Tube floods London

The Brits are learning the hard way. A day-long strike by the railway union has thrown London into disarray. I wonder if this is a result of some influences from here? The English aren't totally unused to the idea of a strike, of course, since their unions are much better organised than our ours.

Commuters are now proposing a counter-strike.

Pandora's box

The US quit Iraq this week. Partially. Of course, the official version is that the CPA transferred sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government. Saddam Hussein has been transferred to Iraqi legal custody but will be guarded by the US until the Iraqis find a way to hold him securely.

Which is a good way of saying that the US will make sure that Saddam never gets a chance to tell the world how the US tricked him, way back in 1990. Arrest someone, keep him locked away until he dies. Of natural causes or otherwise. Put out regular press statements to assure the world at large that he's OK. Poison his food, or water, or something. Slowly. Arrange visits from "neutral agencies".

Better still, hand him over to his own people after carefully selecting the new government and ensure that they have an American education, so that they know how to handle matters. Let them finish him. Then say "Oh whoopee! Didn't we tell you democracy works?"

Golly, playing superpower is fun, isn't it?

She blogs?

I wonder if she blogs.

OK, her column isn't anything great, but at least, she makes the effort to write something sensible.

Fine, write. Just, write.

Most Bollywood types don't even get that far. Can't, is more likely. Or maybe they've just gotten used to signing autographs. Something to do with what I'd read in The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But I like Preity Zinta. Her first flick was an absolute horror, but she's improved in her selection of roles and banners. Sensible girl.

I wonder when NDTV is going to feature her in "Jai Jawan". I'm sure it'll make a wonderful episode. For one thing, she's a fauji brat; for another, her brother is in the army too. She relates to the life.

I'm waiting to find see the episode with Hrithik Roshan. I shouldn't be surprised to find out that he's reformed. I expect we'll find out that "Lakshya" reformed him, made him realise how hard a life our soldiers lead. (Golly, don't films do wonders?)

The episode with Aamir Khan was above average, Shah Rukh wasn't quite ready to drop all his airs, but he was believable. Rani Mukherjee: Airhead. Bimbo. Stuck-up, snotty, spoiled. And throughout, our poor soldiers and their families put up with her jejune juvenilia.

Phut-ball

I wake up bleary-eyed every morning and rush to the notebook. That's been the routine these past two weeks. And I've been boggling at the results the past two days. England, gone. France, gone. This European Cup is turning out to be a shocker.

At least, for me. I don't know how many people had - truthfully - predicted that England, Italy, Germany and France would go out. If someone has recorded their predictions, please let me know.

Mine have gone kaput.

I've got the stupids.....

If you had any doubts about the sanity and intentions of the Page Three crowd, this should dispel them.

"I've been having these ‘visitations' for four years," said Taruna. "I first had one at a Satyana-rayan pooja in Dubai, where I completely blanked out. When I came to, people told me that I had exuded supernatural power and devotees were drawn towards me." Apparently, Taruna has healed people of cancer and Down's Syndrome, speaks shuddh Hindi and recites shlokas when possessed. She insists that she can't get a grammatically correct Hindi sentence out in real life. "She tells people that if you're looking for riches or success, you've come to the wrong shop," says Gomzi. "She can only exude shakti to lessen the bad karma."

"Divine" powers? Possessed by a "higher spirit"? "Shakti"? I mean, what poppycock! How can the TOI even defend itself for printing such drivel? Utter tripe!

Gautam Kapoor ranks among the same category of people who will snigger at the beliefs and superstitions of a large majority of Indians and yet he thinks nothing of grabbing attention with a con like this one? And these claims of curing Down's Syndrome and cancer should be investigated immediately. We have too many gullible people waiting to be taken for a ride.

Down's Syndrome, indeed! Cancer! Cure! I'm sure the cure has all sorts of preconditions and riders and caveats, but such a claim is downright dangerous.

Excuse me, I'm afflicted by the stupids. Can anyone cure that?

Journey, man!

What do people think of anyways? What goes on in their mind? How do they see themselves in their mind's eye? I mean, do we know how different we are from the way we imagine we are? I travel to work by bus every morning. What started out as an occasional observation has now become a habit. I'm quite amused at the reactions of every person who gets in at each stop. And were I telepathic, this is what I imagine I'd hear:

Passenger 1:

Enter bus, say "Ouch". Look embarrassed. "Omigosh. Did anyone see that?" Then, for an encore, "Ouch". "Did anyone see that?"

Furtively look around for favourite seat. "Ah, found it!" Flash a wan smile - at nobody in particular. Slip into empty seat on the first row, near entrance. Settle down.

