In this day and age when we claim to have become “modern” (where modernity has sadly been defined as wearing skirts, talking in English and downloading ringtones), the fact that such a positively medieval thing can actually happen in a supposedly progressive city like Calcutta has left many of us in the educated middle-class elite angry and surprised.

Angry at the violence and the futile loss of life. Understandable. Angry at the police openly claiming to be able to bend the Constitution as they pleased. Again understandable.

But should we really be so surprised?

Growing up in Calcutta, I always heard cautionary stories, from various quarters, of what happened to people who crossed economic boundaries and got married. Stories like “Did you hear about that rich girl marrying into the poor family and the family members then exploiting her to bring money from her loaded dad?” Or ” I knew it ! That girl from the shanties then brought her whole family over to the rich guy’s house and kept on sucking money —a plot all along”. Or the one about that girl from a “decent family” who got forced into performing “chi chi” acts with strange men by her piss-poor husband who lived across the “railway line” among “them.”

While many may have been exaggerations and some patently false, there were more than a few of these tales which were actually true. In telling us these stories, “society” hammered it into us that the rich-poor successful romance, an oft-repeated theme in Bollywood/Tollywood movies, was merely a fantasy sold to us by the dream-merchants and that in real life what happened after the end credits rolled was not a “happily ever after” fairy tale but a ceaseless nightmare of endless wrangling born out of a failure on the part of both sides, often in spite of their best intentions, to adjust to an environment radically different from what they were born into.

In other words, if the families were woefully maladjusted economically, then the union was doomed to ultimate failure.

Because marriage after all, as your grandma would tell you, is not just between people, but between families and their attendant social contexts.

Ashok Todi is a product of this above mindset, the father of a daughter brought up in the lap of luxury (Priyanka Todi tells her mother-in-law that she has tried to prepare herself for poverty by not turning on the AC for the last few days —an indication of how little Priyanka knew about the real issues of being poor), a stupendously rich man with a monster ego and the smugness that comes from knowing that he can make the law bend to his will. He comes into Rizwanur’s home, first tries to buy him and his family off (based on the assumption that a rich-poor relation is but the opening gambit in an extortion game) through the totally “filmi” brandishing of a blank cheque book, then threatens to finish them off, then brings in the cops, unleashes his extended family, resorts to emotional blackmail by claiming to be ill and then does something, which as long as investigations are pending, we do not know for sure but can surely be suspicious of.

Also a product of the same mindset are many of the anguished email forwarders and petition signers, who suddenly have discovered the elephant in the room. Now here’s a rhetorical question to the shocked aunties and anguished uncles: if the same thing that had happened to Todi had happened in their family (i.e their daughter eloped with a man who lives in a shanty in one of the city’s poorer neighborhoods), would they accept it with smiling acquiescence? I would think not. Would they put a contract out on their son-in-law? Perhaps not (and for some that might be because they don’t have the police force to act as their personal gunda army) but they would at the very least sulk and emotionally blackmail and at the worst, cut off all social contact with the offending couple.

Does that make them as bad as Todi? Definitely not. Because they are not accessories to murder, like Todi in all probability is. But the sanctimonious finger-wagging does expose more than a little of “middle class” hypocrisy, even more so when people express shock about the “divisions in society” as if they themselves are totally oblivious of it in their own lives. And for all those who in the spirit of self-flagellation would say “Indians are the biggest hypocrites”, I suggest you watch the classic movie “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” [where the story centers around the character of Spencer Tracy, " a lifelong fighting liberal who loathes race prejudice" getting all upset and suspicious when his daughter reveals her fiance (Sidney Poitier) to be black], to be convinced how universal this hypocrisy is.

So was it only about poverty? What about religion? While in my middle-class upbringing, caste and religion were never defining distinctions but “poverty” (and the closely-related word: “low culture”) definitely was, things would be different in a conservative family where it is conceivable that the Islamic faith of Rezwan was no less an obstacle for parental approbation. When Ashok Todi was asking Rezwan whether he would convert for his daughter’s stake, he was articulating the most potent fear in inter-religious marriages—-the perceived humiliation inherent in a religious conversion for the family that has “lost” one of its members to another religion. However in my opinion, the biggest obstacle in this case was not the religion of Rezwanur (and people may disagree with me here) but the economic condition of his family: between a Muslim scion of a 250 crore business empire and a Hindu version of Rezwanur I can bet that Ashok Todi would gladly prefer the cash-rich son-in-law.

