The life, thoughts and teachings of Beau Peep

Opinion needed: How to deal with acid attackers | मत चाहिए: तेज़ाब आक्रमणकारियों के साथ क्या करना चाहिए

2008-12-14T03:34:00.000-08:00

Throwing acid by spurned suitors and lovers on women have become quite common in the developing world. In India specially, it has become alarmingly high. Bangladesh has included provisions for the death penalty in such cases, which has brought down incidences of such attacks.

In Andhra Pradesh yesterday, police shot dead three youths in their custody, arrested for throwing acid on two young women who spurned their advances in an apparently fake armed encounter between them.

Last month, an Iranian court sentenced a man's eyes to be dripped with acid for attacking a young woman with the same leaving her disfigured and blinded for life.

Do you approve of such retribution in the name of justice for these heinous crimes carried out by soulless criminals? Also, take into consideration the number of times these jilted lovers are taken for a ride by the girls who ended up being victims of such a horrific act.

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ठुकराए गए प्रेमिकों द्वारा तेज़ाब फेंकने की घटनाये विकसित देशो मे काफी आम हो गया है, खास कर, भारत मे यह चिंताजनक मात्रा मे पहुँच गया हैं| बांग्लादेश ने हाल ही मे ऐसी घटनाओ को अंजाम देने वालों के लिए कानून मे मौत की सज़ा का प्रबंध किया है|

कल आंध्र प्रदेश पुलिस के तीन तेज़ाब फेंकने के आरोप मे गिरफ्तार युवकों को एक कथित मुतभेड मे मार गिराया जो की फ़र्ज़ि हो सकता है इन लड़कों के दो युवतियों के ऊपर तेज़ाब फेंका था जिनमे एक युवती की हालत नाज़ुक बनी हुई है|

पिछले महीने, इरान की एक अदालत ने एक आदमी केआँखों मे तेज़ाब डालने का हुक्म सुनाया जो एक युवती के ऊपर तेज़ाब दाल कर उसे अँधा बनाया और चेहरे को बिलकुल नष्ठ कर दिया|

क्या आप इस तरह का न्याय के नाम पर बदला को सहमति देते है इस तरह की संगीन ज़ुर्म करने वाले इन जैसे आत्माहीन आदमियों के लिए? कृपया एक बात को दिमाग मे रखे की घटनाओं की क्या जो की औरतें ऐसी हाद्साओं की शिकार होने के लिए खुद वैसे सनकी प्रेमियों को उकसाया|

Andrew checks in: Ek imaandar maidan ke andar

2008-01-08T09:01:00.000-08:00

This is my first post since last March, and coincidentally my last post was on the continuing Aussie conspiracy to destroy other teams and remain the champion ream so that they can remain at least financially independent and viable.

Anyway, the saga continues with India’s tour Down Under. The latest theory about the raging racial abuse controversy involving Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds where the former allegedly called the later ‘monkey’ is something like this:

Harbhajan is innocent. He just looked at Andrew and said, ‘teri maa ki…’. Andrew wrongly heard it as ‘monkey’.

I can understand that. However, what I cannot understand is how a person supposedly being proud of being called a roo (as in kangaroo) can be so offended by the word ‘monkey’. At least monkeys, as I knew till now were more closely related to a human being than a kangaroo. Besides, there is nothing remotely racial about the word. Instead, one of the most worshipped Hindu deities is Lord Hanuman who is a monkey. Monkeys are fed and revered in India. Maybe a kangaroo brain missed the details there.

Maybe he won’t be able to miss the 6 differences in details between the two images below.

Well, can you help him out? Can you spot the 6 differences? I give up, I could find only 4 till now. Maybe you can help me as well.

Andrew, you are a great entertainer, a cricket player and a champion. But sorry to say mate, you missed one revolution, that's evolution!

Au revoir folks. This year, the Guru will be regular here. All apologies for my broken promises last year. It had been the worst for me in my entire life. I am glad to get rid of it.

Mission accomplished! Well done Greg

2007-03-23T14:04:00.000-07:00

Well, I don't want to sound too snobby in this post, but I can't stop grinning from ear to ear now. I almost feel as if I am God today. The mood is really light, spring time it is and the dawn is just about to break. I shall make some tea now, go to my terrace and enjoy the light breeze that is blowing and let the thought sink in that I just won Rs 10,000.00 from one of the blinded cricket fans who also happens to be my colleague.

You might be wondering that India’s disgraceful exit (well almost save a miracle like a flying pig happens) from the ICC World Cup 2007 in the first round itself after being beaten by (piranha) minnows Bangladesh and then by 69 runs to (bull) sharks Sri Lanka is the thing that ought to ‘sink in’ and not some wild bet at the expense of a billion heartbreaks.

