blind goats..”

“Aah ignorant one. Unlike you I have not led a life of self-abuse—did your parents not tell you that if you masturbate, then you lose your eye. Evidently not. In any case, as an answer to your question this Kola Boof was my sex-slave for 6 months , a time she spent dancing naked to Van Halen and satisfying my horny urges—even Jihadis need some fun when alive, don’t they?

“I don’t believe it” said Mullah Omar…”I just cannot”

“Read, read oh jealous one….one who has only his hand for company. Read from an extract from my mistress’s autobiography”. [Must read]

He (Osama) would humiliate me by making me dance naked. It was such a strange thing, because for the most part he believed music was evil. If a guest at the estate played music, he would cover his ears until the “poison” was silenced. But other times he would become this devout party boy who wanted to hear Van Halen or some B-52′s. To this day I hear the song “Rock Lobster” in my sleep. I would be jerking around like a white girl—“Dance like a Caucasoid girl!” he would say—and his eyes would track me from one side of the terrace to the other. “Your ass is too big, show me the front,” he said. Osama, you understand, did not know the difference between being vicious and being tender.

Mullah Omar gaped at Osama. Breathless. Osama smiled “Heh heh. Ooh Kola’s twin towers…aah…the memories. Read that extract. Learn something. Learn who was the first person to use that eternal Orkut scrap favourite “wanna do franship” (From Kola Boof’s autobiography: But Osama was trying to be charming, despite the fear in my eyes. “Why did you run? I just think you’re lovely and I find you intriguing. I wanted to be your friend.) Learn about my doing drugs from a golden hookah. Learn learn….oh blind one.”

Just then in comes General Pervez.

General Pervez: “Okay now how many times do I have to tell you, that just cause you guys are staying at my place does not mean you can get away with keeping the toilet seat up. Is that too much to expect guys? I have been friggin wining and dining you in my house for the last three years, faithfully ferrying your video tapes to Al Jazeera. And after all that, is keeping the toilet seat down too much to expect in return?”

Mullah Omar yelped “General, did you hear about this Kola Boof?”

General Pervez rolled his eyes. “Oh dear, Osama. When will you stop behaving like an engineering college boy and stop making up sexual encounters when there were none? Holy mother of God, that lady is lying to her teeth and here you are riding on those lies because they make you look more a man than you are. Look at this.”

Peter Bergen, a biographer of bin Laden, says that Osama Bin Laden was never in Morocco in 1996 – in fact, he says that Bin Laden has never been to Morocco at all. He has called Boof “delusional”and described her autobiography as “rife with howlers large and small” – such as her claim of having a group sexual encounter in 1996 whose participants included bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, with bin Laden’s mentor Abdullah Azzam, and Egyptian jihadist Sayyid Qutb. Bergen finds the encounter implausible, since at the time, bin Laden was in the Sudan, Zawahiri was in prison, Azzam had been assassinated in 1989, and Qutb had been dead for thirty years

Mullah Omar laughed out. “Whoa boy. Old Laden sees dead people. No even better, he participates in orgies with them…..ha ha….so what’s this dear? Another Jewish conspiracy?”

Osama’s eyes flashed with hatred.

“Oh Mullah Omar. Stop laughing you Barbara Streisand you.”

“And as to you old Pervez–you should be the last one accusing me of lying. From claiming that India stole your nuclear secrets...”

“But Osama, they did….”

“Aw shut up General. You guys got confused by the Chinese instruction manual for those nuclear devices…and had to call for an interpreter. We all know that your nuclear bombs were as Pakistani as Chow Mein…so zip it.

Had it not been for the publisher, in your autobiography you were going to claim that you knew who killed JF Kennedy and where King Arthur’s sword is….so yeah you should be the last person talking about truth here.”

Mullah Omar interjected ” At least that we could believe. But when the General says that it was India invading Pakistan during Kargil, then even I, who believe that storks bring babies and that there is a nice gentleman in Nigeria who wants to give me 10% of a 50 million dollar commission, have to laugh and shake my head.”

General P was deflated.

“Whatever fellows. Osama here is the latest edition of Playboy which the newsboy just delivered…it’s titled “Suicide Bombers Show Their Packages” and here Mullah Omar is the “Arabs Gone Wild” you ordered—see exclusive clips of beheadings, castrations and amputations that are too risky to be shown on Al-Jazeera. Right now, I cannot get rid of you two cause if I handed you over, then the money I get from US to catch you guys will die up. But don’t be so cocky you two…..don’t be so cocky”

” So where are you off to?” asked Osama. “Sit awhile and we can all listen to Whitney Houston classics.”

