Congratulations and Celebrations! to me, me, me!

Today is a happy day. Yesterday at Fab India (where I buy my kurtas and ethnic clothes), I heard a girl say, "This is a happy, happy, happy, happy color, will suit you just fine." I liked that, huh, though, what she meant by "happy" raised to the power of four flummoxed me.

What do I see first thing when I open my blog? Google has upgraded my page rank to 4 on 10 from 3 on 10 (zigzackly has 6 on 10!). Some promotion this. Yippeeee! Check it out. Out with the bubblies, no, an extra cup of coffee towards evening, perhaps, if wifey permits.

I have also staked my claim to be the most consistent solo blog and the longest running solo blog at the same URL at the Limca Book of (Blog) Records (the Indian equivalent of Guiness Book of World Records). Isn't that a reason to smile?

Thanks visitors! Do please, please visit me daily (;and give me those hits I deserve;) as I write in this space every day.
Tags: Limca Book of (Blog) Records, Most Consistent Solo Blog, Longest Running Solo Blog, Guiness Book of World Records

500 Women for Every 1000 Men in Jaura Block? Fact, Not Joking!

I am shocked to read this article a link of which I came across on Annie's blog. (Annie works for the Hindu newspaper group. Interestingly, her blog has page rank of 5 on 10 and her employer's web edition has a page rank of 1 on 10! Check it out yourself, if you are familiar with Google page ranks!)

"The district (Morena) has a dismal sex ratio of 822 women for every 1,000 men. In Kailaras and Pahadgarh blocks, at least 100 villages have a sex ratio of less than 600 and in Jaura block it is less than 500 in some villages."

Talk of skewed sex ratios. If there are only 500 women for every 1000 men in Jaura district, imagine, just imagine what would be the situation of the men, nay, the situation of the women there.

Now Annie and I participated in the "Blank Noise Project" which had initiated a blogathon on Street Harassment which all about public harassment of women. This is her contribution to the blogathon and this is mine.

Now what I am waffling towards is this. If there are only 500 women in Jaura block for every 1000 lecherous, grabbing, groping, feeling men, and if all the stories of harassment that I read in the many blogs that participated in the blogathon are true (I do not for a moment disbelieve it, I know) then imagine what this country is heading towards!

There wouldn't just be Street Harassment but street rapes and street killings. Why do parents cry when a girl is born and distribute sweets when a boy is born? Can somebody do something about it, fast?

Another Blank Noise Project was a walk they organized in Delhi against Street Harassment. Read Annie's account here.
Tags: Annie Zaidi, Blank Noise Project, Street Harassment, Blogathon

Delhi Pictures

Delhi, especially Connaught Place, has changed a lot since I visited it last. See the mall-look in this section of Connaught Place. 

Delhi rickshaw driver!

When in Delhi I clicked this rickshaw driver, so peaceful, sleeping a dazed sleep, some place in Karol Bagh, where I stayed. 

Rang De Basanti for the Oscars!

Now, they have gone and done the unimaginable. Rang De Basanti, the film about which I had ranted in this piece is going to the Oscars as India's entry.

Says Aamir Khan in an interview to The Times of India, "Lage Raho Munnabhai" is as inspirational as "Rang De Basanti." This year two films have made a huge impact on the audience. Both have been positive and got the country thinking in a positive direction."

I disagree. I think both films have sent the wrong messages, the first that the Father of the Nation (I confess, I am in awe of the steadfastness with which he stood for the values he had faith in!) needs a goon and a petty criminal to show his importance in this age, and the second that the solution to corruption is mindless violence, in fact, hijacking of a government-owned radio station. If these films have got "the country thinking in a positive direction" as Khan states, he couldn't be more wrong.

I have heard of military juntas taking over radio stations to announce that a coup has taken place, but it is unimaginable for a band of young people to be shown taking over a radio station in a movie, however much aggrieved they are. And this, jury members, is the movie that will represent India in the competitive limelight of international cinematic art. I am shocked and amazed. Can there be a greater denigration of the values that, sadly, only a minority of Indians still strive to uphold?

Now why is the the country raving about two films about which I ranted in this blog? If one don't see hypocrisy here one must be blind.