Or was it all about one and only one thing– fear? The fear of being slow-bled for money. The fear of being ostracized by your supposed friends and relatives. The fear of having people whom you snubbed coming back to snub you. The fear of your offspring being hurt. Or tortured. Or simply the fear of the unknown, the people whom we do not understand, the people whom we cannot connect with.

Is this fear justified? Perhaps it is. Parents are always fearful for their wards and there will always be real-life incidents that feed this fear. But the most important thing that Indian parents have to realize is that no matter how convinced they are that their adult children are taking wrong decisions about their romantic commitments, at some point of time they have to stand back and let them “make their own mistakes”. Unless this happens, the Hum Aapke Hain Kaunkian “Dhiktana Dhiktana” ideal of the great Indian family will continue to remain a noose around one’s neck, catching in its strangulating knot as it has in this case–a well-liked upwardly mobile professional of humble origins, his family, a young girl and yes even the father of the bride.

[Incidentally, this is my 400th post according to Wordpress]

However, Raima identifies more with the spunky, modern Sheila of The Bong Connection. “We’ve had a very modern upbringing. We didn’t do pujas at home. We speak in English at home, not Bengali. Most of my friends have been Anglo-Indians.”

There is a lot to be said here — about self-loathing, about the perceived downmarket-ness of speaking in one’s vernacular or of participating in religious ceremonies, about the sense of shame felt by certain elements of the Bengali “high society” in “not being English”, the association between faux-Westernism and “modernity” and finally the connection between a “modern” upbringing and the au naturale look in a naughty MMS (yes I know that was the other baby Sen—but they all had the same upbringing).

But then again, why bother ?

Instead all I shall do, while keeping in the spirit of the “Partner” season, is to quote Govinda from David Dhawan’s Banarasi Babu where he defines modernity in a way Raima Sen would definitely approve.

Govinda (in chaste Bihari accent):

Ab tumhare pyar ke khatir dekhna hum kaisa “maadern” ho jayenge. Tumhare mummy ke saath baithke puff marenge, patte khelenge, tumko disco main le jayenge, jeans ke pant pahenenge tight aur inko aise phaar dalenge aur unke andar likh denge “Take it easy” aur kaan ke andar baali pahenlenge aur chuha cut baal kaatke pura sahar mein ghumenge tum bhi kahogi kya chuha pai hoon..”

[Rough translation: Now see how "modern" I become for the sake of your love. I will sit and smoke with your mother while playing cards, I will take you to the disco, I will wear really tight jeans and then rip them and write "Take it easy", I will wear ear-rings and get a "mouse"-type haircut and even you will realize what a mouse you have....]

Paidal chal raha hoon, ek gaari chahiye,
Jeevan ke safaar main ek sawari chahiye,
Akela hain Mr. Khiladi,
Miss Khiladi chahiye. —Mr and Mrs. Khiladi

All you hot “babes” (as per Hindustan Times lingo)—it’s time that you used your mini-skirts, tank tops, assorted accessories and most-of-all your knowledge of the Page 3 side of the force for the good of the country.

How?

By going on a date with this man. And his other cohorts.

A little background.

After the Mahajan affair, the police have decided to keep strict tabs on the happening parties and clubs in Mumbai (link courtesy Rajeev)—so as to get to the real big users of the drugs Sahil Zaroo peddles.

The Delhi police, starting today, will watch all Page 3 parties in Mumbai very closely. A three-member team headed by Station House Officer of the Connaught Place police station, Suresh Kaushik, arrived in the city yesterday. They will visit parties at short-listed pubs and discos where drugs are taken.

But as it usually happens, getting into the Page 3 circuit isn’t easy. Even for the law. In a sequence straight out of “Police Academy” this is what happened:

The cops did a recce last night, but hit upon a stumbling block. They were not allowed to enter clubs in Colaba, as they were stags. “We will sort out this problem tonight,” the sources told MiD DAY.

