I write this blog in a very cheerful state of mind. I thought I’d be inside a bunker waiting for some army guy to give me five minutes of his spare time with the laptop to write it. But thankfully we did not go to war and we did not bomb New York, Washington or the White House. The collective anger that our Sonia-led government felt after our dear Shahrukh was detained at a US airport surely had me putting my last penny on Indian jets making mincemeat of the Americans. Sonia’s best friend – of course she will be a minister in that case- Ambika Soni even said we must have a ‘tit-for-tat’ policy. But the Americans chickened out, and left Shahrukh after he managed to convince the whites in the Homeland Sdecurity at the Port of Entry that he is a good actor and that films like DDLJ, KANK are masterpieces of Indian cinema and that India was one massive land mass of mustard fields and all of us usually travelled abroad to Switzerland’s Yash Chopra lake to cavort with our girlfriends, lip-synch with them along with synchronized dance steps. So there was no war because the Americans didn’t show their tits, so we spared them the tats.Come to think of it. Poor little APJ Kalam, a nice bloke if there are any left in India, might be feeling a bit left out. The Americans made him do far worse things, in India beat that, and still not a word from the government. But that is understandable because Kalam has been wasting a lot of time with the saffronwalas of late and touching the feet of sundry babas so the Congress really cannot stand up for someone with such bad taste.Now coming back to SRK. I think he is just pissed off because we in India tend to give our lads enough leeway and space to think they own the frigging establishment.So SRK might be the centre of all attention when he alights at any Indian airport, but sadly this time he just got the rough end of the stick. Now Mid-day says he told the US chaps that he is a friend of Hillary Clinton. That is so typical Dilliwala of SRK. The moment a traffic cop catches you, tell him that Shiela Dikshit is my mummy’s elder sister or Arun Jaitley and you went to law school together.A recent research shows that if all the people in Delhi who say they are related to X or Y politicians are taken at face value, then every MP will need to have at least 783 brothers, 519 sisters, 14679 nephews, 1234 nieces- women tend to pull this stunt less- and 350 wives for it all be true. We are a nation just like that. We treat our heroes better and it is time someone told Uncle Sam that. Look at Sanjay Dutt. The chap is a legally a jailbird as someone convicted under the stringent (only for common Indians though) Arms Act. But our man is off shooting to Bahamas, partying in South Africa and then giving sundry interviews to film glossies on how he longs for the freedom he deserves. Right.To top it all and rub it in, the man appears on Sony’ Dus ka Dum- with ‘booze’um pal Salman- and asks the audience in mock Khalnayak style- bolo main gunehgaar hu kya? And the crowd- of course fed on the channels rent-a-crowd policy with Bisleri, snacks and Rs 500 per day- shout in unison ‘NNNOOOO’. I’m tempted to ask whether that is contempt of court or not. What Mr Dutt pulled off was nothing but a loud shout that the law is an ass and the judge who convicted him a bit off the rockers.Look at Harbhajan Singh. When Usain Bolt, Roger Federer and several other sporting legends have no problem with the anti-doping regulations of the WADA, our man will have none of it. What if the chaps come to check his urine when he is out to shoot a commercial of Royal Stag which he has managed after telling the coach that his spinning finger got stuck in the door so he can’t bowl? Very unfair. So Harbhajan has made it clear he will not bow down to these rules. As for the BCCI, the support is whole-hearted because the Ms Pawar and Modi never wanted cricket to come up within the ambit of any world-recognised sports body anyway. They would continue to let cricket remain a kangaroo sport governed by kangaroo courts as long as the moolah flows in. So if someone takes drugs- like stay Steyn- then we will just announce it six months after the tournament and smugly tell the world you can crucify someone with retrospective effect, can you?Salman Khan might not be the ideal Indian hero when it comes to morals. But he had one sane word to say. Speaking to Asian Age, he said the SRK issue was ‘no big deal’. And then he hit the nail on the head. ‘They are particular about their security and that could be the reason why they have not had anything after 9/11’ Salman said.Now we are at the end of it all a nation that allows 7/11, 26/11 and god knows how many more elevens in store that will leave the psyche of our nation in sixes and sevens. So let it all go.I just wonder how did SRK manage to convince the Americans he is a good actor? That must have been tough after playing Raj Malhotra from age 25 to 45 film after film, interview after interview.