For me, this is not the news, my ten thousand rupees matter much more than that. It is not because I don’t like cricket; it is because I stopped following it for recreation and entertainment the moment I realized that Greg Chappell’s entry as coach, Ganguly’s exit as captain and Indian selector’s striptease act led by the punk 3rd class called Kiran More actually were following a pattern, a pattern that meant doom. So, from then onwards, it was more like a criminal research and analysis for me that I found very interesting indeed.

The Aussie’s plotted it (it started from the days when India toured Australia and Guru Greg Bahadur Chappell ‘coached’ Saurav Ganguly and befriended him), BCCI and the Indian selectors suddenly developed a fetish of this variety.

The writing was on the wall. I strongly voiced my concerns with arguments. However, nothing of that sort happened and then I had given up all hopes. The mad Billion were all gaga about Rahul Dravid’s poster boy qualities.

Now, it is time for a new Bond. The current players (Sachin - 0, Dhoni - 0, Ganguly - 7) that make Indian's Bond and its sidekicks have become very boring.

Ah! Forget it! What the hell I am writing at this hour? I would like a few suggestions from you on how to spend my 10K that I expect my good friend to hand me over without much fuss.

Bihar Yatra – II will come soon, please bear with me. You see, small distractions here and there often make you lose focus and the ICC World Cup 2007 is one such distraction.

And the Guru thanks Greg Chappell, Kiran More and the spineless Rahul Dravid for the 10K I just won.

Guru Greg Bahadur Chappell: Mission accomplished, almost!

2007-03-17T14:26:00.000-07:00

Not so long ago, I wrote a post how Greg Chappell is a part of the Aussie conspiracy to dominate world cricket and in yet another post advocated his sacking to save India. I always believed that he made his went into the Indian side via Saurav Ganguly, but was quick to bore into the side destorying it like a termite destroys timber.

Any more disagreements with me after this humiliation inflicted on Team India by Bangladesh today? Guru Greg now is very close to accomplishing his mission; a saboteur’s dream close to getting fulfilled now.

Jai ho! Greg, you are a real guru.

I shall be back with my Bihar Yatra – II soon. Please bear with me, the ICC World Cup 2007 just getting too interesting for me at least.

Bihar Yatra - I

2007-03-11T14:03:00.000-07:00

Ok folks, the Guru is back. I don’t know where to start from, but allow me to take you from where I ended. That is the last month of the last year. Before I begin, I would like to apologize to my faithful, patient and above all, my beloved readers like Nugget Maven.

I finally made up my mind to visit my parents who I last saw when my granny died about two years back. Though I have always had my mom as my best mate, I was kinda estranged with my father since my childhood. Not that I didn’t respect him, for he is a great learned man, but I always hated his attitude since the time I can remember because of his ideology and thoughts that I never agreed with. Besides, I guess both being big egoists, we were like two swords that could never fit in a single scabbard. Still, I found it that it was my ‘duty’ to see my parents who are now middle-aged and none of our relatives were within 1500km of where they were – Patna, the capital city of Bihar and where I finished my schooling from, and perhaps had some of my most eventful days of my teen life.

Ok, now let’s speak about my Bihar yatra in this post that I promised, for that’s I want to write and that’s I promised you to narrate to; but first a backgrounder.

During my days (that is when my father was transferred to Patna from Assam in 1993), Lalu Prasad was the chief minister of Bihar and his reign is mostly remembered as the famous ‘Jungle Raj’ or the rule of the forest. I used to live in a locality called Shastri Nagar, which was (in)famous for one of Lalu’s relatives called Subhas Yadav. A henchmen of the ruling party of which, Lalu was the chieftain and the chief minister of the state, his terror was palpable in the relatively posh residential area where we resided. That is from there after I went down south to study that my father, who was by then posted elsewhere, shifted residence to a place called Jagdeo Path, some 2.5km from Shastri Nagar.

Ages passed, and Lalu still continued to rule Bihar through proxy by installing his wife as the puppet CM when chargesheeted for many crimes; law and order collapsed totally and criminals ruled the roost. The situation became so bad that even the capital city Patna was witnessing broad daylight murders and kidnappings for ransom. Doctors and businessmen fled the state and to say that anarchy was the rule of the day would be an understatement.

It was in Bihar I founded my first company after my post graduation in business administration during which I also had a three-year long serious flirtation with software programming and hacking expeditions. (The business eventually went down the drain owing to ever-diminishing lack of business from private enterprise after which I founded my current firm in 2003 that failed to make any cut as well incurring severe setbacks and losses until I relocated in New Delhi.)

