seedha rasta kaun pass hua hai?

I recently overheard a group of collegians praising a friend to the stars at Vidyavihar station. I do not know which college they belonged to. From their looks, their style of dressing and their boisterous chatter about accounts, environmental science and girls, I’m assuming they were from a decent college though I could be wrong. All of them were waiting for a Kalyan-side train on platform number 1.The point of the decibel-irreverent discussion was one young chap amidst them who had just taught all his friends a new trick to smuggle in chits into the exam hall. Everyone in the group save none agreed that the method was ingenious and could even be tried out at higher levels, like say the CAT exams or the CET. It was an idea that was too good to be restricted to college and its unit tests, everyone agreed noisily.
Standing in the middle of the group, our inventor was preening like the cat who got the cream. As his friends patted his back, some of their smiles dimmed with jealousy at the chap’s cleverness, this boy just shook his head. A very cocky push of the chin sideways, nothing more. Like what some cricketers do when they have smacked a 150kmph delivery as straight as an arrow to the boundary.
As the group collectively dreamt that now everyone there with a bit of luck could get a first class, our man made his move towards the train that had just pulled into the platform. The punchline came as the genius placed his first step on the footboard. His hair waving, the Sultan of Chits turned around to his friends and as the train picked up speed yelled- “seedha raasta kaun m#@%r&*d pass hua hai? Yeh India hai dost”
The high five he got from one of the chaps in the gang who was at the door with him and the sheer admiration that continued in the truncated group till the next train arrived convinced me that everyone in that group heartily agreed the genius was right.
Have you ever taken a look at the affidavits politicians file when they file their nomination papers? SSC pass girls who talk like idiots are worth Rs 20 crores. Others have seen their stock worth increase almost 12 times in five years, better than what some top stock brokers can manage.
Filmstars convicted by courts for riots and bomb blasts inaugurate police Dussehras. Politicians who never show their faces to the electorate except in studios of television channels on their payrolls get second MP terms because their fathers have played the religion and caste mathemtaics well..
An absconding corporator who was caught taking a bribe from a BMC contractor gets a Congress ticket for the MLA elections.
A man hailed as a hero once by a fawning press- BBC no less- is finally raided by the Anti-corruption sleuths and is found to be worth several crores, shops, flats and acres of land. He gets bail, sounds indifferent because he knows after lying low for some months he will be back to some plum post and doing much the smae things he caught for.
Probably the chap who was being hailed as the ‘smartest smuggler of chits’ by his college mates that afternoon at Vidyavihar station was right after all --- seedha rasta kaun m-----d pass hua hai? Yeh India hai dost.

Maharashtra elections: Let us make it historical

Mumbai had abysmal voting percentages for the Lok Sabha elections this year. Cheers to that. Can Maharashtra rise above the stupid argument of ‘your vote counts’ and make history by not turning up to vote at all for the assembly elections. Can we all get together and make October 13 look like some Shiv Sena bandh. Every road empty and every house echoing with the good times of a well-deserved holiday.
Let us make October 13 a red-letter day by simply sleeping the day off if we have nothing better to do.
Think about it. Are we idiots to vote for sons, wives, daughters and brothers and uncles of politicians? Are we donkeys to believe that our MLA can change anything apart from the size of his bank balance?
Are we fools to think that this is democracy? Are we blockheads to go and stand in the sun to vote and provide the shade of luxuries to SSC-fail crorepatis?
Are we so shameless as to be herded in lines by cops to vote for parties who couldn’t care a rat piss about us?
Let us show the country, the world and every place that thinks this is democracy that the people of Maharashtra have more brains than anyone ever acknowledged.
Let us get every leader worth his salt thinking? Let us start the world’s most silent revolution by not turning up at the box office of politics to stamp the tickets of someone else’s – and thoroughly undeserving- ride to fame and riches.
Please don’t go out and vote.

kobad ghandy, naxal

You could call it timing. Just when Maharashtra is in the throes of the run-up to another frenzied assembly election comes the news of the arrest of Kobad Ghandy. Even for someone who has read some literature about the naxals, I must admit I had never heard of this man before. I have heard of the elusive Comrade Ganapathy- though I don’t know by what moniker he goes around now- and to a little extent about scholar historian –turned naxal commander Saket Rajan or Comrade Prem- though he got killed several years ago in a fire-fight with the Greyhounds of Andhra Pradesh.

