Is it WWE? Is it a K-serial? No, it is...

.... read on to know.

Week 1:

Vince McMahon, the co-owner of WWF (with his estranged wife Linda) quite likes this guy Triple H (alias Hunter Hearst Helmesley). Triple H is married to McMahon's daughter Stephanie. Triple H has also, with the back-up of McMahon, built around him a brat-pack of WWE fighters called the "Generation X", with the steady, strong Batista as his right-hand man. And now, as a mentor for the team, they get the old warhorse, Hulk Hogan. Triple H really, really admires Hogan and could not stop gushing at how Generation X under the tutelage of Hogan is going to destroy all opposition at WWE.

Week 2:

But trouble is brewing. At one end, Mihir uncle and Tulsi auntie’s competitor, Naresh Gujral, who has huge contacts with the underworld, is trying to take over the Viranis' family business. And on the other hand, Chandrakant-sir, the U.S. returned friend of Mihir uncle, who was instated as the chief mentor of the business to help out Amit, Tulsi auntie’s favourite son and now CEO of the Virani Group, is trying to gain control of the decision-making of the group. Chandrakant-sir also wants Amit to be replaced by Vikas, who although is not as much a favourite of Tulsi aunty, is a nice, agreeable and capable chap. And with Amit's performance as CEO becoming increasingly sketchy, many think of Vikas to be the right guy for the job.

Week 3:

Vince McMahon plays his cards well and avoids a legal confrontation with Linda McMahon. On the other hand, the battle between Hogan and Triple H has taken fever pitch. Triple H, after winning a Royal-Rumble match, after being presented the championship belt, flattens Hogan (who was on ringside) with a steel-chair hit to the back of his head. Later on, while Triple H was guest-commenting for a match between Mad-eye-Moody and The Undertaker, Hogan clubs Triple H with a baseball bat. Triple H is injured and it is rumoured that he will not return to the ring for two weeks.

Week 4:

While Tulsi aunty, Mihir uncle and Naresh Gujral are lying low for a while, Vikas is appointed as the CEO of the Virani empire after the Board of Directors have taken the decision to remove the ailing Amit from the CEO's post. But Amit stages a miraculous recovery and is back to office two days after he has come out of a coma. The small entrepreneurial venture that he is running parallel with the Virani Group job, bids for a prestigious U.K. project.

Week 5:

Jagmohan Dalmiya is still lying low, and so is Sharad Pawar before the BCCI elections. Sourav Ganguly is supposed to be back at his best, mauling the North Zone attack en-route a win for the East Zone in the Duleep Trophy. In the meantime, team India is rocking, with probably their best cricketing display in the last year-and-half for a comprehensive victory against the Lankans...

...and you ask me why I don't watch WWE or "Kyonki Saas Bhi..."?

Yes, it's been raining here...

... but it's not as bad as you think it is. Yes, there has been quite a bit of water logjam and traffic ... but c'mon, we have all faced the MG Road-heading traffic on Saturday afternoons and evenings, haven't we? This ain't much worse than that. And yes, there have been Business losses and yes, the city infrastructure needs a serious makeover (and has been needing it for a while) .

But otherwise, we are fine. It was just an abnormal splash of rain. Bangalore will be back at her best sooner than you think. Relax.

Blog Quake day

Pakistan quake toll could double without swift help, says Reuters.

See more on Desipundit by clicking on the logo. Also, please find there links for organizations who are involved in the relief efforts, and where you could contribute, monetarily or otherwise.

Deve Gowda?

Was having this conversation with friends this weekend.... There are these two groups of friends I have with whom I sometimes spend weekends drinking etc., and this weekend was when these two groups happened to get together... they got along fabulously well with each other. So I was talking about how all-guy groups tend to get along well better than mixed-gender groups... when someone commented that conversation is easy between guys, you start conversation on sports, or women, or Deve Gowda.... and everyone has a POV. And the conversation flows easy from there on.

Which takes me to the topic of this post. An office colleague, on his blog, posted this rather vehemant viewpoint. My viewpoint (edit: and mine alone, unsullied by externalities) is as follows.

