A Riddle From Vaishnodevi

My parents had gone to a pilgrimmage to the Vaishnodevi shrine and had brought back this sachet of PRASAD from that hallowed place. Why people go to Vaishnodevi at all is a mystery in itself. The place has no history, no mystic, no natural beauty. But more on that some other time. Here I want you take a close look at the message on the 'wrapper'. 'Do not throw this wrapper on the way or in the dustbin.' Now this is one hell of an enigma wrapped in a mystery! Will someone ( preferably someone from the Vaishnodevi Shrine Board) please tell what I am supposed to do with this thing? Archive it? Gulp it down? Bury it on the banks of the Ganga? Burn it, and cause air pollution? Pass it down as an heirloom? Frame it and hang it in the puja room? Some one should know! The Vaishnodevi guys are pretty hep. I would advise them to weigh the option of 'virtual' prasad in future. That'll sort the dilemma of the wrapper as well as the dilemma of correctly spelling simple English words like 'THROW.'
uday

Wife India!

Anupam you take my breath away!
Admire, appreciate, esteem, are words that can do little justice to your fortitude, your hard-nosed defence of a scoundrel who has let you down in the only way a man who had everything (except for a legitimate you-know-what when he was horny)- by sleeping with another woman.
You take my breath away, ma'am!
You give a completely new connotation to the 'sati savitri' tag. You know the rules. You love going by the book. You know right from wrong. You know you married this person for better or for worse. You know you have to stand by him now that he is going through thorny hell( of his own horny making, admittedly). And you are doing admirably. How I wish I had a wife like you! My wife throws tantrums if I forget to pay our Vodafone bills on time! Or forget to call the cheque collection guy for our credit cards! All of us lecherous, luscious Indian males with roving eyes, that are forever undressing the women around us, and with an indomitable hunger for real or virtual sex, would kill to have a wife like you. Such magnanimity! Instead of kicking your man between the legs you put a comforting hand on his drooping shoulders. "Don't worry shining Shiney, no matter how many girls you grope and how many maids you lay, I'll always be there with my rock-solid defence of my once-in-a-while straying hubby." It is only right that the strong should stand up for the weak.
Way to go woman! You take my breath away!
When I read about your spirited defence of your husband at the press conference, I thought, "gosh, this is one shameless woman."(much like Pandhar's son, whose loud-mouthed defence of his father, in whose house 19 children were raped and butchered, makes me reach for Domperidone). But I was wrong. You, ma'am, were absolutely right in pitching in for shining Shiney. One rape? That too, of a maid, and un-substantiated. Surely you were not going to throw your 'baby' out with the bath water! If anyone needs to be thrown out, after being slapped, kicked and beaten with a hockey stick, it is the maid( slut that she is!). And besides,..the man is a veggie, a teetotaler and a non-smoker - take that suckers! What a windfall! I am a veggie, a teetotaler and a non-smoker. Seems like I have a carte-blanche to rape, or atleast have consensual sex with our maid and the wifie won't mind. Not our wives, naah!!!!You forget to 'bharao' the cellphone bill and....! Come on ladies, take a leaf out of Anupam's book and stand up for your man no matter what he does when his *......* stands up! Womens' lib is for women who wash their hubby's undies and iron their hubby's hankies. It's not for Anupam's type of liberated and defiant girls who know that 'in today's world a man can also be raped by a woman'. Shining Shiney is a victim of rape and not the perpetrator! Poor Shiney, should have used a can of pepper spray!
Anupam you are beautiful!
You are Mother India, Daughter India, Daughter-in-law India and most importantly, Wife India! We, the wronged husbands of this nation of the perpetual hard-on, are with you all the way. Fight on woman!The battle is half won. I can see the vision of a slick out-of-court settlement. You'll be poorer by a couple of crores. The lawyers will be richer by a couple of crores less the 10/20 lakhs that the maid and his smart-alec boyfriend ( the one who framed your shinning but dumb knight, remember?) will take home and the heavens shall shower rose petals on you!

ps: one word of advice from an admirer - in future, pick the maids with a little more caution and if possible get a vintage chastity-belt for her...'cos, you never know!
uday

If you are wondering what this is all about, let me elaborate. This is a page from India Today Woman, a magazine that promises to make a difference to the lives of the urban Indian woman. In all , there were 5 famous freedom fighters featured in a box running down the left of the page, Sarojini Naidu, Rosa Parks, Aruna Asaf Ali and the two you can see here- Capt.Laxmi Sehgal and Maude Gonne of Ireland. And on the right is this feature titled 'Singledom Laws' by one Gunjeet Sra! I'll reproduce her words of wisdom for you since the repro on the left is not clear.
1. Have an envious career and a body that is well sculpted.
2. Own something that is ridiculously expensive and of no relative utility.
3. Invest your energy and time in mastering a signature lingerie style.
4. Go on a vacation to an exotic locale and make sure you do it all by yourself.
5. Have group therapists in the form of your go-to girls aka your soul sisters.
6. Start a pampering ritual that a change in your relationship status cannot disturb.
7. Learn to change your car tyre and hone your drilling(sic) skills while at it.
8. Throw wild, crazy parties that leave you hung over. Once you are committed, life does get a little staid.
The writer is part of the editorial team of the magazine and I am sure she knows what she is talking about. But do you?. Ladies, what do you think? Do you believe mastering a signature lingerie style will help you to survive singledom? Or owning something that is ridiculously expensive but of no relative utility? To think that publishing houses get newsprint subsidised by the govt. with the tax payers money, to be filled with such hogwash, such stinking horse-shit. Take a second look at her sermon : "Once you are committed, life does get a little staid." So what should a single girl do? Get laid by a different guy every day? This is precisely the kind of mindset that keep landing women back to where they started. Can't you think of anything better than lingerie, spas, your body and wild parties???? No wonder men think of women as objects of desire and nothing more. That is the stereotype you snugly fit into. That is the image of feminity that you unwittingly perpetuate with your silly posturing. 'Signature lingerie', my FOOT!
And they had the temerity to put these perverted ideas of a sick mind next to the images of women who have sacrificed their lives for great causes! How crass can you get?