Anyway, in by 2003 the situation in Bihar worsened so much that within a span of just 2 months, I was finding myself helping two people who were shot by criminals at night, and on both the occasions when me and a few accomplices were returning from a nearby restaurant (it was actually a shack) called Vatika Restaurant in Khajpura near Jagdeo Path. First, it was the obese proprietor of a famous jewelry emporium called Deep Jewelers who was shot at by criminals (maybe for kidnapping or looting while he was returning to his house just about 50 meters from his shop after closing his shop). We were having bottoms-up then after having a fantastic dinner when we heard the shots and the panicked restaurateur was pulled the shutters down when we were still inside urging us to pay the bills and leave soon. We came out and had to wrestle quite a bit to get the fat man in a forcibly stopped auto rickshaw to get him to the hospital. The man survived the bullets, but died within two months following a heart attack.

The next incident was a horrific sight that I shall not forget in my entire life. We (the same guys) dines in Vatika, returned home and were walking in front of the apartment building where I used to live in Jagdeo Path, the rest including my brother went home. We were three of us and I was the only one who had drunk a bit when we saw a man running towards us waving frenetically. I didn’t notice till he came closer that he was holding his face with one hand and waving with the other making some hoarse sound. When I turned back to see the other two guys who were with me, there were nowhere to be seen. It all happened so quickly that I didn’t understand at all what happened. The man came closer, right before my apartment building gate where I was standing. His face was clearly visible by then, I saw he was profusely bleeding and his lower jaw seemed to have been shattered. He was trying to forcibly enter my building when the guard stopped him. I had to shout at the guard ordering him to open the gates, which he did, following which the man entered and sat down on the cemented ground. I asked the guard to bring some water that the man appreciated but could hardly drink. The stench from his blood soaked body reminded me of the abattoirs where we usually went to bring fresh meat during my childhood (and please believe me, it felt just the same).

Even then, I was supposing that the man might have met with an accident and injured himself severely. There was a nephrology hospital called Palm View right in the same lane where my building was. I took him there and asked the man to write down his name and address so that we can inform his relatives, which he did. The doctors there refused to treat him. There were a few attendants of a few patients there who came forward and offered help to me. I hailed an auto-rickshaw and took him to the address he wrote down. The man was remarkably calm, but was already fainting. It was about 15km from the place in the outskirts of the city. It was already 1:00 am in the morning. By then one of the two guys who were with me who vanished in thin air appeared following a few mobile calls. Seeing me doing everything single-handedly also gather some courage and was with me all through out along with a couple of relatives of the patients who were in the hospital and came forward to offer a helping hand. While taking him off, the man showed his bike which was lying down the roadside and I still thought that he met with an accident. We managed to find his address where a marriage ceremony happened a few hours back and seeing him the relatives panicked. They called a car and took him to Patna Medical College Hospital (PMCH). I left my business card to them asking them to update me about his health the next day and we returned home by around 3:00 am. They never did that!

Actually the man had been shot and the reason the two guys fled was that they saw the man was being shot at the head (the bullet actually hit his lower jaw and ripped it). Seeing him getting up and running towards us, the assailants fired once more but seeing some activity in the dimly lit street (as we were there) they turned their bikes back and fled. It was summer, and many of the tenants of the building too witnessed the event from the terrace. I don’t really know what the story was and why he was shot, but I read it in the papers the next day that said that a man was shot and the locals helped him to take him to the hospital. I dunno whether he survived or not.

I left Patna in the winter. I had seen and endured enough and I had absolutely no further hopes about Bihar.

Since then many things changed, I gradually settled in New Delhi, my girlfriend of 5 years dumped me for no reason (apart from I was struggling then) in Dec 2005, worked like a donkey whole of last year and I can safely say that I am much better now professionally and mentally. Lalu’s regime had fallen despite his prophecy that as long as there would be aloo (potato) in samosa, there would be Lalu’s rule in Bihar.

Under this backdrop I went to Bihar to meet my parents for a week and also see my old friends. Patna seemed to have change, there were functioning traffic lights, bus stops repainted, good wide roads and a lot of construction activities were going on. One of my friends were going to buy a car and bankers were willing to finance it (a virtually non-existent thing during my days there) etc., etc.

One of my very old mates, who studied hotel management in the same institute where I did my bachelors degree in business management in the mid-nineties and now a real estate developer (he got a good inheritance) suggested we drive across the Ganges to Vaishali district and have a few drinks and country chicken for we were fed up with broiler chicken and country chicken had become almost a rare and exotic delicacy!

