Top Five Richest Bollywood Fictional Characters

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Posted on April 25, 2011

Inspired by this, the basic premise suggested by author Samit Basu and another idea by Chittaranjan, here is a top 5 List of the Richest Hindi movie fictional characters, brought to you by Borbes magazine.

5. Y. Raichand

Net Worth: 50 billion

Living in a Scottish castle, commuting by helicopter, and having daily parties where hundreds of women dance in lock-step, the Raichands have always symbolized opulence, khandaani wealth and old world Indian values. Though they maintain their position in the list, primarily because of their investment in high-fructose corn syrup, sugar, heart-shaped balloons, pink cards and romance novels, it has been a stormy year with the next-in-line providing a record 17 flops (if we include his 3 identical copies on a mobile ad, it would be 51 flops), long-time confidante and business partner Kamar Singh defecting and the patriarch tweeting non-stop through it all without much of an “Idea” as to what’s going on.

Char Ikke

62 Comments

Posted on April 19, 2011

It has been a sad year for the Hindi film industry. And I am not just referring to the release of Biblical curses like “Golmaal 3”, “Anjana Anjaani” and “Tees Mar Khan.”

It has been sad because four doyens of old-world 80s/90s single-screen Bollywood passed away in the past few months and as someone who grew up watching their movies, it would be remiss of me not to raise my virtual cap to them.

IPL The Excitement

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Posted on April 16, 2011

For me the highlight of the IPL so far has been Paul Valthaty. Amidst all the millions of dollars and the often dial-in performances of the national and international fatcats, Valthaty is enough to warm the hearts of even the most cynical among us.

If the IPL has any redeeming value, it is that it provides Indian first-class cricketers, off the radars of selectors, who otherwise would be consigned to a lifetime of playing great innings in front of empty stadiums in Ranji trophy, an opportunity to showcase their skills in front of thousands.

Because otherwise this IPL, in comparison to the other three, has been tepid. I am not talking about the quality of cricket (after all, cricket is to IPL what character development is to porn) but about the masala.

On The Jan Lok Pal Bill

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Posted on April 13, 2011

I have been deliberating whether to write about the Jan LokPal Bill for some time. The reason why I have dallied somewhat is because I am more than a bit conflicted on this issue.

Here though is what I am sure about. The “revolution” we just saw, started right after the World Cup and completed right before the IPL, was not India’s Tahrir Square. Not that I am belittling the revolutionary temper of those who starved on Twitter or took an hour off from their busy schedules to show their patriotism or those who made more missed calls than a heavy-duty stalker or those who flooded my Facebook inbox with invitations for “anti-corruption events” or those who turned up at the site of the struggle as if it was a Roadies roadshow or created “Picbadges” for their Facebook profiles or lit more protest candles than there are on A K Hangal’s birthday cake. When Bipasha Basu, Shahid Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra make moving 140 character oratory orgasms over Twitter, far be it for humble me to even hint that this is not something like the “Rang De Basanti Be the Change” revolution of a few years ago. Even then, comparing this to the mass uprising in Libya and Egypt or making a connection between the Indian government, moribund as it is, with the regimes that are there, is a bit like comparing Sachin Tendulkar to, let’s see. Sujith Somasunder.

Walking With The Men In Blue

250 Comments

Posted on April 7, 2011

I was expecting an article from my favorite Goddess of Overbloated Things, Ms. Roy on India’s triumph in the World Cup. Since I presume she has not written one yet, let me write it for her. This is *a parody* and does not purport to be written by Ms. Roy. It is also considerably shorter than her 25-page rantings.

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Rudyard Kipling, that endearing old-world colonialist, once called cricket a game of “flanneled fools”. They don’t wear flannels any longer though, favoring tacky, garish uniforms made glossy by shining droplets of sweat from the foreheads of those who made them, in Mexico or closer home in Dhaka. What still remains are fools, namely those who believe they are watching a gentle competition between bat and ball and not a few hours of vacuous manufactured reality, whose raison d’etre is to serve as an orgiastic assertion of India’s overwhelmingly Hindu middle class’s hyper-nationalistic vanity.

The Big Hearts

157 Comments

Posted on April 5, 2011

When Sohail Tanveer says “Hinduyon ki zehniyaat aisi hai” or when Shoaib Malik thanks all the Muslims in the world for supporting Pakistan or when Afridi says that Muslims (by which he means Pakistanis exclusively) have much bigger hearts than Indians, I understand. I understand that for these people, Pakistan is synonymous with Muslims and India is synonymous with Hindus. You cannot blame the Pakistanis for that—-they have and are systematically removing their non-Muslim minorities (read this for a slice of minority life in the Land of the Pure) for which the equivalence they make between Muslims and Pakistan is not ridiculous at all. On the other hand, their refusal to acknowledge the presence of Muslims in India is natural. If they did, it would be a big middle finger to the basic premise of their existence—-that Hindus and Muslims cannot co-exist together peacefully. Being brought up in an educational system that teaches them that they beat India in 1971 (despite the small fact that they signed a document of surrender) and that Hindus (=Indians) are responsible for many heinous acts directed at the country including depriving them of water, I do not expect any different.