So as you can see, these men need dates in order to bust the drug dealers. And these dates for obvious reasons cannot be the Mayawati-Mamata soulsisters employed by the government of India to drag away screaming lady protesters—–they would stand out in a strapless gown in a not-very-complimentary way.

Of course it can be argued that the man in the first picture would also stand out in a group of meterosexual models and gay fashion designers but then again not all gentlemen on the Page 3 circuit are “lookers”. Nor do they dress particularly well.

Coming back to the main point it is fairly evident that the cops needs pretty ladies from the civilian population, well versed in the art of bitchy chitchat and possessing sound (un)dressing sense, to bump and grind against them as they hobnob with the glitterati and surreptitiously search for clues —-of course the fact that the face of one of these investigators being in the papers may slightly hamper the “secrecy” of their investigations is something that should be forgotten.

Remember ladies that the real ACP Rathores of the world are likely to look like the man in the first picture rather than like Aamir Khan. Consequently, they are likely to be lonely men who will get turned away by bouncers at each and every club while the dilettantes snort contraband stuff and engage in mind boggling debauchery inside.

Unless you step up to the plate. And take a “hit” for the country.

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.

Michael and Fredo.

Pramod and Pravin.

Times like these I am glad I am a single child.

Look at Pravin Mahajan. His elder brother, Pramod brought him up after their father died. Found a bride for him. Used his influence to land plum contracts (Balasaheb’s humble abode) for his construction business. Why, as IT minister, he even took him along to Germany as part of an Indian delegation (needless to say at government expense)—the official excuse (rumoured) being that Pravin was a “developer”. He later gets a job for Pravin in the telecom sector and periodically loans him money.

And what does Pravin do? He shoots sugarbrotha in the stomach—and that too multiple times.

No it’s not pre-meditated (according to Pravin’s lawyers): it was something he seemingly did on the spur of the moment fed up with big brother’s mistreatment and refusal to return calls.

Which conjures up a very scary thought: does Pravin Mahajan go around everywhere, gun-in-holster, like a cowboy from the wild West and on finding someone reading the newspaper while he talks, says “You find that newspaper interesting eh? Well here’s a magazine” before he unloads a full magazine of bullets into the said person’s liver ?

Just like the invisible man who shot Jessica Lal. Or the poor newly married bride into Devi Lal’s clan who accidentally shot herself while playing with a loaded gun.

I am not saying some relatives do not deserve to be shot.

Oh yes, they do.

That snobbish snotty cousin who thinks he is “superior”—the one whom your mother points out and says “Why cannot you be more like him?” The “inferiority-complex” cousin , the one that always sulks in the corner and refuses to come out of his bedroom when you visit. The “know-it-all” uncle who volunteers guidance by stating the obvious, again and again (Study harder, The computer “line” is good nowadays, Management is a nice “line”). And the one who keeps on saying how hard their generation had it and how easy it has become for today’s kids.

These people, without doubt, deserve all the lead they can get.

It’s just that Pramod Mahajan did not deserve to– he had done more than enough for his brother. A little less might have been better for the country, because seeing how his brother is—he would have shot him all the same.

Let’s conclude with an anecdote that precisely captures the mindset of people like Pravin Mahajan.

When it was pointed out to Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar that Mr so-and-so was spreading vicious rumours about him, the great man gently replied:

“I wonder why he is doing so. I never helped him in any way.”

–Devdas (2002)

Shocking. Simply shocking. Unless you have been living under a Stone, you should know by now about the cataclysmic attack that was inflicted on Indian culture and our traditional way of life during Lakme India Fashion week.

Yes I am referring to the wardrobe malfunctions of Carol Gracias and Gauhar Khan which lay bare to the watching eyes of millions a set of female breasts and a woman’s derrière.

Of course the debauches will try to convince us that these were accidents and there was no foul play involved. The pseudo-logicals and the apologists will put forward the argument that if people are already 85% naked, how does 87% make it any worse?

To the first group, all I shall say is that lightning does not strike twice in quick succession. Even if one has 15 girls showing off 35 outfits in 20 minutes. And to the second group I say that it is that 2% which is the titting sorry tipping point—-why even Carol realized it when she slumped on Marc Robinson’s shoulder and cried copiously after the event.