I agreed and went and that would be the second part of the series concluding tomorrow. It will have the story about drive, the quest for the elusive country chicken in rural countryside, my terror of even bringing out my N93 to recieve calls, the Bacardi Blast, an incident and an yet another incident during my train journey back home. ;-)

Au revoir.

Coming folks, coming soon with a 'potri' of stories for you all

2007-02-28T09:51:00.000-08:00

I know, I had been really lethargic in posting. However, you give me just 12 hours mates, and I shall do justice to my blog's cause.

So many things to write. Adventures, travels, emotions, and of course the usual Guruspeak. Just give me 12 hours folks. The Guru would be back on March 01, 2007 with some sensational stuff.

I need some time to rest and some time to think for enabling me to come up with a 'few good posts' tomorrow.

Au revoir.

I am back (and alive) from Bihar 'outback'

2007-01-31T09:42:00.000-08:00

Hey folks, the Guru had been away from Delhi for a month to Bihar. Though I am from Patna, I always had been in cities mostly, especially in Patna. Having said that, I had been in rural Bihar, and also in most notorious parts of the state.

I shall be writing something about my trip there in two days maximum. However, before that I shall write something that I had in my heart for many days.

So my dear friends, d0 return soon. I promise, this year I shall try to write more often and more spicily and try to write on some very touchy and picky issues.

Folks, I missed you all; seriously. But I am back now and I won't leave you disappointed.

I shall be back soon; that's a promise.

Au revoir.

Web 2.0 and new age spamming and ethics

2006-12-14T12:37:00.000-08:00

This is going to be a short post; at least I intend to keep it as short as possible. I just have a few things to say about this recent Web 2.0 phenomenon with all kinds of social networks, communities, blog networks, niche blogs, AJAX scripts in news and info aggregators, publishing platforms etc, etc.

In the last two years we saw dozens of blog networks like Weblogs Inc., Gawker Media, B5 Media, Creative Weblogging springing up. We even have one from India called Instablogs. These networks have a large number of blogs catering to ‘niche’ audience. However, none of the blog networks including Weblogs Inc. that runs the famous Engadget blog is above spamming. All the above mentioned networks have spam content in their blogs. Simply stupid and plain spam.

Typically, they have an army of rewriters of news stories and while some do it with finesse, some are downright unprofessional. Also, some do it with impunity and some on the sly. More often than not, most of these networks pay people who can rewrite stories, and not necessarily anyone who has any knowledge of the domain he/she is writing upon. In time, they start gaining some knowledge on the subject and at best they become pundits with half-baked knowledge.

Then comes the point of being ethical in the business. No matter however critical these networks are of mainstream media (MSM), especially print media (read newspapers) they still want the old media to give them publicity whenever they are doing something ‘different’. In one hand they would loathe MSM to be in the league of blogging brothers, but on the other hand, they would even lick the anuses of the old media for publicity. This is duplicity; hypocrisy at its best.

Whatever the case is, a few blogs have indeed become a part of my life and for the last 2 years or so hardly any day passed when I didn’t read blogs such as Techcrunch, GigaOm, Mashable, Engadget, Robert Scoble, Read/Write Web to name a few.

I am afraid to say that given the very personal blogs such as Read/Write Web, Scobleizer, and to a great extent Mashable, every other blog mentioned either stooped to rewriting or yellow journalism like the recent GigaOm post by Shailaja Neelakantan that incidentally didn’t escape the notice of perhaps the best writer of Indian origin and most ‘commented’ blogger in the blogosphere today – Arnab Ray a.k.a. Great Bong.

The venerable Michael Arrington also didn’t prove to be above unethical practices with his recent sacking of Sam Sethi from the helm of affairs at Techcrunch UK over what I would term as a clash of egos. This is despite his pathetic attempt to justify his act following the expected outcry.

Pramit Singh in MediaVidea has written a must read article titled - ‘Ethics 101 for blog network owners - part 1’. I shall be looking forward to the rest of the ‘series’ if he continues this from where he ended.

The point is that when the only objective is to earn money through online ads, why take the pain of employing high profile editors, writers etc, etc for your blog-based magazine or blog or blog network? It can be done in a much simpler way. What are you folks trying to prove?

It is such a shame isn’t it? At least the Clue Chick is original and for news, we have online editions of the BBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Hindu, The Times of India etc, etc, etc…

Alas! This post hasn’t remained a short post as I intended to keep it. Sorry folks.

Leander Paes: India’s greatest sportsman?

2006-12-13T15:55:00.000-08:00

After watching the day’s proceedings at the Asian Games at Doha yesterday evening, the question that came to my mind was – If one had to choose, who would he choose to be the greatest sportsman India ever produced?