General P smiled “No can do. I have dinner with two of my childhood heroes at the Karachi Sheraton—Elvis Preseley and Bruce Lee. Be good while I am gone—don’t ‘mush’terbate on the bedsheets…..”

Osama and Mullah Omar looked at each other. Smiling knowingly, they whispered:

“Sweet Jesus, this guy can lie.”

And then the zamindar burps. And seeks to excuse himself by saying that the “papad” he had for dinner must have been fried in bad oil. And keeps on sawing away.

Oh what a wonderful sex life Bengalis had. The operative word is “had”—things are obviously quite different now in the Bong bedroom.

Namely that there is no second wife.

Whether 19th century Bengal had the best of times or the worst of times we know not, but if we are to trust Rituporno Ghosh’s “Antarmahal” (a sex-ed up adaptation of Tarashankar’s “Protima” ) it surely was the most debauched of times.

Bhubaneswar Choudhury (Jackie Shroff) has two wives and a mistress and is still unable to produce a progeny despite his laboured exertions (as he tells his second wife “Do you think I enjoy doing this on such a hot day?”). Needless to say, he is unable to connect the dots and realize that there may be something wrong with him (his first wife, Mahamaya (Roopa Ganguly) puts it colourfully—-the zamindar’s snake lacks poison).

Or as they say, his burp is worse than his bite.

Bhubaneswar is also angling for a Ray-bahadur (an honorary title from the British) through the novel idea of crafting the family idol Devi Durga’s face in the image of Queen Victoria—an act that he believes will please the British. (a harbinger of Madam culture yet to come).

A hunky Bihari sculptor Brijbhushan (Abhishek Bachchan) is commissioned to craft the Victorian Durga idol but his arrival in the Antarmahal (inner chambers) sets off a train of events that culminate in the movie’s shattering climax.

Needless to say Jackie Shroff climaxes many times before that.

While Jackie’s techniques and positions may be faulted, Rituporno’s camera cannot as it lovingly and lasciviously caresses Abhishek Bachchan’s bare torso as he bathes and crafts the idol, with Brijbhushan’s aversion to covering his body being explained by an observation made by one of the characters:

Hindustanis (which is the way many Bengalis refer to Biharis/UP-ites) do not like wearing clothes.

Another characterizing trait of Brijbhushan is that he has strong body odour—a point that is reiterated many times in the movie.

Which I presume, somehow, elevates his dreaminess quotient– at least in Rituporno’s eyes.

And lest I forget, our Brijbhushan the sculptor, is quite a pervert himself as he is shown using the Durga idol as some kind of sex toy——caressing the private parts of the statue and thinking erotic thoughts.

Which brings us to the debauchery.

One of the sure-fire ways of introducing perversion in Indian movies is through the stereotype of the uncouth, horny priest. Indeed, the men of God in this movie make Mithun-da’s lusty priest character (the legendary Bhuvan Panda who, with a naked virgin on his knee said: “Nirvastra ladki mere jaang ke upar baithke mere vasna ki aag bujhayegi”) in “Chingari” and the head priest at Sabarimala appear almost Sushma Swarajish.

A sample. A priest watches the zamindar getting jiggy with his second wife while reciting slokas in her ear while the first wife sits in front of the priest topless. (and before you run out to rent the movie, the shot is from the back).

And another.The priests advise the zamindar to atone for the desecration of the Durga idol (thanks to the act of putting Queen Victoria’s face on the holy image) by, hold your breath, sending his voluptuous first wife to an orgy with five Bramhin priests.

Justification provided by the horny priests? (Not that an orgy needs any).

The ancient Vedic ritual by which after an Asvamedha Yagna, the queen slept with the horse.

The connection between horse and the five priests ?And between Ashvamedha Yagna and Durga Puja?

I leave that to you to figure it out.

Or you can watch the movie.

But be careful of the gore. Cause theres a lot mostly borne out of “Ritu”-porno’s well-documented obsession (check out “Chokher Bali”) with menstruation (he is more concerned about periods than Mendeleev ever was). Roopa Ganguly’s thighs resemble a street in Haifa, the zamindar keeps asking his wife about her periods and there is even a shot of a bloody pussy… cat ( the zamindar asserts his masculinity by getting a cat killed).

I could go on and on (like Jackie Shroff) but I will stop now.

Cause my fried papad is waiting.

1. SIMI-ians exclusively use Blogger and Typepad to communicate. Which is why these are the only blogging platforms that are blocked. SIMI stays clear of WordPress (too dynamic for static fundamentalists), Rediff blogs (because they don’t like the template), O3 Indiatimes (because even they disapprove of a paper that sells editorial space), and Yahoo 360 (yes even SIMI activists have some sense). And like everyone else, they have never heard of MSN Spaces.