Passenger 2:

Enter bus. Brow furrowed. Make moue. Stare at rear of bus. "Where do I sit? I can't see....that one's empty...that one too. And another. One more? Omigosh!" Make moue again, emit sibilant "whooo-ooo...". "I can't sit there....that seat's empty..that one too. Oh no, not another one."

Move past empty front seats, continue to stare at rear of bus. Settle for first empty seat in the rear. Any empty seat. "Where were you? I've been looking for you all my life!!!"

Passenger 3:

Dragon lady. Flounce in. Stare forbiddingly at first seat. Repeat for second, third and fourth. Gnash teeth at male occupants. Block aisle for people in line. Hang on to hand-grip for dear life as bus starts. Shoot darts of fire at driver. Stare at first seated male occupant. "Look at me. Don't you DARE look at me." Repeat for second, third and fourth. "Get up from your seat, you insect. Don't you DARE stand up, you male chauvinistic pig."

Sidle to all-women seat. Raise imperious finger. "Move. Push." Stomp into innermost corner. Wiggle large derreire, sit down. Stare straight ahead with supercilious look. "Why am I thinking of insects?"

Married couple 1:

Enter husband. Look at first seat. "Damn, occupied." Look at second seat. "Damn, occupied." Look at next seat. "Damn, place only for two." Next seat, place for three. "Damn, damn, damn." Make lugubrious face.

Enter wife. Look around. Shy smile. Shy smile. Shy smile. Look back at husband's back.

Back to husband. "Seat for two. Seat for three. Empty. Damn. Don't they make seats that don't seat two or three people?" Lumber to empty seat for two. Continue pulling lugubrious face. Flop into seat. Remember about wife. Wife smiles. Hop, hop, hop to seat - bus moving, hold balance, hold balance! - squeeze past husband. Sit down, gingerly. Shy smile, lugubrious look.

Married couple 2:

Enter wife. Wide smile, pearly whites in evidence. Front seat full. "I command you to get up!" Shit. Doesn't work. Glare at occupants. Second seat, one place. "I command you to get up!" Doesn't work here either. Glare at occupants. Turn back.

Enter husband. Smile at husband. Glare at occupant of third seat. Two empty seats. "By the powers of telekinesis, I will you to move!" Tough luck. Smile at husband again. Slump into empty seat. Turn to husband. "Er, I'm not exactly King Canute, am I? But I do look better.....don't I?"

Who said travelling to work is boring?

Routes

Much better this week. After suppressing the urge to blog in, I managed to get some work done. And the fact that I travelled out of town last weekend helped, I guess. I'd gone to meet my relatives - aunts, uncles, distant cousins - "back home". In Indian parlance, I'd gone to my "native place". This visit was rather important because I was visiting for the first time after I'd gotten married. The wife wanted to meet all the family, so we finally managed to make time for a quick splash-and-dash.

The drive is rather pleasant once you hit the open highway after the city limits. In fact, I'm not sure if it's a bad idea that Mumbai stops right where it does. Otherwise, you'd be driving through a lunar landscape forever. Outside the jurisdiction of the BMC, it's a smooth, fast drive. The only blots on the landscape are all the roadhogs. We seem to have no shortage of people with money to buy fast cars but not an iota road manners. The radio was doing well, and I caught Go! 92.5 FM well beyond a 100 klicks. Well, when it wasn't interrupting all the arguments my dad and I were having with my mom and wife about what I meant by "blots on the landscape".

Visits to my hometown (in the past) were always a cause of embarrassment for me. All those people - relatives, mostly - flocking around, peering at me like I was some bug. And the comparisons - my son, my nephew, he's older, he's younger, he's fatter, he doesn't eat, - were never ending. They changed as I grew up - how can he graduate, he's younger than my son, he should be married, isn't he too old to be single? - but didn't go away.

I used to cringe at the very thought of going to our village because that is what it is. A village. Small, dusty and very quiet. Nothing to do really, once you've reached and the pleasantries are over. I didn't know my distant cousins, I didn't jell with them, they didn't know English and my Gujarati was worse. So a few hesitant sentences later, we used to settle for Bollywood Hindi. And try to play. I had never learned - not even today - to spin tops, or play marbles, or fly kites. Or even card games. I resented the invasion - however temporary - of my privacy.

And the attendant problems: the water was hard and tasted funny, the food was too rich and sweet, pools of oil and ghee all over your plate. They haven't yet gone away. No, I didn't buy packged drinking water, I just asked for chilled water. Kills the taste somewhat.

