At The Edge

Recently finished reading a slim booklet  based on a series of lectures given in 1989 by K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar titled 'The Man of Letters and The Doomsday Clock'. The thing that I found interesting is that while the words from west presented on this subject had all kind of emotions like indignation, guilt and almost paranoidal fear, the only corresponding Indian voice on the subjects offered is that of Sri Aurobindo. And lines from his poem 'A Dream of Surreal Science' kind of sums his opinion on the subject: "Thus wagged on the surreal world till A scientist played with atoms and blew out The universe before God had time to shout" It seems that while writers in west people were almost loosing their mind thinking about the bomb, mystics in India were predicting doom that was in any case was foretold. While the influence of Aurobindo on Iyengar is known, still it all sounds dubious and all these words m...

I design games for social networks. The statement basically means I spend an indecent amount of time on Facebook. To be able to work I haven't added too many people as friend and as a precaution I have blocked a lot of incoming distractions that are often likely to appear on one's Wall in form of  timepass  like this : Mahatama Steps Out of character of Gandhi This supposed image of Gandhi dancing with some white woman travelled from hate groups (Anti-Gandhi to Anti-India) with comments about ' Mastikhor Ayyash Gandhi' to liberal groups with 'O! he could dance!' remarks. The basically ended up going viral. If it managed to reach my high wall, it must be really viral, that's my rule. It took me one google image search query to find that the image is actually of an Australian artist impersonating Gandhi for some charity event held in Sydney for India back in those days. -0-

Got these distress messages from the brotherhood in a free booklet stuffed inside the morning paper. >

.Hame toh apno Ne Loota, Gairo Mei kahan Dum Tha.  Hahahah. Hame toh apno Ne Loota, Gairo Mei kahan Dum Tha Meri Kashti Thi Dubi Wahan, Jaha Pani Kam Tha. AHahahah. (Monologue ends. Hero starts beating the Piano. Everybody starts giving a constipated look - hamming various expressions of distress. Song starts.) Hohohoooooaaahahha. Jeeta Tha Jiske Liye Jiske liye marta tha Jeeta Tha Jiske Liye Jiske liye marta tha   ek aisi ladki thi jise main pyar karta tha The song (rather the entire album) from1994 film Dilwale ought to be in record books of some-kind for a feat unparalleled. It remains the No.1 song on play-it-out-loud playlist of 8 out of 10 drivers of autos, six-seaters and buses. Any driver worth his salt carries the cassette in his command center. And it has been like that since  1994. Any hint of melancholy, pangs of love, catching Kareena's brash light eyes looking him up, reading the lines glued in sparkling lett...

There are very few things which I can claim to have mastered through experience and rightful application of intellect. Ability to fly Kites tops the list but stealing cable is a specialty. Back in the late 1980s someone with a VCR and a color TV got tired of charging people for watching films in his establishment. The business model was too ineffective. There had to be a better way. The way was cable. A single cable fixed to the VCR was laid out, branched, which basically meant cut up at places and joined back by faithful plastic tapes, cables tied to electric poles and to telephone pole, where available, stretched across the rooftops, over atop the window panes, and into the television sets of the subscribers. The backbone of cable business had been laid. It's humble origin. The model was flexible. For a monthly fee, watch what you want. In fact it was so flexible that Sharma Ji could pass a few bucks and the VHS of his wedding to the cablewalla and for Prime Time Show your coul...

Came across this curious flyer recently. Television. Actors. Godmen. Lasers. Too good.

I wanted to laugh. At any given moment there are enough people who believe a country out to be run like a mob.We have a mob.  P. Chidambaram earlier represented Enron as a senior lawyer in India. (That should be enough. Still.) And at one time he was also one of the non-executive directors of British mining conglomerate ‘ Vedanta Resources ’ where he helped it in getting listed at LSE. And Chidambaram represented it in the Mumbai High Court until 2003, quitting because he became the finance Minister of India .   Vedanta's Bihar born 'Millionaire but only matriculate pass' owner now lives in Europe ( Arundhati Roy gave the address as : 'London in a mansion that once belonged to the Shah of Iran') and is believed to be very smart: "Anil Agarwal, Vedanta’s chief executive, who founded Sterlite in 1976, caused further controversy last year [2002] when he attempted to delist Sterlite in Bombay. At the time, Mr Agarwal owned 80 per cent of Sterlite’s shares and ...