2. SIMI activists may handle RDX and gelatin with dexterity but have trouble understanding the concept of proxies by which website-blocking can easily be circumvented. As a result, a ban on blogger totally brings them down to their knees—especially when they don’t get their daily fix of desihotties.blogspot.com

3. SIMI terrorists do not know the use of bulletin boards —the gazillions of them that are on the Net. Hence cutting off blogger/typepad will reduce them to headless chickendom.

4. Enforcing a ban on Blogger/Typepad/Geocities will fool the SIMI people into thinking that India has officially become Pakistan (where access to many blogs are blocked) and now that their mission has been accomplished, they may let their guard down.

5. Lakshadweep and Andaman Nicobar Islands are the only places where there are no SIMI activists. (According to the wise sages in power, these places are excluded from the ban)

6. If “somebody” in the government blocks some sites and prevents Indians from accessing information and expressing their own thoughts, how is it anyone’s problem? (read the “official response” to this ban here) After all the government know best and is accountable to no-one—-certainly not to its own citizens.

7.[Update] Immunodiagnostics and hormone analysis are instruments of terror. Why? Because “Diagnostics System Lab” —a medical lab that does precisely that (URL http://www.bloodspot.com) finds itself on the list of hate sites that GOI has deemed we are not supposed to read. Maybe, some backroom boy yelled blogspot and someone else heard bloodspot—-but that’s just a conjecture…I am sure the authorities have checked and rechecked the websites they wanted to ban and such a mistake is beyond the realms of possibility.

8.[Update] The government is engaged in a war with “common sense”. No I do not say that figuratively. According to Shivam, one of the blogspot blogs that reportedly made it onto the government’s list is http://commonense.blogspot.com. The said blog, whose title is the somewhat apt “Common Sense for Dummies” has only one post, dated May 20, 2004 that says:

Why commonense?
“Common-sense” and “common sense”, the common-sense alternatives for a common-sense blog, are already taken.

Deeply subversive—-after all, as we all know, common sense can bring the government down.

The question is obvious: why do we have the worst record in the world (well almost) when it comes to qualifying for the World Cup?

It’s not that we were always like this. Mohun Bagan were the first Asian side to beat an European team in 1911. We missed qualifying for the 1950 World Cup only because we were used to playing barefoot and the World Cup stipulated the wearing of shoes. Throughout the 50s and the 60s, India remained one of the top Asian soccer powers.

But by the 80s and 90s , things had reached their present nadir. PSV Eindhoven, a club team from the Netherlands, were thrashing India in friendlies—-10 goals per match were pumped past the hapless Indians. In the three matches we played against them, India found the back of PSV’s net only once (as far as I can remember) and that too from the foot of Chibuzor, a Nigerian first XI discard who together with Cheema Okerie (also a Nigerian never-been) and Jamshed Nassiri (Iran) were the “stars” of the Calcutta maidan firmament along with some home-grown men like Bidesh Bose and Prasun Banerjee.

Even these “stars”, who to be honest could never hold a candle to their international compatriots, have now vanished: in the World Cup 2006 qualifiers, we lost all but one game and had the ignominy of having been handed a 0–7 drubbing by Japan and a 1–5 by Oman.

And so like every year we are reduced to cheering other countries as they battle for glory in the World Cup—-with football loving Bongs cheering for Brazil simply because there are a few Bong sounding names in the team like Kaka (uncle), Dida (grandmother) and suchlike.

However this impotent backing of other countries, because our country is not good enough, is coming to an end.

Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, effectively the president for life (ala Idi Amin) of the All-India Football Federation (AIFF) has announced “Project World Cup”—by which India will be one of the teams playing in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Of course, critics point out the fact that the Honorable minister has been saying this for many many years now—usually to justify his one month fact-finding missions (paid by tax payer’s money) to the World Cup where he is frequently accompanied by other ministers –like Kapil Sibal in 2006.

But what the critics dont know is that Priya Ranjan Das Munshi has started a ultra secret training camp for Indian footballers. Since we cannot afford to send them abroad (we have only money to send Priya Ranjan and his family), they have been whisked away to a training facility in Bishtoopur, a sleepy hamlet 133 miles away from Calcutta. The picture to the left is a snap taken secretly at this facility—-the guy in the dhoti is the coach.