They're still there, but either I've learned to ignore them or they're not quite so in-your-face. Or maybe because I slept through most of the time that we were there.

This time around, I saw my ancestral house - really opened my eyes and saw - for the first time. How my great-grandfather built the house from teak logs. They're still there, the house is still standing, people stay in it. My great-grandpa, he was a timber merchant and so he selected the best wood he had with him. Photos of him and my great-grandmother. My grand-uncle, telling me how the whole village had felicitated my grandfather when he graduated. He was the first graduate from the village. How the residents gathered around in front of our house in the light of lanterns while the headman spoke of the honour my grandfather had brought to the village. That, in a time when the only electrical connection in the village fed a radio and a loudspeaker mounted on top of our house so that the village could listen to the news. How my father was the first doctor from the village. That he'd grown up and lived in Bombay all his life was ignored; they were just glad to see us.

All in all, nice visit, but let's not do that for another five years, OK?

Secularism - the Congress perspective

This weekend, I managed to put in a couple of hours of uninterrupted reading, something I hadn't managed to do for quite a while. If you haven't guessed already, my time management is lousy.

I chanced across the weekly column by Tavleen Singh. I regard her as one of the finest journalists writing for the Indian Express and I've rarely been disappointed reading her column. This time around, I found her column to be similarly thought-provoking. An excerpt:

Mr Bhatia must have been living in another country in 1984 or he may have noticed that exactly the same thing happened in Delhi with the Sikhs, only the toll was nearly double that of Gujarat and not a single Hindu was killed. He complains that the Army was not called out in time in Gujarat. Nor was it in Delhi until 3,000 "innocent men, women and children were butchered" and this despite former Prime Minister Chandrashekhar going personally to Rajiv Gandhi to beg him to deploy troops. As this column has pointed out before, under "secular" Congress rule, there were many riots as bad as Gujarat (Bombay, Bhagalpur, Moradabad, Meerut), not to mention that the Babri Masjid came down under a Congress prime minister.

Again, I could not disagree - much - with her views. Happening to glance at the feedback (to her earlier columns), however, I was amazed at the - blatantly - partisan attitude that the IE had exhibited. All the readers - save one, perhaps - were vehemently opposed to what Ms. Singh had written. Checking the online edition over the past couple of days, I found - quite naturally - that there were more people who agreed with Ms. Singh than apparent. Why then, does the media persist in presenting a biased view? But now, I digress.

I have a completely different explanation (and this is where I disagree slightly with Tavleen Singh!):

The Congress and its allies - the Left, the RJD, the UPA if you like to call it that - conveniently define "secularism" to suit their own shortsighted and bigoted agenda. What happened in 1984 was secular because it wasn't Hindus killing Muslims. It was Hindus killing Hindus. There are some of use who would argue that Sikhs aren't Hindus, but hey, they're not Muslims, right?

I mean, as far as the Congress is concerned, Sikhism is just an offshoot of Hinduism and therefore, it doesn't exist! They probably don't acknowledge the existence of Sikhism, therefore the issue of intolerance towards another faith doesn't arise! "Fundamentalism" is the intolerance of one faith (religion,as it has often been drummed into us) towards another, not the same religion against itself. Right...

Why, otherwise, doesn't anyone describe the oppression of Dalits by the Thakurs as "fundamentalism"? Why don't Laloo Prasad Yadav (he's calling himself plain ole' Lalu Prasad nowadays) or Mulayam Singh never admit that there is a problem with life in Bihar and U.P.?

So, the Babri Masjid came down under a Congress Prime Minister? Ah, but those were the fundamentalist Hindus, not the secular...er..uh...ummm.... FORCES, see?

And what about our Communist comrades? How can they even protest? As far as my limited - and possibly flawed - knowledge goes, God doesn't even exist. How then, can they even differentiate between what is secular and what is not? I mean, religion just doesn't have anything to do with Communism. How can the CPI/CPI(M) even begin to explain how who's secular and who's not?

And yet, we have the media hailing the "secular" credentials of the UPA. What utter hogwash.

Er, Laluji, no offence meant. I wasn't suggesting you don't have a wash everyday.

I.Q.

In a reassuring report, the Beeb writes that young bloggers are benefiting from blogging. Hope for me? I'm only ten posts young....

Unexpected death......

Most Brits must be still wondering, "How on Earth did this happen?" Of course, I missed it - completely, may I add - because of the race on the other channel and the wife's insistence that I should get my head out of the telly and look at her instead. Apparently, it was Zizou all the way.

Becks missed a penalty?