Grounded High Fliers

The airlines tycoons threatning to go on strike shows when push comes to shove the capitalist( with a capital C, if I may add) and the proletariet behave in uncannily similar ways. Isn't 'strike' a dirty word in your world Mr. Mallya and Mr. Goyal? Strikes are not always the last resort of the beaten and bruised, it seems. Sometimes it is the first resort of the polished and the pampered too, as is evident here. It is good that for once the Govt. acted sensibly, at least for the time being, and refused to give in to their bail-out demands. They are in a high stakes business, raking in millions when the going was good. It is only fair that they feel the pinch now that it has got tough. They have had too many things doled out to them on a platter for too long. In the open-skies policy, which they had been milking dry by every means possible, it is only right that they suffer when others have hit the dust. No safety nets with public funds should be provided to them. They don't deserve any. You are fighters and winners. You are the role model of millions (especially the hiccup brigade!). So fight it out! Make us proud of you. No one loves a cry baby!
uday

Jab We Did Not Meet

About one and a half years back I lost faith in a lot of my close people. Their judgement, their sense of what is good or bad, even their basic intelligence took a beating as far as I was concerned. What had happened, exactly?
Without exception, all of them had recommended a film called Jab We Met, showering epithets like 'good fun', 'great entertainment', 'heart warming', ( India Today had also called it heart-warming, I remember) 'touching', etc. etc and etc....
Since I was a big follower of the songs, especially Mohit Chauhan's soulful 'Tum se hi', Shreya Ghosal's sexily sung 'Ye ishq hai' and the peppy, 'Mauja mauja, I thought what the heck, let's give it a go! We rented a DVD and settled down one afternoon to be 'entertained'. 15 minutes into the film and I couldn't believe the muck that was unfolding on the screen. It was so bad, so plain dumb ....it was unbelievable!
I slipped into a prolonged depression. No, it was not about the film. ( It was highly forgettable and I had quickly forgotten it). It was about the people who inhabit my inner circle. How could they endure and what is worse, endorse such garbage to others? I cannot think of any film in the history of Indian cinema that was so bad and yet managed to make good at the box office! On that count it is truly one of a kind!
Why do we do this? Why are we giving money to people who give us shit? How will they ever know that they deliver shit if we continue to que up to buy their stuff? To quote Confucious ,"If we give good to bad what will we give to good?"
Today, in Aug 2009 I feel vindicated and happy because Imtiaz Ali has come clean in an interview( listing the goof-ups in a box) published in the T2, the Telegraph supplement, of 29th. July. He says, "Yes, I find a lot of defects when I watch the film now.." Oh yeah! And when pray, will you see the defects in your current flick, 'Love Aaj Kal' ? KUCH YEARS BAAD?
uday

The Colour of Money

I am no fan of John Abraham. Why should I be? His work, with the exception of No Smoking- where he was surprisingly good clearly because of the vision of the director Anurag Kashyap-, is slipshod. Kareena Kapoor described him as expressionless, when asked by Karan Johar on a talkshow. And she was bang on correct!

But I found nothing drastically wrong with the guy ( He is an actor who cannot act. But that's no crime in India....) untill now, when he has jumped onto the bandwagon of endorsing fairness products.

Girls take note - this is your macho hunk, the breed that rides 1000cc motorbikes from Pune to Leh and back in 72 hrs flat! He thinks he is a shade too dark and that's bad....oh so bad! I thought he hangs around with a gorgeous girl who takes pride in her dark skin, and rightly so. Have you learned nothing from her, John?

I know he is doing it only for the money. The real John Abraham doesn't believe in all that muck. But then most of the brainless creatures who hero-worship him (precisely because they are brainless ofcourse!) wouldn't know the difference. If they did, the idea of celebrity endorsements wouldn't work. It is all about making us believe that Amir drinks only Coke and Shah Rukh drinks only Pepsi, is it not? People do believe their idols and that is what makes them a threat, or a blessing..., to sane and civilized society.

Shame on you Garnier, Nivea, Fair & Lovely and the antedeluvian others who are making us pay for our dark skins. And shame on you John Abraham for licking their dark shoes.

Roberto !!!!

These 2 photographs of Mr. Robert Vadra, alternatively and universally known as 'Priyanka Gandhi's husband', were published in 2 separate newspapers, on the same day, last week. What's brewing? Are we, the hapless people of this so-called largest democracy in the world, being prepared for another Gandhi, ...oops Vadra, road show? I guess not, because this person comes across as a nice, gentle and unassuming individual. So far he has kept himself away from public glare, either by design or by chance.