I asked myself the question many a time over several years and entered into mild arguments with people. I have and still rate chess super grandmaster Viswanathan Anand above the most common answer I get from people, i.e., Sachin Tendulkar.

India’s greatest sportsperson can be one of the following due to various reasons:

a) Sachin Tendulkar (Cricket)
b) Viswanathan Anand (Chess)
c) Leander Paes (Tennis)

No, sportspersons like Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Milkha Singh, Jaspal Rana, PT Usha, the legendary Dhyan Chand, Bula Chowdhury, Kunjarani Devi, Vijay Amritraj, Ramanathan Krishnan, his son Ramesh, Prakash Padukone, Geet Sethi, Kapil Dev or Sunil Gavaskar can't be in the list at all.

Why? Because, either they have won limited and relatively lower prizes or dominated a sport that cannot be termed as global or was global at the time they used to play the game or their records surpassed by now by long margins (despite the fact the US played hockey then and Dhyan Chand bludgeon it with his hockey stick and Kapil was a great all rounder, world record holder once and the captain of the World Cup winning team in 1983).

Now, coming to my shortlist of the three people – Sachin, Anand and Paes – I have the following to say on the three of them individually.

Sachin Tendulkar: He might have scored centuries and by the bagfuls, but I have never seen him winning matches on his own. Even if he did, he did so in times not more than the digits on your left hand (hexadactyly and amputations included). His record is not unmatched by modern day cricketers; in fact, bettered or on the verge of being bettered now. Apart from his 40 ODI centuries, all his other records will tumble while he still will be playing. One might argue that he carried the burden of the team single-handedly when the rest of the team collapsed routinely in the last decade plus the expectations of a billion Indians.

Viswanathan Anand: A true champ in a truly global sport. He alone walked his way right at the top and not many can boast of what he has achieved in a fiercely competitive sport like Chess. A true genius, a rare talent and still is dominating the international chess arena. He is truly India’s top sportsman.

Leander Paes: Achieved nothing as a singles player, never had any kind of rankings to be proud of. However, his record as a double’s player is nothing less than extraordinary. Nonetheless, they don’t qualify him to be amongst the top sportsmen India ever produced. There are greater achievers by other Indian sportsmen in their respective field like Prakash Padukone, Pullela Gopichand, Geet Sethi, PT Usha etc. His above moderate achievements in professional circles notwithstanding, he gave India everything. He gave his heart out. When it came to do something for the motherland, he fought out of his skin and gave it all.

Just take a moment and remember his Davis Cup exploits where he beat greats like Pete Sampras, India’s lone medal at Atlanta Olympics over a decade back and his golds yesterday at the Doha Asiad. No one can claim to even match up to him when it comes to bringing glory to his country.

He is by far the best sportsperson India has ever produced. Leander Paes is the crown jewel of India, and of course without any doubt a billion and half times more worthy of the Bharat Ratna than the obscure and nationally irrelevant MGR who received it posthumously for reasons not beyond cheap political gains.

If you have a different idea, maybe another name that can fit the bill of India's greatest ever sportsperson please let me know.

There is but one God – Mithun

2006-12-12T08:08:00.000-08:00

Starting this month, I found myself running into some rough time with health and household chores. It was my birthday last Sunday and I spent it under the quilt due to high fever with shivers. Today is also the first day after weeks when I am yet to down a single peg of my all-season favourite Old Monk (and it is 9:10 pm now).

It seems the fever has decided to migrate from my body to someone else’s (pity those blessed souls who came to wish me when I was down). I decided to watch Dance Dance in SET Max that I watched in 1988-89 in Hasimara, Jalpaiguri as a school kid. I still remember what a craze the movie had become there. Mithun Chakraborty is no less than the Almighty himself. The Jalpaiguri angle in the movie made it some kind of a rage, a phenomenon that was more than the normal ‘rages’ of a Mithun movie in Bengal.

Coming back to the movie I watched today, I had to go out just as the last dance started for a minute. On return, I found myself having missed the opening lines of the song, but immediately took out my N93 and recorded the whole dance from the TV. Mithun was really awesome, awesome. Just before I started to compose this post, I decided to look around for the clips of the movie in YouTube and I got them aplenty. However, I was particularly searching for the Zubi Zubi number, which was there but didn’t star anyone from Bollywood, but someone who could have well made it there.

Just watch the clip above and let me know about your thoughts on this. I am sure the number one Mithun fan Great Bong would surely love it. :-)

Last and final chance, BCCI must take the gamble NOW!