After the death of their poor mazdoor parents, young Bhola and Munni find themselves homeless, hungry and on the street. But then a kindly roadside gola (ice-candy) seller Kamla (Parveen Babi ) takes them in. A staple bollywood affair. But then, Mazdoor Zindabaad is a film from year 1976, the middle year of Emergency , and there is not one moment  in this magnus opus of sycophancy that lets the audience forget the great leader, her twenty points and her's son's five points. It was written directed and produced made by some guy named Naresh Kumar.He went on to make a film called Sone Ka Dil Lohe Ke Haath (1978) or 'Golden Heart-Iron Hand', a Chinese Kungfu film sounding title that some people would still use to describe Indira Gandhi. (Humble offering) 'Mazdoor Zindabaad' doesn't try to describe the great leader, it just sings praises of her great plans. And how? Kamla takes the bother-sister duo under her (and symbolically under Indira's) wi...

Once in a while I get an opportunity to rub the fact into the face of my Indian friends that I am a Kashmiri. The conversation usually ends with, 'Yeah Yeah so why didn't you seek asylum in Amreka while you had the chance?' Only a week ago we read about: "Chinese Embassy in Delhi is issuing separate visas to Indian passport holders from Indian-administered Kashmir. Instead of stamping the passport with a visa, as is the norm with Indian citizens, Kashmiri students and businessmen traveling to China have had their visas stamped on a separate paper stapled to the passport. [ News Link, Asia Times ] That make me wanna go, 'Only with a passport! Only with a passport!' like Chaplin's 'communist' boy. Rubs the fact into the face. Today was one such day. The front page of morning paper carried the news that 'Made in China' globes sold in India depict Ja...

alternatively titled: 'What to do if nothing else works?' Ride a horse -single handed, ride a bike on a high wire - let your hair blow into the wind, play with knives ( and springs!), do trapeze, break that wall with your head, and when you have completely lost it, be a ' chiddi maar ' - killer of birds. So now you are a Super Hero.ClapCalpClap. -0- Image: A page from Pratishodh ki Jwala (fire of revenge, Raj Comics ), the first of Super Commando dhruva. dhruva started in Circus just like 'Robin - The Boy Wonder'. Parents get killed and so on. After many successful adventures he ended up playing 'Robin' to Nagraj.

A vintage Diwali poster leached from ebay. -0- When people use Google search for spell check right before sending those mass greetings through sms, emails, 'scraps' and 'messages'. Did you mean: prosperous Google Search Stats for 16th October, just a day before Diwali. Leached from Google trends for India . Certainly India knows no prosperity.

Director, producers, actors, writers and editors who take Norman Bates line - 'Sometimes we all go mad' - a bit too seriously. They give us characters who do not heed a fine advice given by Count Dracula to Jonathan Harker:  'You may go wherever you wish in the castle except where the doors are locked, where of course, you will not wish to go.' Nobody in horror films, made in any part of the world, takes Dracula's word seriously. They would like to produce a vision of Shirley Jackson, 'No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.' So larks and katydids of Bollywood dreamt of : Video link

Mac Mohan came to Bombay to play cricket but ended up sitting atop a boulder occasionally screaming something about 50 thousand rupees, maybe the sun gave him a streak of white hair that was perhaps second only to Indira Gandhi's ice mane (she of course got it for other reasons).     At the start of this year I saw Mac Mohan dancing in a song from Chetan Anand's Heer Raanjha (1970) and then saw him without his without his signature streak, uncharacteristically, doing ChaChaCha ( it seems he did a lot of dancing in year 1964 ). I was shocked. But nothing prepared me for this: giving 'mouth-to-mouth resuscitation' to his girlfriend(!) Laverne Hall  Found it at Picasa Galley of Karen having old Magazine scans -0- Actually I remember a rather strange incident in India's Television space that involved girls stripping in the middle of a busy Mumbai road and Mac Mohan. It happened like this: In late 1999, Channel V came up with a show called 'V Dares You' i...

No, I don't think Lord Mountbatten's Chief of Staff, Lord Ismay, was really thinking about 'Samosa and Tea' in that meet of 3rd June 1947 when Nehru and Jinnah signed on the Partition Plan.

India has to be the coolest country in the world. I just caught India Today Group's 7th State of States awards on TV. A recent phenomena, it's were they give awards to various states based on performance in various fields like Education, Law and Order, Consumer Markets, Housing for Poor, Rural Roads, Irrigation, E-Governance.. .wagaraywagaraw et cetera. It's great but that not what makes India cool. Here's the cool part. At the function held at Taj Palace Hotel in Delhi, each time an old bloke (a chief minister) representing the winner state got on stage to receive the award, the entire hall reverberated with that celestial tune - Baa, ba ba baa, bum, ba ba baa, ba ba bara rara rara ra , the Starwars theme. No they couldn't commission some local artist to some up with an original piece. Banish the thought. It's just an award function where people come and listen to poetics of politicians. Rest of it is just news report.   Who cares about what music we play ...