Golly. This month is going to be full of late nights. That's not good news for the wife.

It's Monday morning. I'm in the office now and what the hell am I doing posting like this?

Se7en

Like the movie that I enjoyed thoroughly, the race was equally exciting. Ross Brawn and Jean Todt's race strategy paid off, and the Ferraris made it through the race with two stops.

Also, you have to put it down to Teutonic efficiency: Michael Schumacher didn't spin once through the whole race, or oversteer, or understeer. Just a textbook-perfect race.

This win threw up a number of interesting statistics:

It made Michael Schumacher the first driver in F1 history to win 7 times at any circuit.

This was Schumi's 7th win of the season.

His 77th win from 203 starts.

It takes his points tally to 70 for this season.

It puts him well on the way to winning a historic - and record breaking - SEVENTH World Championship Title.

Whew! 'nuff said!

Other noteworthy events included Takuma Sato's engine blowing up spectacularly in the race - he's started making it a habit now, much like Juan Pablo Montoya used to do two years ago. The Williams and Toyota teams were later disqualified, which meant that it turned out to be a Ferrari 1-2. That moved Jenson Button up to 3rd place, allowing Jordan rookie Timo Glock to win a point on debut.

Ridiculum sum, ergo sum

It just goes to show that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. The dog may pretend to do something else for a while, but no sooner do you look away, and he's back to doing what he loves most.

Of course, I'm referring to our illustrious Foreign Minister's proclivity for shooting his mouth off and his latest faux-pas.

With Nutwar for a Foreign Minister, be sure to keep your eyes peeled for that weekend chuckle!

Last week, a news channel showed the Science and Technology Minister - also famous for "byting" off more than he can chew - visiting the Nehru Planetarium, for the Venus event. I was waiting for him - or some other Congress sycophant - to ascribe the event to Sonia's descent from the throne.

Rats!!! Looks like the babalog taught them that the stars are, sadly, not in control of 10, Janpath.

Shambolic

The Asian Age, in its web edition reported today that the Prime Minister visited the Gurudwara Bangla Sahib in New Delhi.

This visit was termed "personal" and "symbolic", but I had a rather amusing conversation a while later, at lunch.

The wife said there was an interview on the telly, later this evening, with Laloo Prasad Yadav.

The man does give some excellent soundbytes and is pursued by all members of the media. But if Laloo is pursued for interviews, and Sonia Gandhi is the real power behind the PM, then I pity the poor man.

What is he going to do anyway? The country is run by someone and the statements will come from someone else!

Ralf rockets to P1

Yet another exciting pre- and qualifying session, this time for the F1 Canadian Grand Prix.

The venue is the picturesque Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, near Montreal. Cars that have higher straight-line speeds will usually have an edge over others.
And that is precisely what happened. The BAR Hondas and Williams BMWs went consistently faster than the Ferraris.

Which brings me to another point: what's the fun in winning on circuits that have all these straights? Ralf may think elder brother Michael makes racing "boring", but it is precision that matters.

Michael Schumacher dominates the F1 scene simply because he is a perfectionist, someone who believes in getting everything right, time after time after time.

Hey, look at what happened to Takuma Sato, right? If he had practised, Michael would be starting one position lower. As it now happens, Sato's down there.....in 17th.

Tch, tch.

Losers? Winners? You go figure...

A rather interesting article in the Bombay - do they still call it Bombay? - supplement of the Times of India caught my attention.

An excerpt:

However, a recent newspaper report warns on the harm of blogging. It can get addictive and could even lead to a false "sense of productivity". In extreme cases, the blogger devotes more time to his weblog and less to his work. Of course, bloggers counter such reports by asking, "Is reading books harmful? Is discussing important issues harmful?"

Addictive? False sense of productivity? Errrmm, considering I've spent 40 hours over the past four days in getting this blog to look like it is now, I'm in trouble.

Olympic fun?

I think it's a crying shame that Coca Cola roped in actors to run with the Olympic torch.

OK, so you say that they had sportspersons also, but surely they could have had the actors running along with the torch, rather than with it?

Sure, Coca Cola pays the stars a bundle - make that MANY - to endorse their product, but why mix up the two?

Modding.........

Does the term apply to blogs as well? I mean, if you change the appearance of your blog, you are modifying it, yes?

No?

This will undergo more changes.....have to get it perfect! And that means more hours spent on re-working this. Damn!

General Availability

Everyone is doing it, so why should I?

I lost a whole day in just thinking of a halfway decent name for this blog. Another two days to make it look like I wanted.

Nobody told me blogging was that complicated....
Or this complicated?