2006-11-27T23:22:00.000-08:00

It would be too far fetched if we expect the BCCI to think of what is really good for Indian cricket. No, BCCI is not Cricket Australia who can think out of the box and go to any level to make sure that its team ends up on the winning side each and every time.

To say BCCI is only interested to fill its coffers would be an understatement. Actually, a much-divided body across regional and political lines, the main concern of the BCCI honchos is how to win the next board elections.

I was reading Arnab (Great Bong) Ray’s article Just Sourav and could not help but agree with him completely. In fact, my support for Saurav now is based on the same reasons Arnab cited for his. During my student days when Saurav was blazing centuries after centuries in ODIs averaging over 45, I supported Sachin Tendulkar despite the fact that it meant high-decibel fights with my father who is a blind Saurav supporter. I still am a great, great fan of Tendulkar despite the fact he is a Marathi and would still support him over Saurav whose main destroyers had been Marathis.

I will not mince words here today. I have now started believing that the Marathis are the worst culprits in dividing the cricketing nation on regional lines followed by non-Bengali Sachin supporters. They simply could not digest the fact that their beloved son – the great Tendulkar proved to be a miserable failure when it came to leading the team. Five consecutive Test drubbings – three in Oz and two on home turf (that incidentally was India’s first series loss on home ground since Pak beat them in 1986-87) meant that he was a meek guy whom the team did not have any fear of, his batting capabilities notwithstanding.

Under the shadow of the match fixing scam, the relatively inexperienced Saurav Ganguly made a great turnaround in Team India’s fortunes. We all know his contribution to the resurgence of the Indian team. The Ganguly-baiters just could not digest his success. By then Sachin’s future as captain had evaporated and the baiter needed another guy to fight Ganguly with. Rahul Dravid, whom Ganguly gave a second life by making him the wicket keeper of the ODI side, was the perfect boy for them to do the trick. Rahul Dravid, despite his role as batsman-keeper for over a hundred matches was still cribbing about being the wicket keeper. Ganguly would have none of it; and didn’t Rahul flourish during that time?

Unfortunately, for Ganguly, two Marathis took office in the BCCI who could spell his doom. The chairman of the selection committee Kiran More was the first to make the move. Though one might argue that Ganguly lost his place during the Dalmiya reign, it was not supposed to be a permanent removal. Then the Dalmiya faction lost the elections and another Marathi – the spineless Sharad Pawar became the president. Ganguly’s fate was sealed. He simply won’t give up his Aussie-worshipping rituals even though the Aussie in question is a saboteur.

Then the blogosphere was suddenly abuzz with pro and anti Ganguly articles, analysis and rants. That was the time when I lost all respects for another Marathi because of first his pedestrian analysis, and then when his regionalist mask fell off, which left me with no other alternative but to react in my own way.

Ten matches to go before India plays in the ICC World Cup 2007 and what are we seeing now? Team India, led by a pliant and meek puppet captain and run by a saboteur, is viciously trapped in the quagmire of defeatism.

The only mantra to get it out of this load of total mental wreck is to bring back Saurav Ganguly in, kick the saboteur out and instead appoint a manager. We don’t need a coach now, it is already too late in the day for that. Ganguly in the recent Ranji match has shown what a helluva good captain he is. Give him the control again and trust me, he will spank the despondent team back to what they were under him – a bunch of fighters.

Precious little time remains, the BCCI must take the gamble. Not to stoke some Bengali or commie ego, but for the good of Team India.

Great Bong is a genius…

2006-11-27T02:29:00.000-08:00

Great Bong a.k.a. Arnab is a genius if you did not know it already. He has an original masterpiece (which is being copied all over) on the state of Indian cricket now. You cannot simply afford to miss it. Click here and find out why I admire this man so much.

SOS ignored, idiots heeded, Team India’s kismet sealed

2006-11-25T00:34:00.000-08:00

A few days back I wrote a post calling for an SOS to save Team India. Some morons like this bloke couldn’t see that like them, I too am a die-hard fan of Indian cricket and have my heart in the right place when it comes to loving and supporting my team. I had suggested a few things that many rebuked in the blogosphere.

The point here is that most of those who criticized me were actually Dravid worshippers (no harm in that though) and place his interests above the team itself. They would accept anything to see that Dravid remained as the captain even if it meant that a saboteur is at the helm of affairs in the team’s on field and strategy decision-making.