Reading the lead story of the Times of India today- September 23- a stray thought about what is right, what is wrong and what is it that we call a country all came to me at the same time. Funnily enough every time you think deeply of the political system in this country, the only reaction you can elicit from yourself is a smirk, which itself tells the story of a dream we started when some good old men chased the Britons away.

Here we are reporting on a daily basis about parties ‘committed’ to the nation-state of India as we know it. Parties who once they attain power swear on the holy books that they would uphold the sovereignty, integrity blah blah blah of the nation. And then go into the teakwood paneled offices and start doing exactly the opposite.

In the run up to attaining that power- through a circus we call elections- these parties and their leaders ensure that every promise they have ever made to their party workers or the nation in general is stuffed up whichever part of the anatomy has place to take it in.

Leaders think nothing beyond promoting their kin even if they are jackasses of the first degree. So the dear leader’s daughter gets a ticket, the departed leader’s daughter gets a ticket, the son gets one, the so-called mass leaders get tickets from safe seats, the opportunist gets a ticket the moment he walks into a party even if it is the fiftieth party he has walked into in the past five years.

Those who lose out on tickets openly say that the party demands Rs 2 crores for a nomination. It is a barter of democracy pimped by parties, prostituted by leaders.

Amongst a barrage of such news- that makes Churchill’s prediction of Indians being too idiotic to govern themselves true- comes the news of Kobad Ghandy. The man studied in the best of schools- as a journalist I know how editors swoon over pea-brained journalists whose only claim to fame is schooling in Doon and college at St Stephens- and in the best of colleges- HE’S FROM XAVIERS!!!- but somehow schooling could not dumb him I think.

The man then went on to be managing director of a company, lived amidst riches, married rich and still managed to think of some who are so not part of the system we call India that they don’t get counted even if they die.

And then he leaves all of that to go out and claim for the poor what the poor are too poor too claim for themselves.

I know in the days to come the establishment will make Kobad Ghandy look like that bastard Qasab. I know we will get to hear stories of Naxal leaders living in posh surroundings while the cadre fight it out in god-forsaken jungles. Cadre who then fall to malaria, bullets or snakebites whichever wins the race to fell a red rascal. By the way Kobad Ghandy’s wife died of malaria the cops inform.

I hold no brief for the naxals, because any movement that holds the gun as its bible generally leaves a caravan of carcasses and stench, not revolution and utopia. This would be no different.

But if the leaders of parties like the BJP, Shiv Sena , the Congress and the NCP are reading about Kobad Ghandy amidst haggling for tickets for their sons, daughters, dogs and dhobi, let them reflect for a moment.

Ghandy might be served the justice he deserves by the law that governs India, but in the court of law of the elements- where barter of good and equality is the cornerstone- Kobad Ghandy might just be handed a ‘not guilty at all’ sentence.

Let us fight the naxals not with the gun, but by bringing the equality they talk about. We have a bigger system, we have better guns, it is now time to show we have better hearts as well.

kobad ghandy, naxal

You could call it timing. Just when Maharashtra is in the throes of the run-up to another frenzied assembly election comes the news of the arrest of Kobad Ghandy. Even for someone who has read some literature about the naxals, I must admit I had never heard of this man before. I have heard of the elusive Comrade Ganapathy- though I don’t know by what moniker he goes around now- and to a little extent about scholar historian –turned naxal commander Saket Rajan or Comrade Prem- though he got killed several years ago in a fire-fight with the Greyhounds of Andhra Pradesh.

Reading the lead story of the Times of India today- September 23- a stray thought about what is right, what is wrong and what is it that we call a country all came to me at the same time. Funnily enough every time you think deeply of the political system in this country, the only reaction you can elicit from yourself is a smirk, which itself tells the story of a dream we started when some good old men chased the Britons away.

Here we are reporting on a daily basis about parties ‘committed’ to the nation-state of India as we know it. Parties who once they attain power swear on the holy books that they would uphold the sovereignty, integrity blah blah blah of the nation. And then go into the teakwood paneled offices and start doing exactly the opposite.