Bengali superstar Tapas Paul, having essayed the role of the hero with a foot of gold many many times in Bengali movies knows exactly what is expected of a soccer star. Which is why he has been made captain of the Indian team. In the first picture, he is shown worshipping the God of football, Footballeswari/Footballnath before a game—a wise move since only divine intervention or genetic mutation can make India qualify for the World Cup.

Since the current crop of Indian footballers have traditionally struggled with basic skills like trapping and passing, one of the innovations of the current camp is that fruits plucked from trees are being used in lieu of balls. So hard are these fruits that unless you use the sweet spot of your temple or your feet to hit them, your head will be split open or your feet seriously injured–the threat of grievous bodily harm keeps the players “on their toes”—so as to say. This fruity innovation has been adopted from the nearby colony of monkeys who use this technique to hone their skills. Such has been the rate of progress, that the same simian team that beat the Indians 4–0 a few months ago are currently finding it tough to repeat their success (3–2 in their favour last week).

Innovative training methods are being used where players adopt ambiguously gay positions while heavyweights like Tapas Pal run over them (please see the picture to the left). This has led to the development of upper body muscle and also promoted team-spirit, especially after the lights go out and the chi(m)ps go down.

Since, as mentioned before, tackling has been a persistent problem with the Indian team, players are encouraged to gain possession from a dribbling elephant. Priya Ranjan is currently negotiating with the FIFA to see if the elephant can actually play for the team.

Of course, despite the far-out training methods and the absolute secrecy surrounding “Project World Cup” , Indian fans must understand that Rome was not built in a day. As a result, it very well may be that we are not ready for World Cup 2010. Priya Ranjan has taken that into account.

“We will try hard for 2010. If we can’t succeed, we will try for the next edition (2014),” Munshi said.

And for the next edition. And the next. After all elephants do have long memories don’t they?

Till that happens cheer for Brazil. Or Argentina. Or whichever team catches your fancy.

Just remember not to feel ashamed.

Because AIFF and its sinecured officials sure do not.

[These pictures are taken from the Bangla movie "Antaranga" ---more specifically the song sequence "Paanch goleri khodder noy, ek golatei kaat". No animals were harmed during the making of this movie. Except the desi murgis that found salvation in Tapas Pal's not-inconsiderable belly.

An excellent post on the "death" of Indian soccer here.]

So what is it–what is the reason? Is it that nasal accent? Well if that was the case, then Kumar Sanu would be the reigning king today—-but all he got was the very healthy Kunika and a hysterical wife who comes on the telly and says “Sanu… bhogoban sob dekhta hain” in the worst Bongo Hindee.

Is it his sweet deal with T-series by which he is being aggressively promoted, much to the chagrin of people like Anu Malik? But wait—the last time T-series got behind a bearded, smart-alec music-director with pretensions of being a singer (think back to Nadeem in a pilot uniform violating “O Mere Dil Ke Chain”) it ended with a dead body and a fugitive. But not so now.

Is it his mixture of qawwali and modern beats? But even Altaf Raja tried doing it with “Kar Lo Pyar” , “Thora Intezar Ka Maza Lijiye” and the very groovy “Yeh Raat Hain Rangeen Sharabi” —-and what happened to him? Possibly doing live entertainment at Mithun-da’s monarch hotel along with Vikas Bhalla and Anaida.

Well finally, the real reason is out.

Ghosts.

Himmesh Reshammiya’s hit number Jhalak dikhla ja, ek baar aaja, aaja… may set feet tapping at discotheques, but in Anand district’s Bhalej village, it seems to have set alarm bells ringing.

Why? Residents claim that the lyrics are an invite to “ghosts” who then possess residents. The person possessed – some put this number at five, others at 20 – run a high temperature and behave in a strange manner

“Since the last 15 days, we’ve noticed this problem. There have been about 20 such cases since then,” says Malek. Mushtaq Thakore says there have been around five such cases, including that of a newly wedded girl Sartajbanu.

“The lyrics are such that they draw the attention of the ghosts, after which the person starts screaming and also runs a high temperature. The only way out is to seek divine help. Muslims go to maulvis, Hindus to their godmen,” Mushtaq says.

Exactly. Firstly the lyrics: “Jhalak dikhla ja” is an open invitation for denizens of the netherworld to come and show their stuff. But similar songs have been there before—how come they never tickled the fancy of the bhoots/chudails? Simple. They never heard it. Only Reshammaya’s voice can reach the frequency range at which ghosts can pick up sound—–as we all know ghosts talk in high-pitched shrill voices themselves.