And why do you think she was crying? Well I think she realized that it is going to be tough to get her married off after this horrible event. If it really was nothing, then she should have been saying “Gracias”—right?

So yes—yes it is a big deal. That 2%.

Indian culture cannot and should not tolerate the display of naked breasts, even for a blindingly brief nanosecond. We are addicted to the boob tube. We have old boobs for politicians. Any more will surely rupture the country’s moral fabric and expose the junk in our trunk.

And that cannot be tolerated.

This “wardrobe malfunction” thing has always been an euphemism for the worst kind of vulgarity. Its origins are in the infamous Justin Timberlake-Janet Jackson rumble during the Superbowl half-time when the entire US population were treated to a gratuitous display of breasts as Ms Jackson’s top was torn away by Timberlake. According to Justin, he was expecting something underneath it, Janet claimed she did not know Justin was going to do that– in short, it was all an accident.

Did anyone buy it? No. They however did buy a shitload of Janet Jackson CDs after that—-in the process giving a huge boost to her sagging career.

And why did they not buy the “accident” theory? Maybe because Mr Timberlake was performing a number that had the line “Bet I’ll have you naked by the end of this song” in it.

In the Carol-Gauhar case, things are not so open-and-shut. Correction: they are open but not shut.

Which is why I welcome the initiative of one of my favourite politicians: Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil who, in a transport of immense sagacity, has directed City Police Comissoner AN Roy to check all video clippings of the slips and investigate if this was a deliberate act.

A brilliant use of our policeforce’s time and taxpayer’s money as roomfulls of hyperventilating men shall watch and rewatch (in super slow motion) the offending video clips late into the night and try desperately to find hidden clues, exercising the mythical “kanoon ka lamba haath”. (long arm of the law) for the good of the people.

But I am not sure that merely watching the clip a 100 times will be able to solve such a delicate case as this. Clues may be revealed but the case will not be solved. In order to make the case “stand” we should have re-inactments of the act in front of an audience comprising of politicians and other eminent beings who have the total interest of the country in hand.

The models should be made to recreate the scene over and over again while the Patils and the Thackerays compare notes so as to get a grip on the situation. Fingerprints should be collected from the exact “scene” of the crime and for that special agent Amar Singh should be brought in so as to get to the bottom of the case pronto.

What is worrying for me is that if this goes unpunished, it may start a new age of copycat malfunctions. What is there to prevent Laloo Yadav, who like Carol Gracias reportedly has an aversion for underwear, from stage-executing a dhoti malfunction during a Janata Dal rally to win back his Yadav support ?

Is that the kind of open government you want?

I do not think so.

And to all those slaves of the Western world who say we are over-reacting over a small issue, I have one thing to say:

Zip it.

[Update: The case has been solved. It was an accident. A cover-up if there was ever one. Disgusting.]

Which is why we should celebrate “Kamdev Chaturthi” instead of Valentine’s Day.

And April Fool’s Day should give way to “Ullu Divas”.

The biggest fools are those Indians who celebrate April Fool’s Day as-is—-do most people even know the history behind why April 1 is “All Fool’s Day”? If they did, then they would realize that the Gregorian vs Julian calendar battle is not part of our history and so we should take no part in this celebration of idiocy.

From a very practical viewpoint, how much of a fool do you have to be in order to taken in by April Fool gags considering that all of them have to happen on April 1 ! As an example, the rather-nice “our site has been hijacked” hoax by the folks at Sepiamutiny. If they had done this on say September 15, then it might have fooled a lot of people.

But in and around April 1, we are expecting stuff like this for which even a well-executed hoax merely gets a snigger or two whereas ideally it should cause panic (like Orson Well’s “The Martians have landed” ).

Besides the name change, I propose that “Ullu Divas” should become a floating event—that is you are free to celebrate it any day you choose. Which brings the surprise element back into the equation. However if you try to celebrate it two days a year, then it’s you who are the ullu.

Just imagine how fun it will be.

Kiran More calls Ganguly to say: ” You have been selected for the last 3 ODIs.” Ganguly does Chandipuja, Calcutta takes out a procession and all is well till Kiran More comes on NDTV and says:

“Ullu Banaya”.

LK Advani calls Jinnah secular in a RSS meeting. And as the pracharaks gasp for air, he winks and says :” Happy Ullu Divas”.