In the run up to attaining that power- through a circus we call elections- these parties and their leaders ensure that every promise they have ever made to their party workers or the nation in general is stuffed up whichever part of the anatomy has place to take it in.

Leaders think nothing beyond promoting their kin even if they are jackasses of the first degree. So the dear leader’s daughter gets a ticket, the departed leader’s daughter gets a ticket, the son gets one, the so-called mass leaders get tickets from safe seats, the opportunist gets a ticket the moment he walks into a party even if it is the fiftieth party he has walked into in the past five years.

Those who lose out on tickets openly say that the party demands Rs 2 crores for a nomination. It is a barter of democracy pimped by parties, prostituted by leaders.

Amongst a barrage of such news- that makes Churchill’s prediction of Indians being too idiotic to govern themselves true- comes the news of Kobad Ghandy. The man studied in the best of schools- as a journalist I know how editors swoon over pea-brained journalists whose only claim to fame is schooling in Doon and college at St Stephens- and in the best of colleges- HE’S FROM XAVIERS!!!- but somehow schooling could not dumb him I think.

The man then went on to be managing director of a company, lived amidst riches, married rich and still managed to think of some who are so not part of the system we call India that they don’t get counted even if they die.

And then he leaves all of that to go out and claim for the poor what the poor are too poor too claim for themselves.

I know in the days to come the establishment will make Kobad Ghandy look like that bastard Qasab. I know we will get to hear stories of Naxal leaders living in posh surroundings while the cadre fight it out in god-forsaken jungles. Cadre who then fall to malaria, bullets or snakebites whichever wins the race to fell a red rascal. By the way Kobad Ghandy’s wife died of malaria the cops inform.

I hold no brief for the naxals, because any movement that holds the gun as its bible generally leaves a caravan of carcasses and stench, not revolution and utopia. This would be no different.

But if the leaders of parties like the BJP, Shiv Sena , the Congress and the NCP are reading about Kobad Ghandy amidst haggling for tickets for their sons, daughters, dogs and dhobi, let them reflect for a moment.

Ghandy might be served the justice he deserves by the law that governs India, but in the court of law of the elements- where barter of good and equality is the cornerstone- Kobad Ghandy might just be handed a ‘not guilty at all’ sentence.

Let us fight the naxals not with the gun, but by bringing the equality they talk about. We have a bigger system, we have better guns, it is now time to show we have better hearts as well.

let us take the BJP to ground zero

Let us start off by playing a game this election season. For years we have been voting for corrupt netas, sons and daughters of netas, illiterate wives of netas and so far have only abstained from voting for the dog of the neta.

To all you Bharatiya Janata Party supporters out there, I hereby present a game that you could play this assembly elections in Maharashtra.

It is called 'choose the funniest symbol' contest.

Please go to your voting booth, take time in looking at the symbols of all the sundry candidates and you will find among them funny ones like brinjals, carrots, donkeys, cows and an assortment to raise a few laughs.

Choose the one that you found the funniest, get your finger inked and walk out feeling proud of yourself as BJP supporters.

Let all of us pledge to reduce the BJP to nought in the state. Let us reduce it to dust before someone sane comes around a rebuilds it into the party it should have been or it had promised to be.

It today is a party of leaders who in order to further their own dynastic aspirations think nothing before destroying the party if it helps.

Gopinath Munde, that creation of Pramod Mahajan, has ensured that Pramod Mahajan's daughter Poonam gets a ticket from the Ghatkopar east seat. The trade off was Guhagar which since 1972 was the BJP's safest seat. Dr Vinay Natu, the five time MLA from there can go take a walk, said the BJP's dynasty setters. So what if the party workers revolt, the party isn't as important as ensuring that one's own kin get tickets from safe seats, seats made safe by the toil and sweat of thousands of workers.

Then Munde manages to get his daughter Pankaja a ticket from Parli. His nephew Dhananjay can also take a walk because a daughter is a daughter and a nephew, excuse me, is not a son.