Those who have seen Satyajit Ray’s “Goopi Gayen Bagha Bayen” know that pleasing the king of the ghosts makes any musician invincible. For those who don’t know what I am talking about, “Goopi Gayen Bagha Bayen” is a story of a talentless singer (Goopi) who gets thrown out of the kingdom for his horrid voice. Joined by an equally talentless hack, Bagha (a drum player) they play their music in the deep jungles.

What is cacophony to the living world is high art for ghosts. So impressed do the ghosts become with their music that their king grants them three wishes: one of which is that their music will be irresistible (people wont be able to move it will be so good).

It is fairly evident that Himesh Reshammiya has also been granted a similar wish by the “dead people”—the only twist is that people have to start moving and dancing the moment he opens his mouth or composes a song—no matter how horrible it is.

[Some rationalists opine that the people who run a high temperature and start screaming are actually musically highly sensitive people whose musical immune system is reacting to the presence of a malignant presence---but of course that's baloney]

So it is not that people all over India actually like his songs—it’s just that the supernatural compels them to.

My faith in vox populi is consequently restored.

Mithun Chakraborty, the greatest actor alive, plays Krishnan Iyer, Ph.D. No he is not the nariyel paani wala from Agneepath but a professor of symbiology at Lund University. The movie opens with Krishnan Iyer delivering a lecture to the brightest students of the world in Paris explaining the origin of the symbol “420″.

At the same time, the curator of the Louvre museum, Kamana (Rakhi Sawant) is being shot (using a gun that is) by a mysterious albino assailant (Bob Cristo) who keeps on whispering “Main Hindoostan ki tubahi kar doonga”. He walks away strangely without finishing the act —- leaving the voluptuous curator three-quarters dead. Knowing she has only a few minutes to live, Ms. Sawant’s character starts stripping in super slow motion—desperate to send a message to the only man who understands nudity, now that Raj Kapoor is dead.

As the lecture finishes and he is mobbed by autograph seekers, Prof Iyer is approached by a French policeman who whisks him away ostensibly to make sense of the bizarre murder. The professor is ushered into the Louvre where he sees Kamana lying nude in a pose that censor boards would have baulked passing a year ago. The police captain in charge of the crime scene, Capt. Bulli played by Mukesh Rishi (who subtly shows his French pedigree by giving the audience glimpses of his VIP Frenchie elastic ala Saif in “Salaam Namaste”) wants Iyer to interpret the message the dead lady was trying to send : a cryptic code written in tomato ketchup that reads “d3669 ”

This is when Amisha Patel playing the role of Sophie NoBrain, the famous police cryptologist barges in. She surreptitiously hands Iyer a visiting card which has a 1 900 number ($2.99/minute + tax) scribbled on it. Wasting no time he calls it to hear NoBrain’s voice telling him, in that hushed Amishanian whisper, to not make any expression of alarm and come meet her in the ladies restroom.

Prof. Iyer, used to such urgent encounters with strangers in rest rooms, hurries to the meeting place making some excuse to Capt. Bulli. After all seeing Kamana that way has set off all sorts of thoughts in his head. But no. Things are quite different.

NoBrain warns him of the grave danger Prof Iyer is in. The French captain had not brought him in as an advisor but as the prime suspect. They have no intention of letting Iyer walk out of the museum unarrested. Because there is something Iyer does not know–a line that Kamana wrote which the police have wiped away before he came.

It said “I need Iyer badly”.

Professor Iyer smiles slightly. He had deduced Kamana’s intentions long ago—this was merely a confirmation. After all who did not “need” him?

NoBrain, no mean cryptologist tells Iyer her interpretation of the symbols with wide-eyed wonder.

“Sir, 3, 6 and 9 are in Arithmetic progression. Also 3 + 6= 9. 666 means the devil and we all know that 9 can be read as 6. Also “d” can also be looked upon as 9 after some transformation geometry”.

Iyer is willing to have nothing of it.

“Bewakoof nari. Kitne durgandh a rahee teri shareer se. d3669 actually should be read as 36d and 69—-the only two alphanumeric concepts Rakhi Sawant or what’s-her-name-in-this-silly-movie was aware of. That’s why she wrote them down before she died. Logic use logic. Do you think this is a story written by that nonsense person Dan Brown where a person who has been shot can still think clearly and construct elaborate puzzles? Not even Prabhu-ji can write the Fibonacci series after a belly full of lead.

Abh chal bahoot ho gya natak, de de chummi chummi.” (English: Enough talk. Now give me a kiss.)

NoBrain smiles coyly: “But sir, the French police”.

Iyer says:” Use your brain. Cops. A lovely lass. Hero needs to make a get-a-away.”