You check out an attractive female and she looks at you, takes out her camera phone, snaps your picture and says “Hey sleazebag, you are now in the Blank Noise hall of shame” . You smile at her and say ” Ullu Banaya. I am totally gay” and walk off humming “Hum dono hain alag alag” (the gay anthem song)

You propose to your girl-friend, meet your ex on the way back, get cold feet—well now you can get off the hook by telling your girl friend—yes you guessed it—”Ullu Banaya”.

Let’s take another example. Madame Monisha Koirala. It’s April 1st. And she wants to play an April Fools Joke on her darling secretary—the same guy who brokered the contracts for gems like “Choti Si Love Story” , “Tum” , “Market” and brought her so much adulation and respect. So she calls Abu Salem (a wannabe comic whose jokes always “bomb” spectacularly for which he is called “So-Lame”) and tells him to bump off Ajit Dewani, the said secretary—all in jest of course.

A nice hoax. Except that it was not April 1st but October 6th—Madame Koirala, in a gin-soaked moment of impulsiveness, has lost track of both the month as well as the date. So Abu takes her in all seriousness and goes off and actually has the guy shot.

Years later, during interrogation, Abu Salem—who has forgotten all details of his conversations with Dawood or ISI—remembers only this joke-gone-bad and tells our investigating agency this gory incident, much to Madame’s embarrassment

Now if we only had “Ullu Divas” she could genuinely have smiled sweetly and said:” Aare Abu ko Ullu Banaya. Even now he has not understood” before leaving to shoot for Nabh Kumar Raju’s new movie where she plays a bisexual novelist who weighs 3 Stones.

Which brings us to the “acknowledgement” part. People who get fooled have to accept that they were “ullus”—-no more smirking and saying “Ooh yeah I knew it all along.” With “Ullu Divas” being a floating event, saying “Of course it’s April 1″ will do no longer.

And the way to accept their ullu-dom is to sing, in a nasal tone, to the perpetrator of the hoax:

“Ullu Banaya…ullu banaya…ullu banaya aap ne”.

Taking off their shirt however is optional (reference: the sequence in “Aashiq Banaya Apne” when this song is going on).

Happy Ullu Divas everyone.

The one main problem plaguing India, according to me, is poor roads. There should be a law to level all roads. Due to overpopulation, the traffic seems to increase even more. This is an immediate concern as we use these roads daily. It would make living better.

He is also a murderer—or at the very least an accessory. Unless you have been living under a rock, you know the story— Jessica Lal, a model, was murdered in a restaurant called Tamarind Court where she was the celebrity bartender for refusing to serve drinks to an inebriated son-of-a-minister, Manu Sharma. Despite being shot dead in front of so many people and then fleeing the scene of the crime, Manu Sharma and his associates were set free—-thanks to collusion on the part of the police (who intentionally botched evidence) and because Shayan Munshi, who was present when the murder took place, retracted his evidence—thereby letting a murderer walk away: laughing.

Of course Shayan Munshi had some cock-and-bull story for why he retracted his evidence —because he gave his deposition in English and the cops took it down in Hindi (a language Shayan cannot read), totally changing everything he said and then Shayan signed the statement without reading it. Now even a model cannot be that air-headed. Or maybe the cops conned him by asking for his “autograph” and in his obscene hurry to give the first autograph of his life—he did not even see where he was signing.

I don’t know what exactly happened but one thing for sure: Shayan Munshi is a murderer, at least in my eyes.

But at least he tried. At least, he stuck his neck out initially to depose against Manu Sharma. What about the entire party—comprising of socialites, cops and strapless blouses, powerful and influential people most of them, who stayed silent throughout? Do they want us to believe that the bartender got shot and that they did not even look up from their plate? Are they not as bad if not worse than Shayan Munshi?

But here’s the bigger question: How many of you, shocked and indignant Indians, would put your own life on hold, risk police harassment (we know which side they are on) and go out on a limb to seek justice for a total stranger? Not many—looking at how on the urban streets of India, accident victims lie dying while the city moves by them, not stopping.

Nobody wants to get involved—Shayan Munshi is merely a symptom of that.