the world's largest toilet

Had a wonderful time last night/ early morning at Shab-e-baraat, a time when Muslims are supposed to visit graveyards to pray for the departed.
Had the magnificent opportunity of seeing autorickshaws at Shivaji Park and Cadell Road, almost ten kilometres into the suburban city.
Was fortunate enough to see wonderful chivalry as bikers, dressed in pathanis and skull caps on their heads, jeered at women who, unfortunately for them, had no roofs over their heads so slept on the pavements and nocturnal movements forced their clothes to go up their legs to show unwanted skin.
Saw five boys stoning a hapless dog from close range at Byculla’ khada parsi bridge. The dog, thankfully, managed to escape though the short whimper it let out suggested that one of the idiots had managed to connect somewhere on its bone.
Heard cries of Allahu Akbar in the middle of the night waking up entire residences as lights came on at the windows of sleepy buildings in a jiffy.Felt very nice to be Indian. The world’s largest toilet. Where the only contribution you need to make is to shit all over it.

ramdevitis is spreading fast

While the world is talking about the swine flu and the super speed at which it is spreading, everybody seems to be forgetting that just four hours of television viewing- only the news channels mind you- should be good enough to convince you that a far deadlier disease, currently called ramdevitis, is spreading at an even faster rate.Ramdevitis is a disease that scientists found after watching television channels and reading newspaper reports. These scientists say it is mainly found in babas and godmen, most of them as fraudulent as a three rupee note. Its main carriers are television channels like India TV which in case of an absence of any videos showing ‘swarg jka raasta’ fall back on babas and sadhus with ramdevitis.Scientists said the disease is named after Baba Ramdev- the sadhu who does all those body-twisting asanas wearing a lungi and has a permanent twitch in his eye. Now ever since TV channels started showing up at his doorstep, the man, from spouting about the power of yoga, has moved on to trying to rid India of corrupt politicians and also to saving Indian culture now that is expected to fall flat in three months since Section 377 legalized. On Monday (27/7) Mumbai Mirror carried a front page story on the latest baba down with ramdevitis. Some Jain monk- with a mouth mask made popular long before swine flu- has a particular problem with the Indian Navy naming its first nuclear submarine Arihant.Now the chaps at the Navy thought it to be an apt name because Arihant means ‘destroyer of enemies’ in Sanskrit. But who will explain that to our good little Jain muni.He is particularly miffed because Arihant also happens to be the name of a particularly sagely and peaceful tirthankara- or prophet- and giving it to a killer submarine is highly distasteful and hurting to the Jains across India.That is where the problem begins. It like saying calling anyone a lungi or a nariyal paaniwala is hurting to the mallus whereas being one of them I know that you can call a mallu anything- and I mean anything- as long as you give him his visa to Qatar, Kuwait and all the other parts of the Gellfff in time.
At last count more than 90 percent of the Jains in India- a very industrious and wealthy community- could not have been less bothered if the submarine was named Arihant or ‘Phatti Pant’ as long as the share market was doing well and there were enough people to lend money to.But who explains that to the good muni who after all was feeling the pinch of giving a good byte to the accompanying TV and paper chaps.At the time of writing this blog, the name of the submarine is Arihant. But if the Grand Old Party goes back to its old ways of pleasing all for votes, they might change it and name it ‘Rahul baba’. Watch it.