They have miserably failed to see two things:

a) India is going from bad to worse under the Chappell-Dravid duo. Dravid, the good soul he is, may still believe that the team’s performance can improve and India can put up a good show in the coming World Cup. However, Chappell, being the saboteur knows very well that he is doing his covertly assigned job wonderfully well. He had to save the aging Aussie side from the only threat they possibly face – India. Reason? Ganguly led a young team to the finals beating everyone except Australia into the finals of the previous edition of the WC, gave the Aussies a good spanking in the Test series Down Under two years back.

b) Burdened with captaincy, Dravid’s own stats are taking a beating. The fantastic numbers are becoming mediocre in comparison with others like Ricky Ponting or Mohammad Yousuf. Now Ricky Ponting is the best batsman in the world and has gone way too far ahead from Dravid for him to catch up him in his career. Md. Yousuf has left him behind as well.There are just eleven matches to go before the ICC World Cup 2007 starts. Team India can NEVER make a turnaround from this. It is not only playing the worst cricket in several years just in the nick of time, but also the players are totally psyched out. They have developed a loser’s mentality and there cannot be any expectations from this bunch. In any case, it is just too late now. TOO LATE in the day either to sack the coach, change captains or select and groom a new bunch.

Team India will fare miserably in the ICC World Cup 2007. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that after the hiding they would get in the Caribbeans it would take another four years to exorcise the ghost of the experience.

This post will be testimonial to the statement I made today regarding the ICC World Cup 2007 in the West Indies. It would be interesting to see how the Chappell-Dravid foot-worshippers like this fella has to say then.

India vs. South Africa: Old whine in new series

2006-11-22T22:15:00.000-08:00

Given the state of affairs in Indian cricket, the result of the first ODI between India and South Africa at Durban yesterday came as a (pleasant) SHOCKER! I couldn't help but wonder how the Indians managed to get so many runs!! I was betting upon an under-fifty score. The hell with Harsha Bhogle and Sunil Gavaskar who termed the defeat as ‘annihilation’ and ‘capitulation’ respectively. They are obviously missing the woods for the trees.

Greg Chappell and his poodle Rahul Dravid are doing a great job. Fantastic! You can now safely bet that they would cross the magical figure of 100 runs in the coming matches. If they played out of their skins then 150 runs can be a possibility.

Come on India, do it for your adoring billion and some.

Coming for peace

2006-11-20T22:40:00.000-08:00

The Desi Devil pointed me towards the Global Orgasm Day event. I am all for it for the sake of world peace. We have always heard/seen the line – Make Love Not War – all our lives. This is the time to do something. The event takes place on Friday, December 22, 2006.

Let me know if you are interested with your name, location and sex for synchronized orgasm. There will be special mention about you all in this blog.

Details of the event.

Britney Spears-Kevin Federline raunchy honeymoon sex video free download

2006-11-16T21:40:00.000-08:00

The bombshell of the year is out. Click here to download the Britney Spears and Kevin Federline assortment of four different footages of their honeymoon sex videos combined in one 83-minute video absolutely free in high quality MPEG format. Don’t spend your money on DVDs available now. I am also sharing the video through eMule and BitTorrent. So if you use any of these p2p clients, connect to KevBrit. Show your support to Britney by downloading the video free so that Kevin doesn’t benefit from its immoral sale.

Well, this is apparently a hoax. I am just trying to see how much this post plays on various search engines, and the traffic it pulls on this blog. I will publish the results on Monday.

All apologies for the dampener. I hope you shall be kind enough to understand the eccentricities of the Guru. As compensation, I am linking the Google search for the keywords – Britney Spears Kevin Federline Honeymoon Sex Video Download.

Hope your search would end there. However, if you reach back here again please see a psychiatrist.

Jai Kali, Bayer wali!

2006-11-16T02:03:00.000-08:00

I spotted this ad here. Needless to say, we are soon going to hear from the sentinels of Hinduism like this guy. After Ganesha trying his hand selling beer in the West, Maa Kali seems to be trying her hand in product endorsement too – selling mosquito repellant.

Well, with increasing number people having little or no time for religion, and religious offerings spiraling downwards, I reckon the gods are finding it very difficult to sustain themselves.

I wonder if Bayer would like to make a good donation to the Kalighat temple in Kolkata. After all, Bayer has chosen the resident goddess of the famed temple to endorse their product. The Kalighat temple trust should demand a bagful of Euros for this. That should take care of the potential controversies that might arise in the near future over this.

Talking about artistic creativity in the ad world, how about a coming up with a sex toy product labeled as Virgin Mary chastity belts, or launching an airlines service called Jesus Airlines whose ad campaign would show Jesus’ crucified stretched hands transforming into wings enabling him to fly away free?

What do you say?