Isn't it obvious for Deve Gowda to take the easy way out for himself and his party, throw some crumbs for the rural masses (ah, the politicians call them subsidies, but let's keep it at crumbs for this discussion) in the name of their development, keep them ignorant and ensure that their vote fall to his lap? Deve Gowda's votes hardly come from the urban populance anyway (not surely from those evil corporate sector folks). For example, Laloo has been doing the same thing for fifteen years in Bihar, and has been very successful at it. The CPI(M) has been doing it for dog’s years in West Bengal, and they have been brilliantly successful, haven't they? (And yeah, I know about the pro-active steps taken by Buddho and may Marx bless him for those)

Again, if the people are kept in the dark, if the people are ignorant, what would happen? Ignorance would lead the people to not thinking, therefore sticking with the status quo, and voting the way they have been voting all this while. On the other hand, if they would think rationally, they will have a viewpoint, they will vote rationally, they would understand that throwing crumbs is not the same as aiding development, and they will vote Deve Gowda out. So keep throwing the crumbs to the people, inhibit flow of information, paint a picture of us, the humble farmers v.s. them, the evil corporations trying to rape and pillage the state. And what have you? Five years in the bag!

Smart guy, you, Deve Gowda. Would you care a bit about whether Infosys is there in Bangalore or not? Or Wipro? Or Biocon? Of course not. Who in the name of god needs a Metro Rail or an International Airport? Ah, those big corporates would love it if such godforsaken things actually happen, but your votes do not come from them, do they? So why care? Let’s have another Bihar and let’s rule for 20 years.

You win, dude.

Quizzing in Calcutta

... is something I have hardly done. So although a proud Bong, and having stayed in WB for 19 years, I am (or rather, was) more a Bangalore quizzer than anything else (albeit a bad one). Thus, opinions that I have about the Calcutta quizzing circuit are often borrowed from Bangalore quizzers who have quizzed in Calcutta, and are a little biased towards the negative. Which is normal, every major quizzing centre has its own idiosyncracies, and being brought up on a certain pattern of quizzing (this includes type of questions, level of work-out-ability, bias towards a certain few genres, and even the general ambiance) makes one a little impatient with other patterns. And of course Calcutta will have its Roshogolla questions, and KQA it Mysore Pak questions (i.e. regional biased questions et al) ... and they hurt you only when you see other teams discussing frantically for the answer, and you not being able to. And that is normal quizzers' jealousy.

While in school, I have participated in the DI once, and the Eddie Hyde once (and of course did not qualify). These were in '96 I think, so I can proudly tell my grandchildren that I have attended quizzes by Neil O' Brien and Francis Groser. Now, I was obviously lacking in quizzing knowledge to appreciate really erudite quizzes those days (again, I do not know whether being erudite is a good thing or not for a quiz) and to differentiate between a good quiz and a really spectacular one was well nigh impossible then. I remember both, though, as being somewhat serious and reverential in approach, a common malady of well established quizzing centres. Of course there were these curious things called school fests, which I attended by the bucketloads during '95-'97, and thus had had first-hand experience of seeing people get bullied by the ubiquitous Parnab and his load of gas (I never got bullied though, Parnab wasn't the quizmaster the only time I participated for my school).

Ah, enough of the rambling... what am I getting at, you will ask. Well, I was reading this article about quizzing in Calcutta, and realised that most of the regular quizzers (or semi-regular ones, me included) know very little about the history of quizzing in India. Kunal, the guy who was compiling this Wiki article had asked for info in a quizzing e-group. Lacking knowledge of my own on this topic, all I could provide were a few googled links. One of them was the above article about the DI quiz.

Previous post on quizzing here.

If there would have been no internet,

... there would have been no IMDB or RottenTomatoes. And the world would have been a worse place to live in for sure.

IMDB recently turned 15. Thanks for happening, folks.