Naam ghum jayega..mere murti hi pehchaan hai

Was just going through an opinion piece in one of the papers where the writer asks why is Mayawati (of the thousand statutes of herself fame) so fixated on memorializing herself? Good question. But I fail to understand what the fuss is all about? Haven’t we heard of the simple fact of life called progression?
If you start something, good or bad- such is the power endowed on the human race to prefect and better a move- that someone somewhere is bound to move towards making it perfect and better.
Just last week the state government announced the opening of the Bandra Worli Sealink in Mumbai, the city where I stay. The Congress government, both at the Centre and the state, thought it fit to make the much-hyped Mumbai seabridge into one quagmire of political sycophancy and opportunism.
So what do both governments do? To inaugurate what is arguably India’s most visible piece of engineering and architecture in the last fifty years, they get Sonia Gandhi. Now may I ask who is Sonia Gandhi? Is she the Prime Minister of India? Officially she isn’t. Is she the President of India? Positively she would never accept such a titular post.
Then why was she called? Because she is the chairperson of the UPA? How would the same glitterati and journalists fattened on Congress dole outs like Padma Shris have reacted if the BJP-led NDA government had invited the sarsangchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh- the RSS- to inaugurate the seabridge if they were in power?
A massive hue and cry? Logically speaking the RSS chief khakhi shorts-and-black-cap wearer has the same position in the BJP scheme of things as Sonia in the Congress. A disgusting façade of authority without responsibility going under the name of mentorship.
So not only do they go ahead and get Sonia Gandhi to inaugurate the bridge, all sycophants including Maharashtra’s tallest political leader- of course now heading the fighting for survival NCP- go ahead and name it after Rajiv Gandhi.
Now Rajiv Gandhi was India’s most progressive Prime Minister who after five years as Prime Minister of a party that had 410 seats in Parliament lead it on a colossal Lok Sabha campaign in 1989 that ended with the party wiped out in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, West Bengal. Rajasthan, Delhi leaving the Congress with just 140 seats to show. The Raja of Manda had left the scion of India’s first family with the kind of bloody nose that would make Advani’s loss in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections a photo-finish.
Coming back to the point from where I started- about India’s self-styled favourite Dalit daughter.
If one party goes around naming stadiums after the grandfather, educational institutions and sundry indoor swimming pools after the daughter and seabridges and rural development schemes after the grandson, some self=styled daughter is going to come forward and prefect the art of memorializing self.
Mayawati has just gone ahead and done it. She has spent almost half a billion dollars- in dirt poor Uttar Pradesh- to make statues of herself, those of Babasaheb and Kanshi Ram are just to soften the blows that she expected would come her way.
Now if the Congress wants to top it, they would have to somehow get Rahul Gandhi’s mug on the Rs 1000 note. That will take some doing and I am sure Mayawati would come up with something better. The game has begun. Sit back and enjoy it. I have a feeling the Congress government in Maharashtra will name the Rs 1000 crore Shivjai Maharaj memorial in the Arabian Sea after Sonia Gandhi. Fun.

Death of the saffron soul

It might not seem anything but fun for the Congress or for that matter the Left and the wide array of parties that have a visceral hatred towards the BJP. One defeat and the saffron edifice is collapsing in such a way that it would seem it was made by a consortium of engineers handpicked by the BMC or the MCD.
Leaders like Yahswant Sinha and Jaswant Singh, turncoats of the worst order, are now lecturing to what till some time ago prided itself as being the most disciplined and ideologically strong party. The likes of Venkiah Naidu- who’d lose his deposit even if he stood for municipal elections, are busy wiping their brow in despair that their beloved party is going down the drain.
However if the BJP should have prayed for anything at the moment, it should be the churning that its insides are getting now.
The country’s first party without history- the Congress still clings on to the tails of the history left behind by giants like Gandhiji, Nehru, Patel and Ambedkar and the Communists imported it all from wisemen sitting in Russia and China- needs this churning if it is to have a future.
It was weakened by leaders like Pramod Mahajan whose easy ways with money and power made the party as corrupt and lackluster as the Congress itself. The only difference was that the Congress had the Gandhi-Nehru family. And in a nation like ours, bereft of the last drop of self-pride and confidence after a thousand years of crippling Mughal and insulting British rule, we love thinking of ourselves as property to be passed on from one feudal lord to his progeny. If it is the Gandhis, so be it. Infact I’d wager a guess that in 2030 our Prime Minister could well be Priyanka Gandhi’s son. And a million idiots would accept it as if it is the fellow’s birthright to lord over us.
Coming back to the BJP, let there be an open rebellion, let the seat-warmers and the weak be torn into bits. Let the party’s name be dragged through mud. Let the Ivory Tower that the party perched itself in be pulled down brick by brick.
All of this so that a hero might rise. Let a hero rise from the saffron ashes who will lead us into a party whose ideology is the strength of Hinduism without the caste shackles, whose business would be that of the farmer and the working class, whose politics would be unabashedly muscular. A hero who will promise every community in the country the right to live happily as Indians, but will reserve the right to come after them like a bat out of miserable hell if they as much as place their religion before country.
It might not happen till 2014 but happen it will. Maybe the party by then might not be called the BJP. But as long as its heart is in the place the saffron patriarchs wanted it to be, lets take it.

camels and donkeys, cults and religions

Do we need to look like our God to become better human beings? Do we need to look like our icons to become better followers of our religion?