NoBrain gets the message. Soon she starts dancing a seductive number, after a costume change—the superhit ” Char gaya upar re”. Two backup dancers repeating “Sha la” emerge from the shady nooks and crannies of the Louvre —one is called Mona and the other, yes you guessed it, Lisa. More follow. The French police are lost in music and lust and Iyer escapes through the window.

Prof Iyer and NoBrain are soon on the run—-from a strangely obsessed Capt Bulli, the sinister “Jhakas Dei”, an ultra-secret cult of Rajanikant fans, a deadly Swiss banker (Shakti Kapoor) with the lecherous “Khol do khol do account khol do” and a mysterious person determined to find out the Great Secret that Kamana gave her life for —a person who is not seen, nor heard only smelt — the “Fart-eacher”. (Hint: In this context, was the “I need Iyer badly” actually “I need air badly”?—puzzles puzzles all around)

Careening from one crisis to another, they alight at the mansion of an old friend of Prof Iyer: Sir JavaBean, the foremost expert on secrets, government conspiracies and nudity. The movie moves up a notch as Sir JavaBean’s eccentric British drollness is brought to life by Feroze Khan with his bald pate, cowboy hat and boots and the two cheetahs who sit on his knees.

And so begins the most intellectually stimulating part of the movie where Prof Iyer and Sir JavaBean try to decipher the reason why Prof Iyer and NoBrain are being pursued. What deadly secret have they stumbled upon? —a secret so explosive that it can shake the foundations of human civilization, a secret that is encoded in the “gupt katha” of Da Vinci, Darwin and Dino Moria as also in the incoherent mumblings of Arjun Singh.

Is it the affair Mumbai’s biggest star had with a bisexual leading lady?

Is it the identity of a leading man who has yet to come out of the closet?

Is it the location of the royal treasure of Jaipur that disappeared during the Emergency?

Is it actually a top Bollywood actress in that MMS clip we all have?

Is it the secret of Dev Anand’s energy?

Is it the true nationality of Arundhati Roy?

Well if I told you that, I would be Taran Adarsh—the movie reviewer from hell whose mission in this world is to divulge the endings of all movies and classify celluloid products as either “for the classes” or “for the masses”.

Thankfully, I am not. So I shall stop now, leaving you at the precipice of suspense.

As Iyer (who remember is Mithun-da the great) says to NoBrain: ” Yeh secret main itna lava hain, ki sunoge to tumhare kaan ke parde jaal jayenge, tumhare haathon se hosh ke kabootar ur jayenge“. [This secret packs so much hot magma in it that once you hear it your eardrums will undergo spontaneous combustion and the pigeons of your senses will go "gutar gutar"]

Yes it’s that shocking.

It is with a heavy heart that I have to announce the death of an old friend.

Desibaba is no more.

Desi Baba Desi Babes
Is closed till further notice.
Copyright © 1998 – 2005 DesiBaba.com
For those who came in late, Desibaba was the original Indian porn site. But it wasnt merely a “porn site”—it was a landmark in desi pop culture.

Let me explain.

The cable revolution of the early 90s came as a blessing from heaven (or hell) for the raging hormones of my generation who were henceforth liberated from the oppressive censorship of state-owned television. The “Chosen One” was Star Movies which served up an intoxicating feast of “After Dark” movies—”Lake Consequence”, “Wide Sargasso Sea” , “ Blindfold—Acts of Obsession” —amazing feasts of carnality whose charm never decreased with multiple viewings and where sound was not necessary for understanding the plot.

For those with a more earthy, daughter-of-the-soil preference, there was Sun TV’s late night adult programs where ladies with Sachin Tendulkar shoulders and Ramesh Krishnan waistlines heaved and thrusted away. As a result, Silk Smitha, Nylon Nalini and the other goddesses of the wet sari pantheon became part of our nightly vocabulary. Watching TV late at night with the sound off became a national obsession.

This was too good to last. In the north rose a fell presence, an evil Eye that never slept; whose sole purpose was to take us back to the Dark Ages.

In other words, I&B minister Sushma Swaraj—the hysterical lady who admonished DD newscasters for wearing transparent saris and showing cleavage, launched a war against flesh tones on the airwaves! Soon she was passing one dictat after another —-Star Movies censored all their sugar and spice, Sun TV followed suit and a dark shadow of depression and KLPD-ness swept the land.

The Net was making its presence felt then in India and the tech-savy section of the country focussed their attention into tapping the vast potential of the cyberworld. It’s well known that porn drives technology—it drove Net commerce in the early days just as it is doing for the multi-media part of the cellular phone business today. But therein lay the problem, smut was a business. Every damn site needed a credit card and we were poor undergrad students with” not a penny to our names” even though we wanted to see others “without a shirt on their back.”

