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.

Bengal Blues

This, believe it or not, is a govt. emplyoee guarding an important, impressive and popular historical monument in Kolkata, the Princep ghat. Without a uniform, one leg non- chalantly hoisted on the chair he was a picture of unchallanged and complete supremacy! His total disregard of the fact that I was taking his photograph shows that he has faith in his dadas in the party or govt. or both.
This is very typical of India in general, but Bengal in particular. In Bengal, most so called 4th class staff, usually guards, sweepers, peons etc. act and behave as if they own the building where they work! The Director of Nandan, the film centre, may not believe that he owns the place but the guards at the gate certainly do!

The guy in the picture became extremely vigilant when he saw us, decent blokes, strolling among the grand coloumns. We were after all intruders in his private domain! The sooner we left the better. We did not fail to notice however, that the place was over run with lumpen elements. They were huddled in every corner, either having some contraband stuff, or involved in some crude form of gambling.

We have lost our beautiful river-front to the gamblers, pick-pockets, muggers and drug-peddlers and addicts. We have lost 2 of our large lakes to similar activities. We have lost all the beautiful and secluded places of our city to anti-socials. Our apathy, their gain.

God of All Things

I have often been asked this question, as I am sure most of you have been at some point in your life, -
Do you believe in God?
Of course I do. I believe in God just as I believe in good literature, good music, good cinema or any good work of art. I believe in literature. I believe in God. If you believe in God it becomes easy to explain away a lot of things. Let’s say that you’ve been a kind, considerate and generally nice human being all your life and yet when your child is born, he is born with a brain disorder. If you don’t believe in God what do you do? With eyes glazing over you look for explanations and find none. You are mad at the injustice of it all. If you believe in God, it’s a piece of cake; put all the blame at His door! He must have a very good reason, you tell yourself, His mind works in mysterious ways and it is not for you, a mere mortal with bad breadth and bad belly, to take His measure. It just might be that you are not a decent human being at all. It’s all in your mind, and you do not deserve a good turn. Who knows? And, just for the record, there are millions of decent human beings like you in God’s kitty and if one or two of them get a raw bargain what’s the big deal? God’s mind works in mysterious ways. God is the biggest and the most efficient life-jacket invented by man. God keeps you afloat no matter what the calamity. What would we do without Him? Men would go mad. How would you explain away the tsunamis, the earthquakes, the hurricanes, the famines and the epidemics that kill millions? How would you explain the stampedes at the temples that kill children? How would you explain the world wars, the holocaust, and the killing fields of PolPot? How would you explain Idi Amin, Hitler, and Karadzic? Or the gun-slingers who have occupied the white building in Wasington DC? If you believe in God you have the luxury of looking after yourself and your family and leave the rest to His whim. If you don’t believe in God you have to bear the burdens of this world because there are no shoulders (read God’s) in sight, to shift them to. So it is always smart to believe in God. You can be at peace with yourself. No guilt conscience for any wrong that you may have committed because it was God’s hand at work and you were a mere instrument. So who wouldn’t believe in God? Who wouldn’t make the most of such convenience? He is the ready-reckoner you need at all times and in all places. He is the Swiss Army Knife you must carry to all places and at all times. If your marriage is falling apart, blame it on God. If you find a new soul mate give the credit to God. What would we do without Him? How would we search for the black cat in the coal- celler? So I believe in God! I believe in literature, I believe in feel-good stories, I believe in 'God'.

NB: The picture above is the result of a random search in Google images! But I do remember, when I was in school about 35 years back many pages of The Old Testament did feature a patriachal figure with flowing beard levitating in space and I was left wondering if God doesn't age why does he look old!

Chi Ha! Ha!

These days every newspaper and magazine has a Feng Shui coloumnist who, among other things, helps us ignorant folks, to pick the right colour of the shit-pot and install it in the correct corner of the toilet in the correct corner of the flat in the correct corner of the building so that, you-know-what, can be passed without the aid of isabgul!

The following question was sent by one Harshit to the Fengshui 'master' of a popular paper.
I have recently had my office renovated with windows dressed with Venetian blinds. Someone told me these blinds are not Fengshui friendly. What is wrong with them and what could be the substitute?
In reply the master writes- "Venetian blinds are normally not considered to be Fengshui friendly because they are like a series of blades when flat, cutting not only anyone sitting nearby but also weakning the surrounding cosmic chi. Either always keep them closed or replace them with plain pull-down blinds."
Did Marco Polo ( he was from Venice remember?) carry a bunch of Venetian blinds to China to be vetted by the ancient masters to determine their Fengshui friendlines? The blades of venetian blinds are mostly made of plastic and the possibility of hurting oneself on them is extremely remote. Look at the second part of her reply - always keep them closed. What fool would hang Venetian blinds to keep them closed at all times? Someone is laughing all the way to a bank, Fengshui and Vaastu advisers charge hefty sums for their services, while some poor jerk is pulling down all the Venetian blinds he had just put up for a princely sum. Such are the wonders of cosmic chi! And common sense tells me keeping the blinds closed will completely block this chi thing anyway.
Fengshui is perceived by Westeners and gullible people in our metros, who devote their waking hours to imitating the West, as a system of designing interiors, arranging furniture and filling up every available nook with junk 'Budhhist' totems, figurines and amulets.
Fengshui, like Vaastu, is plain common sense packaged with a liberal dose of mysticism, because without a metaphysical, paranormal, mystic twist we don't pay heed. We love to worship the unexplained. And chalu people use it to great effect.
I had once asked a guy selling fengshui stuff how he managed to keep so many 'powerful' items in his shop without upsetting the cosmic chi? How did the cross-energies running amok in the small confines of the shop affect his life? How did he keep his sanity intact. Or is it possible that these things start working only after you have paid for them? He had nothing to say in response. Fengshui had given him the inner strength to maintain silence in the face of embarassing questions!
Uday

Numerology Works!!!