The Backlash: return of the mainstream…

A lot has been said about the imminent demise of the pattern masala hindi film. The distinctly Bollywood genre of formula movie-making, with the successful director-ji and the big-banner producer-ji, has not been having the best of times for the last few years, with big-budget releases failing to rake in the moolah, and the only bona-fide successes being either films with storylines that are markedly different from the dishoom-dishoom and glycerine that is the trademark of the Bollywood genre of film-making or the small, semi-arthouse films with unheard-of star-casts, shoestring budgets and fledgeling directors. This year was thought to be the beginning of the end to the big banner masala films juxtaposed with the rise of the outsider; the year of the rise of the tight-scripted, director-oriented movie, which might or might not be realistic, but which will compulsorily be different from the formula.

Any change in the prediction as yet? Umm… I’d say no. ‘Bunty aur Bubbly’ was distinctly un-formulaic, and so were ‘Parineeta’ and 'Black'. And as of yet, these were the biggest successes of the year.

And then came 'No Entry'. Ah well, and what have you? Three big stars as male leads, three pretty models as their lady loves. A wafer-thin script, slapstick comedy, sufficient glycerine, and a strict adherence to the formula. Pativrata wives. The archetypal vamp with a heart of gold to liven up the proceedings (Bipasha does make a great Helen). Skimpily clad models. Mauritius. A lecherous politician. Even a snake and the associated Nagina music. Ah well, at times it sure looked like good ol’ late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s. And the director (Boney Kapoor.. Ah well, there’s big banner for you) was so unabashedly convinced in his faith to the three-hour, paisa-vasool, complete masala package that at times I was squirming at my seat, watching it. How could highbrow connoisseur-of-the-arts (ahem ahem) I be watching this movie? On second thoughts, I did at times wonder whether Kapoor was parodying the whole genre of formula films itself…

But I watched ‘No Entry’ to the entirety. And it was addictive. I absolutely loved it.

RhythmScape: Bikram Ghosh

I am not much of a follower of fusion. And would accept to having absolutely no understanding of Indian Classical Music... any classical music, in fact. But I still have ears, don't I? This album absolutely blew my mind. Have been listening to it non-stop for the last three days. Go listen if you can. I recommend. Strongly.

Of course I am incapable of writing a review of a fusion piece, thus here's one from The Hindu.

And no, I am not Ghosh's marketing agent ;)

Suketu Mehta

wrote the now-famous 'Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found', which I have not read as yet. I will soon. The reason being this article by him on HT today, which I found really nice. Simple yet heartfelt, Informative yet never preachy. Maximum City, I'm waiting for you.

An extract of Maximum City here

The whys of the Bali bombings for a layman

I have not been following the Bali bombings and the Jemaah Islamiya etc. carefully. So I had a brief talk with one of my best friends. This was in Chennai. On Saturday.

I: Bali is in Indonesia, right?
V: Indonesia.
I: What about Bali? The bombings and all?
V: What about it?
I: I know little, tell me the rationale.
V: Which religion do Indonesia’s people follow?
I: Muslims. Largest Muslim country in the world. That’s the question! Why bomb a Muslim country? So many other places to bomb, more effective places… Oz is next doors...
V: Hmm. Largest Muslim country. But non-Arabic. So no Arab hangover or Jehaadi baggage. Strategic location… the whole of South East Asia… What is Bali? A tourist location. Bomb it, and that revenue stream stops. That would make it a poorer country. Thus…
I: Easy to get recruits and set up base. Thanks, V.

Some guys have the knack of making things easier for others to understand.

Also, newsclips:
Oct '02
Oct '05
Editorial:HT

Merriam-Webster, bikini wax and Metadata

Almost-Techie I got the most kick out of this article in the knowledge that Metadata was not a part of the Merriam-Webster previously.

Literary exhibitionism 2: The 55 word story.

This exercise was like playing Sudoku with one’s literary skills. Literary pretensions I have little of, but I do like numbers.
So, three chapters. 55 words. 30,000 feet above ground on a rickety DeccanAir plane. Here.

*******************************************************

Dadu.

I

The old man shook his head vigorously. “No, Dadubhai. Your story is all wrong. A story MUST have a twist in the tail.”

II

He died on a Tuesday the next month, almost unnoticed.

III

It’s been twelve years. I still wouldn’t write the way you wanted me to.

But today, Dadu, I tried. I failed. Sorry.

************************************************************