My mother-in-law tells of her office colleague who tried to help an accident victim (he subsequently died) and the good Samaritan landed behind bars. In Calcutta, an off-duty policeman died trying to save a lady from being molested by three other cops—the lady in question refused to identify her molesters. Yes that’s right. She prevented justice from being served to the person who died saving her. A few months ago, the Telegraph reported that a man took an accident victim to the hospital in his car—a few days later the cops arrived at his doorstep: it seems that the “victim” had told the police that the doctor was the man who ran him over in the first place.

In this context, can you blame people for turning their backs ?

Lest it be misunderstood, this is not an attempt to absolve Shayan Munshi of his guilt. It is instead to make the point that rather than using Shayan Munshi as a receptacle of our hatred, it is better to ask ourselves: “What would we have done in his place?”

I know there are a lot of you who would have faced the damnation of hell in order to see justice being served—-its a pity that such people are almost never present when a person gets shot in a room full of people or lies bleeding — run over by a bus or when a woman is being assaulted on the street.

In conclusion, I wonder how Shayan Munshii can sleep at night knowing that his evidence exonerated a murderer. And the scary thing is I think I know his answer.

Just like the rest of us.

On this Valentine’s day buy a diamond for the special woman in your life—-it will be something she will remember for ever.

I let out a small imprecation under my breath as I heard this on the radio while driving home from work. Not because I had not bought a diamond for my wife (I am a big miser) but because of the way the media brainwashes us into believing that love is directly proportional to the cash you spend on the object of your affections. And that a diamond is the best way of expressing what’s in your heart.

Why a diamond? Why not bubblegum?

Because it’s the most expensive thing you can think of.

Which prompts me to ask myself: Why oh why is the most ethereal of concepts ie love to be measured by the most corporeal of concepts ie cash?

I understand what drives the diamond merchants and card vendors and the sellers of soft toys—after all Valentine’s Day is exclusively a capitalistic endeavor, aggressively promoted by the media only as a vehicle to sell merchandise that people do not really need so much so that I sometimes suspect that Valentine is the name of the guy who founded Hallmark cards.

Their game plan is to make an association with buying otherwise-useless things that have high profit margins with “love” and push this association explicitly through media advertisements and implicitly through movies and television soaps.

Quite a racket.

But why do sensible, otherwise level-headed women fall for this sham–especially with respect to the buying of diamonds? I mean tell a lady that the sweatshirt she is going to buy has been made by bonded laborers who work under horrible conditions where the price of refusal to work is the cutting off of hands and odds are that they are going to walk away.

However this is exactly how most diamonds are mined and most women seem to have no compunctions about it. Tell me, how many women on getting a diamond ring or diamond jewelery ever stop to think as to how that thing got there, whether it is a “conflict diamond” or not or how truthful “certificates of authenticity” actually are.

Now now you say. All this is just an excuse for Greatbong not to buy a diamond.

Which incidentally is right.

[For instance, I refuse to buy a fur coat for my wife because an animal was killed to provide for a humans entertainment. It's quite another thing that I believe that a chicken exists for the sole purpose of attaining nirvana in a tandoor.]

You will also tell me how deluded I am: women don’t want diamonds or expensive things—they want gestures. And gestures don’t cost money—or get anyone be-handed.

Nice. So what kind of gestures? Why a simple bouquet of flowers. Just a sign to show the man cares. How touching. Now if I told you that the bouquet of flowers I have in my hand was not bought from some chic flowershop but was painstakingly collected by me from the tombstones of the local graveyard , would it be quite so saccharine?

After all, taking flowers people have left on gravestones required more effort than just buying them at a store.

Or giving you a diamond ring and then adding that this was something I gave my last girl-friend which she returned when we broke up?

Would I get brownie points for that?

No I don’t think I would.

Which brings me to my central point of Valentine’s day as seen from the female perspective: did you spend money on me?

If you did, you are a sensitive man.

Else you are a mean-minded ogre who “has changed” !

But wait, gifts work both ways—-guys also get stuff on Valentine’s days. But they are girlie things too—tie pins, pens, scents, aromatic candles, chocolates, musical cards (which woe betide you if you cannot find after a few years) and sometimes even that monstrosity—soft toys.