If you think numerology is bunkum,sample this: the number 4 works for us. I was born on the 4th. of July. Chua, my wife, was born on the 13th of the same month.3 and 1 makes 4.July has 4 letters. So does Uday and Chua ! We live in flat no.4. Our pincode ends with 4. Our car registration no.(4514) begins and ends with 4.
We were about to buy a 4 cylinder car before we settled for a 3 cylinder one. Our bedroom has 4 walls. So does our kitchen and toilet, and, would you believe it, all our tablels and chairs have 4 legs! Our car has 4 wheels and 4 gears. Between us we have 4 parents, 4 legs,( our dog also has 4 legs) 4 hands, 4 eyes and 4 ears. Our son Anok was born at 30 minutes past 4. He has a 4 letter name too. He was in class 4 for one full year before he was promoted to class 5. And, dare I add, he was in class 3 before he was sent up to class 4? He was 4 ft. tall a couple of years back. There is one 4 in my cell no and one 4 in Chua's cell no. My mother got a 4 poster bed for her wedding and our desktop has a Pentium 4 processeor. We were married on the 3rd. of Aug, which is the day precedding the 4th of Aug. The civil marriage was on the 25th of July, which, if you care to note, is 4 days before the 29th of that month.I was born in 1960, Chua was born in 1964, our son was born in 1995 and we were married in 1992. If you notice all 4 dates have 4 numerals. Is it only a coincidence or the manifestation of some unexplained astrophysical, super/supra natural phenononmenon? My wife and I met at a place called Gateway 2000, which again has 4 numerals in its name.
It is hard to believe that there are people who brush off 'numerology' as hogwash, inspite of all the evidence before their myopic eyes! Well I've given you all this data from our very own lives and none of it is concocted. So.... draw your own conclusions but please don't make an absolute ass of yourself by claiming that numerolgy sucks.
uday

RAIMA

I have this very disgusting habit of dividing the people of this world into those who have read and liked J.D.Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and those who haven’t. Obviously I hold the former group in sky- high esteem (I could have kissed them on both cheeks!) and pity the latter. (I could have written here that I have complete disdain and unmitigated hatred for them but stopped short of such extremes because all is not lost - the book is still in print, they can read it and redeem themselves!) So, I was relieved, and pleasantly reassured, when I read in a recent interview of Raima Sen that ‘Catcher’ is her favourite book. Yeah! That made my day, because Raima Sen happens to be one of the few people from the world of entertainment I genuinely like. For her sultry good looks, sure, but mainly for what she can do on screen. The 3 individuals (barring Rabindranath Thakur) Bengalis unabashedly adulate has to be Subhas Chandra Bose, Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen. A freedom-fighter and 2 matinee idols! Sourabh Ganguly is fast closing in on them but as of now Bengalis are not wholly convinced of his greatness (besides he is stinking rich and we Bongs simply hate the stinking rich. It’s got nothing to do with the stink though!) But since I am into Raima Sen today I’ll stick to Suchitra Sen. Ask any Bengali to name the most beautiful woman of all time, and 7 out of 10 will still vote for Suchitra Sen. In the 60s innumerable impressionable Bengali girls got stiff necks trying to clone her famous head-turned-to-one-side-and eyes- to- the- other look. It was a class act. Coyness, standoffishness, Presidency or Lady Brabourne educated Bengaliness personified. Then one fine day she just turned away from the cameras reducing Bengalis to heart-broken rudalis whose only refrain was After Suchitra the deluge! Until….Raima came along. When her photos were splashed across the pages of glossies many a Bong heart skipped a few beats. Raima was Suchitra Sen re- incarnated! Well not quite. She gave Tollygunge what it deserved - a short shrift. (Take out Rituporno Ghosh and Aparna Sen from Tolly and you’re left with a huge yawn! Anjan Dutta and Sandip Ray do have their fans but I am not one of them, sorry.)

Moonmoon Sen, her mother, in spite of her many talents, couldn’t make much headway in Bengali films because she couldn’t act! She should have tried her hand at making films, instead. She is an accomplished photographer, a trained painter and for many years was one of the moving forces behind Chitrabani, Father Gaston Roberge’s film school. I’ve heard innumerable Bengalis refer to her as ‘makal phal’ (loosely translated it would mean beauty without brains/talent). How wrong they could be! But then can you blame them really? She was famous only for being her mother’s daughter then and now all indications are that she’ll be known only for being her daughters’ mother! Aishwarya Rai underestimated Raima, in Chokher Bali,( why wouldn’t she? Afterall she was the reigning queen then, and Raima, a greenhorn.) and paid a heavy price for it. Raima stole scene after scene from right under Asihwarya’s snub nose! It was an early indication of the kind of stuff she was capable of delivering given the right script and the right director. It’s a long road ahead, but keep walking Raima…………….’cause you have places to go.
uday
Ps: the beautiful photograph I've uploaded is by Ronny Sequierra. Ronny, please don't sue me for copyright infringement. Nobody reads my blog anyway!