Is "inspirational" the word, Aamir Khan? They say Indian cinema is about "mauj, masti (fun, disport)", nothing else. They say the audience goes to the theatre to see some forbidden tits and tush (yes, they show an unimaginable amout in these films), and some violence, not to be elated by high-brow lecturing. I thought these are formulaic movies made for the market, for purely financial gains, not to win awards.

A better entry would have been a film like "Iqbal," a regional film, or, even "Corporate." Yes, I liked the latter film very much. It has an understated cinematic elegance, fine acting and a convincing story line that "Rang De" sorely lacks. By its wrong choice the jury seems to have forfeited a chance to show that there is possibility of a more meaningful cinema emerging from India, at least the hope of it.
Tags: Rang De Basanti, Oscars, Iqbal, Corporate

Anousheh Ansari's Spaceblog

If you say, "Duh, Anousheh Ansari, who?" she is the one who paid a few millions to be the first female space explorer to spend ten days in space. Read all about her adventure in her blog. And, hehe, her biggest concern is hygiene in space, or, space suit.

On the right of this blog you will notice this announcement, "Donate $ 500 and receive an autographed photo from humanity's first space explorer." So, did she go broke exploring the great beyond? From the blog it appears she is a firm believer in God, and I hope she comes back confirmed in her faith. Her blog has received 470,748 hits as of this day, tomorrow being her last day.

She reportedly paid $ 20 million to get there. By some simple mathematics 40,000 visitors have to pay $ 500 each for her to break even. That would mean merely eight per cent of the visitors to her blog can help her break even, become famous, and even earn from lecturing tours for life. I am not one for such stunts, but must confess I am too broke to even think of contributing my mite.
Tags: Anousheh Ansari, Anousheh Ansari blog, hygiene in space

Milestone crossed, 5000 visitors!

This blog has crossed the 5000-vistor milestone. See the numbers at the bottom center of this page. Thank you visitors! You make me very proud. Though I am one of the earliest bloggers in India (I started blogging in August 2003), regretfully, I hadn't put a visitor count code on my blog. I redeemed this only later. I hope to make you come back again to read my views, news, trivia about things literary and search in the search boxes in the top right hand corner.

If you are a journalist, and would like a quote, do email me, I will only be happy to give you a quick and relevant quote within 24 hours. As a former journalist I know what it means to get quotes, and how your work is judged by the "smart" quotes you get from people. You can first search my blog to find if I have anything interesting to say about the subject and then proceed.
Tags: Blog, Earliest Blogger in India, news, trivia, views, literature

The Amitava Kumar - Salman Rushdie Controversy

Read this article on Amitava Kumar's Blog. Can't say that I agree with him totally, being a die-hard fan of Rushdie. But, it now turns out that Rusdie has, some how, read Kumar's blog articles (some excerpts follow) and has threatened to cancel a lecture at Vassar College if he was introduced by Amitava. This may have the potential of blooming into a full-fledged literary controversy, me thinks.

"What Rushdie did was not exactly new in Indian writing in other languages or even in Indian drama, but its intensity and range was novel in the tradition of English writing that had been inaugurated by the likes of R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao, and Mulk Raj Anand. In a land allegedly in thrall to babu English, here was someone who was having fun with the English language. Reading him was a bit like coming across a giant ad for Amul butter on an Indian street—except that Rushdie was in command and kept doing it for five hundred pages."

"The trouble is that despite all his invention and exuberance Rushdie remains to a remarkable extent an academic writer. He is academic in that abstractions rule over his narratives. They determine the outlines of his characters, their faces, and their voices. Rushdie is also academic in the sense that his rebellions and his critiques are all securely progressive ones, advancing the causes that the intelligentsia, especially the left-liberal Western intelligentsia, holds close to its breast. This is not a bad thing, but it should qualify one's admiration for Rushdie's daring."

"There can be no doubt that the threats that Rushdie faced and also the book-burnings and other protests were shameful and unacceptable. But I do not for a moment support Norman Mailer's assessment (Norman Mailer wrote Rusdie after the Fatwa "Many of us begin writing with the inner temerity that if we keep searching for the most dangerous of our voices, why then, sooner or later we will outrage something very fundamental in the world, and our lives will be in danger. That is what I thought when I started out, and so have many others, but you, however, are the only one of us who gave proof that this intimation is not ungrounded."). I don't believe that Rushdie has even found his most dangerous voice. In fact, I don't believe that Rushdie's is the most dangerous voice writing today. His is no doubt a powerful voice; often, it has been an oppositional voice; but it is a voice of a celebrity promoting commendable causes; more seriously, in some fundamental way, it is the voice of a metaphorical outsider, and therefore incapable of revealing to ourselves, in an intimate way, our complicities, our contradictions, and our own inescapable horror. I don't deny that it is a voice that can engage and delight and of course annoy, and yet it is very important to make a distinction: what Rushdie writes can easily provoke, but it is rarely able to disturb."