It’s not as if there aren’t enough occasions for giving sappy gifts—birthdays, anniversaries and such like. But no we have to add one more superfluous occasion on top.

It also puts undue stress on those who do not have a “Valentine”—especially in a country like India where unbridled male-female interaction is an opportunity open to a few.

Valentine’s day, like all capitalistic constructs, is thus primarily divisive—meant to amplify the divide between the haves and the havenots or in this case the “getting it” with the “getting it nots”.

Valentine’s Day–Hai Hai.

[Vday Disclosure: I took a bunch of carnations, a card and chocolate home ----so that my wife still believes that I am a softy at heart. Which shows I dont necessarily practice what I preach. Aaah well.]

So what’s going on in this picture to the left?

Let’s see what Amit who took this picture says.

“At one point, Raj Singh Dungarpur, the team’s manager, got Wasim Jaffer’s attention and pushed his glass towards him. He wanted Jaffer to pour water into it. Jaffer politely obliged.”

Am I depressed on account of Raj Singh Dungarpur’s imperious regal air, the fact that he does not even acknowledge Jaffer’s action with a glance—instead staring straight on like a Sultan watching a mujra while his wine goblet is refilled by an underling?

No I am not.

I am depressed because I do not have anyone “under my command” who would be sufficiently afraid/in awe of my powers so as to pour water into my glass while I kept myself otherwise occupied. After all Dungarpur and I are kind of similar otherwise—-both of us have no personal achievements to speak of, both of us make idiotic, self-important statements, neither of us has any idea of cricket, both of us love Mohammed Azharuddin, both of us hate Sourav Ganguly and both of us were born into royal families.

Okay maybe not the last one (or perhaps the one before too), but you get the picture.

To be honest, I have always admired people in authority who push their subordinates about and treat them as personal serfs. A senior cop who gets on the shoulders of a constable to avoid getting his feet wet, a professor who sends his PhD students to do his family’s groceries, a powerful administrator who has home guards cooking and cleaning his house are all objects of my undiluted admiration.

Take my Class 6 Arts teacher. One day he took a boy’s collage work (something he had spent hours doing) and in front of him ripped it up, slapped him hard on his face and said ” Do you know why I ripped your work? Because I don’t like your face.”

While the young boy, tears running down his cheek, picked up the remnants of his work from the floor and our arts teacher paced the class saying “Keep me in good mood, children” I remember thinking to myself—

Wow what an achiever. Today he is going to go his dingy Bhowanipore hovel and over a dinner of rice and daal tell his fat wife–Guess what I did today ! I made a 12 year old boy cry. While his wife would reply—”Ooh you hunk of a man you. Come to bed bobba and ride me like a rickshaw”.

Yes even at age 12 I was having such thoughts. And idolizing my Arts teacher. And worshipping some of the other noble men and women who would accept gifts from their students—from things like diaries and chocolates to more significant things —all given in the hope that the teachers “liked their faces”.

I remember our school “foundation day” where our founder used to sit on an elevated pedestal smiling benignly while kids piled past him –laying at his feet “presents” which ranged from greetings cards to gift packs of scents and toiletries. I wanted to be like him—lording over puny humans who knew that this superman had the power of life and death over them.

Just like Wasim Jaffer knows that Raj Singh , who as we all know has been sent on the Pakistan tour purely as a stooge of the ruling BCCI clique, exerts an inordinate say in selection matters (though technically speaking, he is not supposed to). So while Jaffer knows that acting as his towel boy may not get him into the team, refusing to do so would be like consuming cyanide with respect to his cricket career . Which is why, like a meek boy, he was obliged to service his master. Now that is what is called Pawar…sorry Power.

In conclusion, I wonder (yes I wonder a bit too often) what would have happened if one day underlings snap. What if, pushed to the corner and sick and tired of their fear of authority being taken for granted—the constable drops his superior into a ditch, the student puts laxatives in the groceries, the home guards throw the frying pan at their boss and ask him to cook his own food, the class 6 kid shoves his boot up the Arts teachers ass, students refuse to “celebrate” foundation day and Wasim Jaffer pours water on mega-blowhard Raj Singh Dungarpur’s head.

That would be some day.

Water on “dung”—-the stink would not have gone away too easily.