So let us all as friends of the BJP go out in droves, play 'choose the funny symbol' contest at the polling booths on October 13 and hand the BJP the worst defeat it has ever seen.

Let 2009 Maharashtra be so severe that Lok Sabha 2009 can be conveniently forgotten by the saffron idiots.

Let us help make a new BJP, The one where workers still become chief ministers, like Narendra Modi, and where sons and daughters get tickets only if they deserve them. And from seats they are capable of wresting from the opposition, not safe seats.

Let us tear apart the BJP to shreds.
Join in.

Lets take BJP to ground zero

Let us start off by playing a game this election season. For years we have been voting for corrupt netas, sons and daughters of netas, illiterate wives of netas and so far have only abstained from voting for the dog of the neta.

To all you Bharatiya Janata Party supporters out there, I hereby present a game that you could play this assembly elections in Maharashtra.

It is called 'choose the funniest symbol' contest.

Please go to your voting booth, take time in looking at the symbols of all the sundry independent candidates and you will find among them funny ones like brinjals, carrots, donkeys, cows and an assortment to raise a few laughs.

Choose the one that you found the funniest, press the EVM, get your finger inked and walk out feeling proud of yourself as BJP supporters.

Let all of us pledge to reduce the BJP to nought in the state. Let us reduce it to dust so that someone sane comes around and rebuilds it into the party it should have been or it had promised to be.

The BJP today is a party of leaders who in order to further their own dynastic aspirations think nothing of destroying the party if the cannibalization would help.

Gopinath Munde, that creation of Pramod Mahajan, has ensured that Pramod Mahajan's daughter Poonam gets a ticket from the Ghatkopar east seat. The trade off was Guhagar which since 1972 was the BJP's safest seat. Dr Vinay Natu, the five time MLA from there can go take a walk, said the BJP's dynasty setters. So what if the party workers revolt, the party isn't as big as ensuring that one's own kin get tickets from safe seats, seats made safe by the toil and sweat of thousands of workers.

Then Munde manages to get his daughter Pankaja a ticket from Parli. His nephew Dhananjay can also take a walk because a daughter is a daughter and a nephew, excuse me, is not a son.

So let us all as friends of the BJP go out in droves, play 'choose the funny symbol' contest at the polling booths on October 13 and hand the BJP the worst defeat it has ever seen.

Let 2009 Maharashtra be so severe that Lok Sabha 2009 can be conveniently forgotten by the saffron party.

Let us help make a new BJP, The one where workers still become chief ministers, like Narendra Modi, and where sons and daughters get tickets only if they deserve them. And from seats they are capable of wresting from the opposition, not safe seats.

Let us tear apart the BJP to shreds.
Join in.