September 13th, 2009 Last week there were reports that Chinese troops  intruded 1.5 km inside the territory of India in Ladakh and spray painted China (* in red, no less) on boulders and rocks. They did this near Mount Gya (22,420”), that (experts pointing to strategic significance) touches Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir, Spiti in Himachal Pradesh and Tibet in '?'. Chinese response to these reports, 'No! No! We don't do rocks. War monger Indian media sells opium. Indian people, don't let them dope you. China loves you' As often happens, China misunderstood the significance of these reports in India. In reality Indian received the news as one of those Ashok Kumar-Shammi Kapoor 'Pan Parg: O'Ho ! Humein kya maloom tha aap bhi ... ' moments: 'O'Ho! How could we know that you people also love to leave your name on insignificant inanimate things that will outlast significant human existence of this planet.' I am sure if the Indian media, ...

2nd September, 2009 Rewind: The video of Alisha Chinoy song 'De,de,de,de dil de de Mujhko', a single from her 1994 album 'Bombay Girl', was deemed too improper, almost indecent, outright Adult for the vetted audience of the national broadcaster - Doordarshan.  The hot video directed by Ken Ghosh came out in 1996 quick on the heels of success of their previous collaboration for video of 'Made in India' - a phenomena that led to the boom of 'Indi-Pop' which continued for about half a decade till the fizz slowly died down. 'Indecent Exposure' by Alisha Chinoy didn't keep Doordarshan.from showing the video in one of their 'Indi-Pop' countdown shows running on DD Metro. They did show it, complete, no cuts, it wasn't banned outright, but they did pixelate the offending parts. So the audience, perplexed, got to see heavily pixelated cleavage of Alisha Chinoy. Let's just say, as you can see from the sample image, it didn't h...

-Jaswant 'eyebrow' Singh, in his baritone voice: Mera jaanam mera saajan mera saajan mera baalam Mera baalam mera majnu mera majnu mera raanjha. Jinnaaaaah Tu mera jaanu hai, tu mera dilbar hai Meri taareeqi kitaab ka tu hero hai -His ' Hey Bhagwan ! they are in fact KKK in saffron bedsheets' friends, keeping up with the tempo (they knew the song) and the lingo (they won't say it but they hate it) : Par Bharti taareeq ke panno par uski taqdeer toh zero hai, hoOhoooo He would have been fine, even though he is no singing canary, still he would have been fine, but then he followed that song with an unusual little number with lines unkind even to 'Sangh Friendly' Sardar 'Iron' Patel. They together took the whole Indian nation Locked us on this reservation Though I wear a shirt and tie I'm still part redman deep inside Indian people, Indian tribe So proud to live, so proud to die But maybe someday when they learn Indian nation wil...

"Goro Ki Na Kalo Ki Duniya Hain Dilwalo Ki"   Not Whites, Not Blacks, the World belongs to those with a mighty heart. video link You just witnessed a performance by Baimurat Allaberiyev, a 37-year old Tajik worker, an ex-Soviet Army man and a singing sensation in Russia, who hauls cardboard boxes in a Moscow shopping store and sometimes works at construction sites. His performances first surfaced on Youtube in 2008 ( 4 June 2008, to be exact), most of these had him performing Bappi Lahiri's (now re-discovered) hit number “ Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja ” from “Disco Dancer” (1983), but always the version which starts with song " Goro Ki Na Kalo Ki ". The video, probably, first captured by someone who found his entertaining and amusing, became a Youtube hit in Russia and adjoining region. Soon, people began to seek him to make more videos. He didn't seem to mind. More videos followed. Baimurat "Tajik Jimmy" Allaberiyev, became a viral phenomena. I...

Krish Raghav of Mint got in touch with me through email. He said they are doing a feature on the 'Blog in India', critically examine the blogosphere and blogging in India, as its been exactly 10 years since the founding of the popular blogging tools of today (Blogger, Livejournal). So, he sent me a couple of interesting questions and I tried to be coherent in my answers. It was tough to be coherent , I was facing an erratic Internet connection at the time and and an eternal Power outage, I was high on lead fumes of a buzzing inverter.[ Five minute break. Believe me, Power Outage again.] I think it may have lead me to go into Dilip Kumar of Mashaal (1984) mode, it's that 'never understood in its time' Yashraaj film in which Dilip Kumar delivered the famous heart wrenching line, 'Eh Bhai, Koi Gaadi Roko Bhai, Koi Gaadi Roko Bhai, Gaadi Roko Bhai.' Here's the Q/A session (I have cleaned up my Answers a bit, grammar and speeling and all, but then the t...