You know that there is something inherently wrong with the world.
No not when a man is electrocuted and beaten to death for refusing to buy a birthday present for the Queen of the downtrodden or when suicide bombing becomes a business in Pakistan.
That’s expected.
You know there is something wrong in the world when Santa Claus gets postal, takes a gun and starts killing people.
Merry Christmas everyone.
Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind turns four on the 20th of August. And to commemorate this occasion, I, as a proud father, join voices with Prabhuji Mithunda, as he sings, in his very own voice , the following song.
“Aaj mere Munne ki saal giraah hain”
Four years in the turbo-accelerated Indian blogworld is like forty in the real considering the sheer amount of change, both in terms of the number of blogs and overall readership, one has witnessed over these years.
If on August 20, 2004 someone would have told me that in August 2008, people like Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Ram Gopal Verma and Karan Johar would be blogging I would have laughed him off by saying: “Yeah right ! I can just see the future. Amitabh Bachchan, who we know for his strong silence and aloofness, would be using his blog, perhaps twice a day, to take swipes at every Tom Dick and Harry who criticizes him. Aamir Khan would spend his keemti time informing us of the name of his dog (which happens to be Shahrukh) . Ram Gopal Verma would be justifying his questionable creative decisions through his blog. Hah ! Dude no way is that happening in four or four hundred years. What stuff are you smoking?”
Bihar main ek kahawat hain, mard jab tak chita pe naheen baithta, use buddha naheen kahete.
-Old Is Gold (2007)
Figure 1: The birthday of the future (or so I wish)
The 5-bit counter overflows. I turn 32.
Maturity, responsibility and a sense of balance beckons.
I, however, refuse to listen.
Happy New Year everyone !
Figure 2: The birthdays of the past (or so I remember)
Haye haye mera beta jawaan ho gya, toota hua teer kaman ho gya
On August 20, “Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind”, the fruit of my fingers, turns three. And so I feel like a Dummy (dad + mummy) blogger, which is why we have the standard “proud parent” graphic below.
It has been an eventful year for RTDM, with it winning the IndiBlog of the Year 2006, a fact that caused much merriment in the Greatbong household with calls to all and sundry and conversations on the lines of “Yes mera beta came first this year. How did your blog-munna do? Not that good? Aww…koi baat naheen…(wicked grin)”. The jubilance was in sharp contrast to 2005 when my good-for-nothing blog came second, despite the best coaching and cramming classes money can buy. No doubt the repeated boxing of its ears, the 100 lines of writing “I shall come first in class” on the blackboard and the ritual humiliation, inflicted on it as sanctions for its “failure” to live up to it’s parent’s expectations, had its effect.
When Meow FM104.8, India’s first radio station for women, wanted to create compelling content for their first week of existence they needed a delicious chunk of hunkhood with seductive voice and flirtatious temper on their show, whose rich dulcet baritones would make ladies listeners swoon, go “sh-boogie bop” and come back purring for more.
Instead they got me.
Yesterday I was invited to be one of the panellists on BBC’s “World Have Your Say” on a show about the Big Brother and the Gandhi Youtube controversy.(If you want to listen to the program, look at the right hand sidebar of this page, find the “Listen Again” tab and click on the Thursday link. The audio file will be there only till next Thursday i.e. January 25, 2007).
Dear Ms. Romila Saha,
This blog post is with reference to your article in the Indian Express July 1, 2006 edition where you refer to my blog thusly:
But for most Indians, the blog functions as a forum to connect with others. Take, for instance, blogs like greatbong.blogspot.com where Bengalis from around the world write in.
Now there is a little bit of confusion as to what you mean by “writing in”.
When I die, would this be what people will say about me?
His known weakness was for good food, which made him overweight and diabetic.
[FYI: I am not diabetic]
Will gmail be in such an obscene hurry to recycle my mail space that within hours of my death, this would happen?
His e-mail was gbong@gmail.com, which will be defunct from today.
Won’t anyone have the decency to forward my mails from my defunct account to gbong.is.dead@gmail.com so that I can read my spam from Dante’s second circle of Hell while listening to “Jhalak Dikh Lajaaa“? Won’t anyone have the decency to not call me overweight once my soul has left my defunct body?
[Originally published November 13, 2005. Reposted because of technical difficulties experienced by many in accessing the old post]
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.
I have never had a guest blogger here at RTDM. But as of today, I am going to make an exception. I present (fanfare)—-my mother. A little context: My father, a professor at IIM Calcutta is going to retire in February. So on his last LTC, Baba and Ma went to Andaman Islands—both for some peace and quiet (they deserve it for having brought me up) as well as to visit Andaman Cellular Jail—-the place where my grandfather (my father’s father) , Jyotirmoy Ray [his picture in the Cellular Jail museum on the left] spent 4 years of his life [his sentence was for 7 years commutted to 4 as part of an amnesty program] as a political prisoner (He was part of the revolutionary movement in Bengal and transported arms to the revolutionaries). He died in 1991.This post is based on a mail my mother wrote to me after coming back from Andamans—-I have added some things to it based on phone conversations I had with her since then. In all, it’s a joint effort between mother and son—in some places the feelings are Ma’s (as conveyed through the telephone) and the words are mine and in some places both of them are Ma’s (being part of her original letter).
With January 26 here, I thought of sharing it with you.