Yesterday once again, 1984 India, 2009 Andhra

A news repot in the Times of India – September 17- claims that more than 75 percent of the Andhra deaths reported as those that were the result of the ‘massive shock’ of YSR Reddy’s death were exaggerated, concocted and in many cases ‘bought’. The Congress leaders owing allegiance to Jaggan- YSR’s son- actually paid certain families to tell the press that a death in their household was caused due to the immense love the man in question had for YSR. Of course several papers, loyal to the Congress rather than the profession of journalism, carried these deaths in order to bolster the chances of Jaggan becoming CM of Andhra Pradesh after the untimely death of his father. A first-time MP from Cuddapah, Jaggan according to reports is a bit of an upstart and was a perfect candidate for the ‘too big for his boots’ category when YSR was in power. Moreover Jaggan’s business background meant the ‘make Jaggan CM’ campaign had the backing of several moneybags.
It rang the alarm bells in the Congress High Command which at all times consists of just two people- Sonia and Rahul Gandhi and in case of the rare deadlock, Priyanka Gandhi as the casting vote.
The first family could definitely not allow another family enterprise in their party, especially in an important place like Andhra Pradesh, which, if the trend for smaller states continue, could end up as three different states- Andhra, Rayalseema and Telengana. Three states is a lot of bureaucrats, lots of middle-level governmental carrot postings and on a larger scale Rajya Sabha seats. Moreover with the Telugu Desam Party floundering and failing to capitalize even on the multi-crore Satyam fraud, especially when Satyam’s disgraced bosses were close to several top Congressmen, the Congress knows Andhra is theirs for some time to come.
So far the High Command has had its way and has very curtly told Jaggan to rein in his men who now go by the sobriquet Jaggan Sena but everyone knows that something is about to give there. MLAS have started openly defying stand-in CM Rosaiah, even his ministers and bureaucrats- those epitomes of servility to their political masters- not turning up for meetings chaired by the new CM. For how long the party can hold back Jaggan is a question no one is willing to answer now. If Jaggan gives in to the hot-bloodedness of youth, he might just walk out and take away a major chunk of the party with him. With him would go the sympathy wave that accompanies deaths like that of YSR. With him would go the Congress citadel of Andhra for sure.
I’m sure the main players in the drama- Sonia and Rahul- might be getting memories of a particular November in 1984 that started off with just such a dilemma for the grand old party.
Indira Gandhi had been assassinated, Sikhs were being butchered in several cities in India, the intelligence agencies were talking about a major mutiny in the India Army as restive Sikh soldiers had refused to attend duties in many cantonments in the country, Khalistani fringe elements were swearing bloody revenge and most of the Congress leaders leaving their work were busy trying to prove to the party and the powers-that-be that no one had been hurt and devastated more than them with the death of the ‘only man in the cabinet’.
In short it was one of the most painful phases for the country. A decapitated party was looking for someone to lead them through the labyrinthine mess. Some sane head who could go back to the drawing tables, keep his emotions in check, look around, and then lead.
The names that got bandied about for such a role included old fox VP Singh, loyalist Pranab Mukherjee, wily Narasimha Rao, Arjun Singh and SB Chavan. It is of course a matter of destiny how anyone of these would have fared. Only VP Singh and Narasimha Rao ultimately got to sit in the PM’s chair and while the former destroyed his chance by trying to be India’s foremost social reformer since Babasaheb Ambedkar, Rao lost it for trying to make the party from a Gandhi family enterprise to a Rao venture.

But loyalists in the party at the time, like the ones now who are rooting for Jaggan, played the same emotional blackmailing games and riding roughshod over all these experienced heads all the way to the PM’s chair was Rajiv Gandhi.

Of course five years down the line, in 1989, Rajiv Gandhi led his party to the biggest poll defeat ever which saw the Congress down from 410 seats to a humbling 140 seats. And VP Singh went on to become PM before Mandir and Mandal trapped him and brought him crashing down.

History has a strange way of coming back to enact the same scenes in the same old drama with a new set of actors. Andhra is nothing but India of 1984.

kissa TV kiss ka

Trust Ekta Kapoor to line up a blitz of such shrewd marketing that you would believe that she is going to start a trend of kissing on Indian television. While bikinis and choreographed bathing sequences have made their debut, thanks to reality shows, we are being made to believe by a city tabloid that the kissing sequences are going to be a television first thanks to Ekta Kapoor and Co's all-pervasive marketing arm that has all television reporters by their throat.The paper has over the past carried two articles on how youngsters who arrived to audition for Balaji teleserials were suddenly asked to kiss the person next to them, in most cases complete strangers. The article despite being cleverly packaged as a negative one by the paper did not do enough to keep the reader from seeing the shrewd Balaji marketing gimmick behind the whole affair.Coming back to the point, kissing isn’t new to Indian television. If it begins again, Ekta wouldn’t be the pioneer however much her marketing team might want us to believe.That credit should probably go to the team at Zee TV that brought in the first Indian cable television network in around 1993 if I’m not mistaken.That would be the Sharad Sharan-directed Dillagi, a serial that notched up another first by being entirely woven around the characters and locales of the city’s oldest theme park- the Subhash Chandra-promoted Esselworld at Gorai,The serial had a long kissing sequence between Neena Gupta and the late Dilip Dhavan.Infact the first kiss controversy on television might also be the one involving the Zee TV serial Kurukshetra, directed by Lekh Tandon.India Today on its last page carried a snippet with a mug of Seema Kapoor that Indian television viewers would be in for what the magazine claimed would be the longest kiss in Indian TV history when the protagonists in the serial- Harsh Chayya and Seema Kapoor- would finally admit to their feelings for each other and seal it with a 'caution thrown to the winds' kiss..The audience waited with customary eagerness only to be cheated with a kiss sequence that got canned with some suggestive camera-angles like the way directors in the 60s and 70s managed thanks to tough censorhsip. In short it was a scene which could have been shot even if both the actors were corridors apart, forget rooms.Aware of the bad press, Lekh Tandon made amends and gave the audience an authentic kiss in the same serial, this time between Harsh Chayya and Shefali Shah who were part of another parallel love track in the serial. The fact that Shefali Shah was at that time Shefali Chayya and Harsh's real life wife helped.The channel once again gave Indian television its first adult serial - definitely a departure from the staid ones offered by Doordarshan- when it telecast 'Shaadi Ya' directed by Aruna Raje.It had several television stars make their debut and featured issues dealing with low libido to marital rape and had some of the first scenes of couples in bed, in embrace and stealing smooches. Among those on whom these 'role in the bed' scenes were shot was Himani Shivpuri.Of course a good dose of complacency that came with an unchallenged run for nearly five years killed the channel and soon Star Plus took the lead and, though I have not followed TV much of late, seems to have kept it. Prime movers in the Star Plus armada were Amitabh Bachchan and of course the lady who brought marketing into the TV serial world- Ekta Kapoor.