Do we need to pray in a particular way for it to get accepted by the power above?

Do we need to pray a fixed number of times every day, that too at fixed times?

Do we need to pray in any particular direction after proclaiming loud and clear that God made all sides of each direction?

Do we need to believe every breath that we take and every work that we do is part of a religious obligation?

Do we have to forsake every argument, every shred of natural dynamism to be known as exemplary followers of our religion?

Do we have to believe that every other religion and all its tenets are obviously wrong for us to be better followers?

Do we have to positively believe that everything our religious books tell us has to be right?

Do we have to be idiots when it comes to religion?

Is a cult masquerading as a religion any religion at all?

IPL at all costs

On Wednesday under the cover of darkness and in utmost secrecy a plane carrying 25 National Security Guard commandos took off from a military airport near Panesar in Haryana and left forydney. According to highly placed sources, the plane left after agriculture minister Sharad Pawar and home minister P Chidambaram had a long chat that extended well into the night at the latter’s library where Chidambaram was reading a book ‘ How to fool everyone during recession’
According to a military official who was present in the meeting because the book belonged to him, the discussion was on how the government could save the Indian Premier League from being confined to the cans for this year after the terror strike on Lankan cricketers in Lahore early this week. A top BCCI official made a PowerPoint presentation for Chidambaram which showed that there was almost Rs 2500 crores to be made from the IPL this year alone. And since where there is money, there has to be a minister or several ministers, both Pawar and Chidambaram agreed that the IPL had to be conducted come what may.
Accordingly, the military top brass made a plan to induct superbly trained NSG commandos into several teams and disguise them as regular players and send them out on the field.
It was this batch that took the flight that left for the Australian Cricket Academy in Sydney. The consensus was to send them to the Indian one in Bangalore but both ministers agreed that the NSG guys would come back with terrible fielding skills and will also have the propensity to scoot off to shoot for advertisements in the middle of regular terror operations like the Taj or Nariman House

However touched by the amount of effort Messrs Pawar and Chidambaram were putting in to ensure the IPL goes as per schedule, top ranking officials in the Prime Minister’s Office told this blogger that many ministers and politicians had come forward to add their mite to get the extravaganza going.
Many netas promised to play in the teams as and when the NSG guys falls short. Of course these netas would be in disguise. But this blogger after much research has been able to crack the code that would allow you to find out which neta is playing whatever be the disguise.

Here is the lowdown on the code:
If you see a fielder who lets the ball pass through his legs every time and then, wagging his finger at the batsman, shouts ‘streect akshaan bheel be taken if you do it again’, rest assured it is Pranab Mukherjee.

If you spot a fielder running to the stands and sitting between some skimpily-clad celebrity- however worthless talentwise- and grinning from ear to ear when the celebrities are being photographed, bet your last penny it is Amar Singh.

If you see a cricketer going up to the stump microphone and sourly hissing that the captain is no good and he would have been the ideal captain, then be sure it is the one and only Narayan Rane.

And if you see somebody who is completely hopeless batting, bowling, fielding, appealing, running, stumping, catching, cheering, shouting, and just about anything else that is required in modern cricket, but if you still find every other player praising him to the skies- calling him Sachin Tendulkar, Michael Holding, Jonty Rhodes, Don Bradman, Gary Sobers rolled into one- look no further. That man is our own Rahul baba Gandhi. And every other player on that team are old fossils from that fabulous organisation called the Congress Working Committee chaired by rahul baba’s mummy Soniaji ‘mother of India’ Gandhi.

As and more leaks from that meeting come to this blogger, he will update you. And if you can crack some more codes, try to ensure no one gets to see the crack.