Plus firang models got boring after a while and we could never associate ourself with the hot stories set in the context of the decadent West.

It’s always darkest just before dawn. And when things are at their worst, guess who should come alawn (poetic license)

It all started with a whisper campaign. Hey guys, a new website has come up whose theme is desi. Best of all, it’s free. No credit cards (supposedly used for “age verification” by respectable sites—my foot), no passwords.

The name was desibaba.com.

Suffused with the spirit of Swadeshi, we started the “Danda March” where we vowed to free ourself of the shackles of government censorship. In the process, Desibaba created a whole generation of libertarians impacting the future political landscape of India in an unforeseen way.

So what was this catalyst of social change? It was a Pakistani website (reportedly) that inspired by the vision of the new dot-com economy had a revolutionary business model—fully advertising-revenue driven , free-for-all porn site primarily built on a South-East Asian theme but with enough international pizzazz to please those among us who considered themselves citizens of the world. No dead links, no unbounded opening of pop-up windows and again most importantly no credit cards, Desibaba truly brought honor to the world of smut.

Chock full of content for every man’s taste, it was a pioneer in many respects. For example, it was the only website that would close during the month of Ramzan. But if you had an emergency and had taken the precaution of bookmarking “into” the site, you could still get access. Such thoughtfulness combined with piety and morals.

Yes of course there were some ugly critics who carped that most of the stories were badly spelt, had no grammar or thematic structure and were extremely perverted. But of course, one man’s perversion is another man’s daily routine—-most importantly Desibaba promoted a culture of non-judgementality and acceptance. The only crib I had was the repeated misspelling of the Bengali word for “brother’s wife”—-it was invariably spelt as “bodi” while it should have been “boudi”. A small blemish.

Desibaba preceded Orkut as a social networking center….so many of those badly spelt, barely coherent stories ended with lines like “Any hot aunties in and around Chennai who would like to pay for massage and …..” . I have often wondered what the success rate for these attempts at networking was. Guess I shall never find out.

Desibaba greatly impacted the Indian media—for instance they were the first to come up with the idea of “Babe of the month” —-a concept later adapted with slight modifications by certain other more mainstream publications. Desibaba also pioneered the art of digital picture manipulation —-in a bygone age where actresses used to keep themselves covered up, it was Desibaba’s view of the bold new future. I read with alarm, that the Desibaba technology is being applied to the reticent and shy Meghna Naidu to make her expose even more than what she usually does. Which just goes to show how much impact it has left on our popular culture.

There were spinoffs and copycats—Desimama mounted a challenge before it became a pay site called Chalugirl. Indian porn portals came out and soon Western porn conglomerates were eyeing the lucrative Indian market. The dot-com industry went bust and the model of advertiser-driven businesses was discredited. Desibaba was swamped with Western competition who, very slyly, started using their old stock photos of Hispanic/Latina women and passing them off as 100% desi. Young Indians, on the crest of a BPO boom, had more credit cards than ever before and were increasingly getting more comfortable using them on the Net and elsewhere.

The death knell for Desibaba had been sounded. People stopped going to websites for their porn—instead they started making them themselves armed with tools hitherto in the hands of a privileged few—camera phones and webcams.

School kids in respectable institutions were shooting their own sex videos and marketing them through auction sites. Desibaba suffered.

Consider this. Who would go to Desibaba to watch digitally morphed pictures when people like Tanusree Dutta were going topless in songs in reality (reference: Aashiq Banaya Aapne)?

Indians were being sexed up too fast and Desibaba was now a relic of a more innocent bygone era—-an anachronism, a giant who had not been able to keep pace with the times. Somewhat like Sourav Ganguly.

It spluttered on for some time before its inevitable death.

Weep not. A website may die but an idea does not. I would like to believe that Desibaba is still alive—spread out over thousands of hard drives where pictures and stories from it have been downloaded over the years .

Indeed I would like to believe something even more powerful. That there is a little bit of Desibaba in each of us—-in the memories we carry. Memories of mammaries, of innocence, of shared secrets, of careless whispers, of the thrill of discovery, the whiff of heaven, the hours of unalloyed joy and most importantly the ideal that Desibaba embodied, an ideal many of us bloggers have been inspired by :

” Real pleasure cannot be bought. It is free.”

Desibaba. 1998–2005.

Rest in peace.