Wait till the Dalit Queen says STATUE !

The Supreme Court might have dealt a telling and deserving blow to our Dalit Queen Mayawati by halting the work on the statues being raised all over Uttar Pradesh at a colossal Rs 2600 crores. But expect the queen to not give up without a fight.
Her counsel told the Supreme Court to take a look at the Rs 10000 crores- her figures and not verifiable- spent by the Congress party in erecting memorials to their leaders, all of whom have that one common thread that the party has been hanging onto for almost a century now. They all belong to the Gandhi-Nehru parivaar.
Of course, the SC pushed aside the argument but I believe in the months to come as this fight over statues gets into the business end of litigation, the Dalit Queen is going to leave the Congress and its fist family with more than a bloody nose.
Because she might just re-ignite a long-dead debate than in a nation of so many disparities and differences why should one family lord it over with such brazen misuse of taxpayers’ money.
That brings me to the old Congress trick of putting out full-page advertisements of some or the other inauguration about to take place. They cleverly beat the election code of conduct and when it comes to answering these allegations, the party and the government goes back to the old explanation that these ads relate to that particular ministry and not any party or personality. The Election Commission- not the epitome of fairness at most times- accepts the argument every time. But then we have had reams of newsprint expended on people who have sat on that supposedly unbiased chair and have given clear hints about who they support. Remember how former Chief Election Commissioner MS Gill after taking allegations of a bias towards the Congress with indignation felt nothing of that righteousness at joining that very party as a junior minister.
In the September 9 issue of the Times of India there is this half page ad of the Textile Ministry of the government of India. On the top are the smiling mugs of Manmohan Singh- he gets left side billing which means he is not the most important man around- Sonia Gandhi right in the middle- slightly higher than the mug of Singh- and the third of Dr Kalaignar Karunanidhi.
In the middle of the text that goes blah blah about the textile ministry and its initiatives is a mug of Textile Minister and Karunanidhi’s DMK scion Kalanidhi Maran.
Well the Congress might say this is just an ad put out by the ministry but the only problem is that the ad is for a textile hub coming up in Surat- the Gujarat Eco-Textile Park- mind you not Tamil Nadu- that the Union Textile ministry is setting up in partnership with the Gujarat government. Ideally then, instead of the bespectacled mug of Thiru Dr Kalaignar Karunanidhi, we should have had one of Narendra Modi, since he is chief minister of Gujarat.
But then as we told you earlier, when the Congress gets into governance, every ad in the papers and every function should propagate just one ideal- that of the party and of course that of the family.
We have never thought in these terms because we tend to get too much of a dose of ‘secular’ media led by journalists fed on the awards bestowed by the Family.My bet is that a lot of that silence is going to be broken when our Dalit Queen starts talking, and mind you the Queen talks in a very shrill voice. She started off her career ticking of good old Gandhiji- remember nautankibaaz- and she might end it with those who use the old man’s legacy to get to the seats of power.

whats that indescribable word

I just happened to get caught in the frenzied melee of the Ganpati immersions at Tilaknagar on Thursday. The regal and benevolent all at once Ganpati of the Sahyadri Mandal was making its way through the suburb on its way to immersion.
I fended off the gulaal, took a few blows on the sides of the stomach from people dancing to steps that are part of no known dance routine in the world, and had my ears paining from the not-in-sync rhythms of three different brass bands.