Kumar's grouse seems to be that Rusdie is being used as a milestone in Indian English literature as when we say "he writes like Rushdie" and "he doesn't write like Rushdie." But Rusdie opened the gates to the flood (or is it a trickle?) that followed, didn't he? Admittedly Rusdie criticized and parodied Indian life for a western audience, but he did it with considerable charm and wit and even we tend to nod our heads and smile when we read what Kumar calls "academic" writing. Here's what Rushdie says about migration, as quoted by Kumar, "To migrate is certainly to lose language and home, to be defined by others, to become invisible or, even worse, a target; it is to experience deep changes and wrenches in the soul. But the migrant is not simply transformed by his act; he also transforms his new world. Migrants may well become mutants, but it is out of such hybridization that newness can emerge."

I have underlined "invisible" because in "Midnight's Children" he calls the people who live beyond posh Neapean Sea Road area in Bombay as "Invisible People," or the migrant people. This is something I can identify with as I am of second generation migrant stock, living as invisible people in an extended suburb of Bombay. Here's a poem I wrote in my blog about how indigenous people hate migrants.
Tags: Amitava Kumar, Salman Rushdie, controversy, R K Narayan, Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand, Norman Mailer, Neapean Sea Road, Invisible People

Reality Show to Sell a Book? Quite possible!

Saw the James McGreevey interview with Larry King on CNN. Now, for those who came in late, James is the former governor of New Jersey who has made a public admission to having a homosexual affair and to having cheated on his wife, as a consequence of which he had to give up his office. He has also come up with a book on the affair titled "The Confession" and may, me thinks, have been desperate to get publicity for the book. The confession includes trysts in anonymous truck stops, crawling into bed with his wife after escapades with his boy friend, etc.

What I found unusual was the handsome McGreevey was squirming in his seat while answering King's pointed and, rather, blunt questions. Several times he fumbled for answers, and on occasions he seemed as if he wasn't telling the truth, at least, fudging some. Larry King asked him if he had sexual encounters before his marriage, and he said, "yes," the next question was, "was it pleasurable?" What does he mean by asking if a sexual encounter was pleasurable? Why would he go for an encounter if it wasn't pleasurable. Come, come, now, Larry King!

To make matters worse there were also interviews with his cheated wife, and his boyfriend (no, he says, life partner), whom he kissed on the show. Yes, kissed on the mouth! All through the interview I was conscious of a brave show being put up, all that was wrong with such displays became quite obvious. I mean, the reality television kind of programs showing people embarassed, crying, shouting, and kissing.

I felt that this was the movie trailer to goad people to buy the book in millions to delve into the secret life of the handsome governor. Also, who knows, movie rights, and may be, a movie role (seeing as to how handsome he is!). Oh, the pits to which people can descend!

I may be terribly old fashioned (my blog says so), not to talk of getting old, but couldn't these emotions be handled a bit more discreetly? All through the show the interlocutor Larry King had a cynical set to his mouth, and conducted the interview with great detachment, as is his wont. But all this drama to sell a book? If this genre of publishing is so desperate to sell their books, then why don't they call themselves "The Celebrity Business" and not publishing at all.
Tags: James McGreevey, Larry King, The Confession, Reality Television, Homosexuality

Story of the Grafted Weenie!

A Chinese man had another's weeny grafted on to him when he lost, (not exactly, he still had a stump left) his in an accident. The surgery involved connecting the nerves and blood vessels that makes the organ tick, or, erm, throb. But it turns out that his weeny wasn't as teeny as it was, and the first to notice, quite obviously, was his wife.

Now Zhang Weining wants his grafted weeny off. The organ wasn't rejected by his body, but by his wife. Where does that leave men of the world whose weenies have been Bobbitted. Your guess!
Tags: Chinese, Zhang Weining, Grafting, Bobbited