And read this(Wild, Wetty Dreams) (link via India Uncut) [Update: the article has since been edited with wetty being replaced by witty. Some samples of the original are below. For the original unedited version, (which was up on Hindustan Times Tabloid): please go here] [Update 2: The HT link is now dead--but thankfully the original unedited version is still available. ]

Yes sirs and madams, it has finally happened. The cataclysm we had all been anticipating. The Ingliss language (Indian English) that originated from the love poems of the famous Bangladeshi (yes don’t point out the contradiction please) brothers Horizon and Verizon on Bangla bulletin boards, gathered steam with “May I do fransip with you?” on orkut scrap books and Yahoo messenger, and then spilled out onto Shaadi.com matrimonials has finally made it to the main stream media.

Note kindly the lyrical quality of these lines.

Being a celeb doesn’t accomplish all your dreams. One still desire for more.

Once being abreast of wildest romantic dream of some of them, you will realise that they are like us.

I love to dress like a Punjbai bride, Christian babe, a beautiful parsi girl and like other communities’ bride.

So I love to get married to a man in several times in several ways

Wren and Martin must be wetting themselves in their damp, dark graves in several times, in several ways.

Of course before you smile that superior smirk, let me tell you that there is a method in the madness. For instance the title of the piece is “Wild Wetty Dreams”—-note that the use of the word “wetty”, though strictly not grammatical (as a matter of fact it doesn’t exist) is essential to distinguish the title from “Wild Wet Dreams” which would be dishonest labelling for this piece of Pulitzer material.

It’s an important distinction to make because of the presence of lines like the ones below, which with a different heading on the piece could have been otherwise construed:

Diana Hyden, a beauty with brains thinks of forest, wild animal and her sweetheart.

As you know African forest are dense and you have deadliest of creatures there. I dream of wild animals all around me. I think this one dream I will ever want to get fulfilled.”

Finally pliss to note the beautifully respectful way of addressing women. Christian “babe”. Hollywood “babe”. Bollywood “babe”. Maywati “babe”. And the author’s lovely conception of romance –”commitment-less cavorting on a lonely island with multiple babes”—-a definition that sensitive men all over the world can relate to.

Very very wetty the author of this piece truly is.

Spontaneous displays of grief were witnessed out all over the city as the death of Imran Kissme, the doyen of Hindi movies, was announced on TV India. At 12:00 midnight, Dr. Rekha Sexena (who this correspondent has gathered has been having a hot affair with her gardener for a year now), chief medical officer at the private hospital he had been admitted to for lip-reconstruction surgery, announced to the assembled press that Mr Kissme passed away peacefully in his sleep of causes unknown.

As soon as the news of his death spread, mobs of heartbroken fans swarmed the streets—wailing in high-pitched nasal Reshmmaic tones, crying out “Woh Lamhe”, setting buses ablaze, vandalizing public property and looting shops—actions which led to the RAF being deployed at many places.

“He took Kissme away from us”–weeped a disconsolate fan, pointing to the sky. Then he pointed to an electronics gadget store, whose doors had been ripped away from its sockets, and said “And He shall pay” as he proceeded to carry away a wide-screen holgraphic device.

The correspondent caught up with another group of students, who were throwing stones and debris at the offices of Microsoft Research, one of the world’s oldest companies. When this correspondent asked why they were trying to vandalize Microsoft, one of the leaders, his eyes red with anger and tears said:

“We owe everything to Imran-ji. Countless generations of young men have used the Kissme Gambit to get girls to take off their top (reference: ” Aashiq Banana Aap Ke” where he gets the heroine to take off her upper garment in order to show that she trusts him)—and now he is no more. He made “adultery” a household word—in addition to “adulteration” which had always been part of our lexicon. The world as we know is over.”

Of course the connection between that and throwing stones at Microsoft Research was not made. But then again logical consistency was never the strong point of Kissme’s work.

The chief minister was quick to absolve all fans of Imran Kissme of guilt. According to him, the violence was instigated by “special interests” and though he knew who it was, he was not telling.

Elsewhere statues of the other doyen of Indian movies: Dino Moronia were attacked by irate fans. Just like Karunanidhi’s statues were after MGR’s death many eons ago.

Reacting to Kissme’s death, Bhatt Patel (the love-child of Mukesh Bhatt and Amisha Patel), whose father Mukesh Bhatt made a record number of movies with Kissme kept looking at the camera, cross eyed with a blank expression on his face–all the while struggling to speak. Ultimately he could only flutter his eyelids.

In late breaking news, curfew has been clamped in anticipation of greater violence as news filtered out that Dave Anand, currently housed at the Museum of Natural History, is planning to do a biopic based on Imran Kissme’s life (called Kiss the Girls) with Dave-ji himself essaying the role of the superstar.