I wanted to reach home quickly- just a few yards away- thinking that I hadn’t shut the tap leading to the overhead tank. And no way did I want to be welcomed by a tiny room filled with waist high water. But as I said once you get caught in this melee, you just give in. An unstoppable force that will crush all in its path.
In most languages there is no word for it. English for long has been a soaking sponge for words from the disparate languages of the nations the British once occupied. Pandit, jehad, yog, guru, coffle, jungle, and the like.
The feeling of the hair on your hands standing at its ends as the dong and the dhols reach a crescendo, the sheer force by which this unending mass of nearly a lakh people move inch by inch on a 60 feet road, is one that is indescribable.
And since we have gone through this feeling for several hundred years now in a small town called Puri in Orissa, we decided to be a bit charitable about it.
So to the massive ocean of English words, we added a drop to fill up what was otherwise a dry spot for the language.
We gave them the word ‘juggernaut’.
A term that the dictionary puts down as ‘ an unstoppable force that will crush all in its path; usually created by a group of people working together’.
It comes from the frenzy that is created when lakhs of Oriyas- now from people across the world- come together to pull the massive sky-high chariots of Lord Jaggannath, Subhadra and Balaram across the streets of smalltown Puri.
Juggernaut, Jaggannath, that’s the connection.
And for someone like me, who firmly believes that all public festivals should be banned, the pagan air that the immersion procession had at Tilaknagar was something I liked.
Maybe if we just let go of some rituals and concentrate on the pagan-bit in the only organised religion in the world that has it, I think we will enjoy our lives better.

endorsed by nobody (this blog that is)

Being a big film star is so much fun. At the end of the day you could earn money in so many ways you didn’t even imagine possible.
I read today that Salman Khan is going to be brand ambassador of football in India. Would someone tell the geniuses who run the sport that football is a sport that needs no ambassador in India. Despite all the hoopla about cricket, football is still a sport which will get you 20 thousand screaming fans even for matches involving small fry teams anywhere in West Bengal, Kerala, Goa, Punjab and all of the north-east. If statistics are to checked – that is in case they are available- I’m sure the average turnout for any match in the Santosh Trophy should be higher than the Ranji Trophy finals, even if all five days are taken into account.
What the sport needs is a thousand Tata Football Academies like the one in Jamshedpur, the city from where I come. It requires a thousand Super Soccer tournaments that football-mad Russi Mody- when he was king of Tisco and affectionately called Maharaj- used to organise first at the Keenan stadium and then at the magnificent coliseum-like JRD Tata Sports Complex in the steel city. It used to be a week of football talk for the whole city and the crowds came in droves.
It needs television honchos to come up with an IPL-like glitz to get the game to Indian kid in a way he accepts the English Premier League. Forget the difference in standards.
It doesn’t need Salman Khan just like an IPL never needed the SRKs and Preity Zintas and the Shilpa Shetty’s who have used the game to promote themselves rather than the other way round.
Just as I fume over these things, a business paper tells me that SRK- all yellow teeth from the four packs of the cancer stick a day- is now set to endorse Colgate toothpaste. What next for SRK. Anti-wrinkle cream?
Think of small mercies, they did not get Ajay Devgan to endorse Colgate.
So I think Sanjay Dutt has a good chance of becoming brand ambassador of the Army-run Icchapore Small Arms and Rifle Factory in West Bengal. Shiney Ahuja could be one for Mahila Grih Udyog or the Women Welfare Department. Harbhajan Singh of the ‘riding a Hummer without a number plate’ fame can endorse the RTO.
Now what does someone like me- who loves all humanity and wants to live in peace with everybody in harmony and unity- endorse? The BJP?