The week that was: New mobile, cricket, glamour, festival, dead body and bandh

2006-11-07T03:27:00.000-08:00

The Guru witnessed a few things last week. I started the week coming to work with a spanking new mobile - an N93 (the pearl black one). Since then, it has become highly embarrassing to attend calls in public places because I don't want others to see me amongst those who flaunt their high-end mobile handsets or look for every excuse to take them out while traveling in the Delhi Metro or in happening places such as malls, shopping arcades, theatres etc. I bought it purely due to its utility factor especially the Internet applications.

Australia won the Champion's Trophy as expected. The saboteur Greg Chappell did excellently well to keep the Indian team out of the semi-finals. How prophetic my post was on this. West Indies meanwhile can kick themselves for fizzing out in the manner they did in the finals. We heard the same old whine from Brian Lara.

Meanwhile the saboteur was spotted in a glamour event in Mumbai. God knows how we can tolerate such things. Oh! Sorry, I forgot that we were a population without spines. Ponting and his team of champions shoved Sharad Pawar, the minister and BBCI chief away from the dais while posing for the photographers. Well, Sharad didn't take offence, neither did I. He had no business to be there. Of course, the media attempted everything possible to sensationalize it. On second thoughts, the character Pawar is, we can well expect him to behave the way he did in front of the 'members of superior race'. You see, we are inherently pliant and have slave-mentality. Thank you Ricky Ponting for reminding us that. Also, some 'dashing cricketers' walked the ramp to endorse a product. Maybe they got the clue from their divine coach on where cricketers in India exactly ought to be in.

Guru Parv was superb. I live in a Khalsa colony and it was a great experience to be amongst them during the festival. I was spoilt like anything by my Sikh landlord and his family.

Then I saw the town derelict, whom I got so used to seeing every morning near Welcome station eating bhujiya, lying dead on the pavement. His face was covered and flies were swarming all over the body. I just couldn't take my eyes off him and help wondering the value of life. Despite having an N93, it didn't occur to me that I could take a short video and post it on the web. I was too shaken and deep inside, I was ashamed beyond words. Today I saw the same spot again and though the body wasn't there, the source who placed the bhujiya for him every morning did place it there as before. This time I managed to click a picture and will publish it here soon.

Then the bandh called by the traders. Ah... the least said, the better.

Au revoir.

Hey Ram! Indian media proves itself to be not only shameless but oxymoron too

2006-11-04T00:42:00.000-08:00

The hot news that the great lawyer Ram Jethmalani is going to defend Jessica Lall murder accused Manu Sharma is creating a few ripples in several rungs of the society fuelled by some shameless mainstream media sensationalism. The media is acting as if being struck by a bolt from the heavens on the news. Of course, they have reasons to shed a few tears because it was the media that kept the Jessica Lall issue alive and made the public take cognizance to the outrageous acquittal of all the accused following key witnesses turning hostile.

Now, the media that was slapping their backs when Santosh Singh was eventually convicted and sentenced to death finds itself in some discomfort as a lawyer non other than Jethmalani is standing against another of the 'causes' they picked up for 'public awakening'. Chances are, that with such an accomplished lawyer like Jethmalani defending Manu Sharma against whom the case is not as strong as that was against Santosh Singh, Manu Sharma would be acquitted again.

TV channels and news websites are taking polls via SMS and online polls. While online polls are non-commercial, conducting SMS polls on a sensationalized subject like this often brings in windfalls for the TV channels and phone networks. So, even if the media might lose their 'cause' in the face of Jethmalani jumping in the fray to defend the murder accused, they stand to earn millions that would compensate them manifolds.

The way the Indian media is behaving is making it look like oxymoron. A few days back they were saying that since Md. Afzal did not get access to good and quality lawyers he got the noose while the other co-accused of the Parliament attack case walked free. Now, irony of all ironies, the same media is crying at the top of its voice on why a lawyer like Ram Jethmalani would jump in to defend the alleged murderer of the model.

My opinion here is that the best resources should be available for Manu Sharma. After all, he is defending his life in such a high-profile murder case. If the court finds him guilty beyond all reasonable doubts notwithstanding Ram Jethmalani, other high quality resources and money, then that would give the best satisfaction to the people, and the media of course who picked up the Jessica Lall murder case so vehemently. Also, there are no rights and wrongs here. It is the right of the accused to defend himself in the best possible way and shameless campaigning against this very fundamental human right is despicable to say the least.

Shame on all the TV channels soliciting polls through text messages and behaving the way it is now. Also, the public who are against Shree Jethmalani's decision to defend Manu Sharma may take a hike. They are not going to get a kangaroo court set up for the retrial of the case.

We all want Jessica Lall murderer to be punished. However, three cheers to Ram Jethmalani.

Disgusting: We didn't know until now!

2006-11-03T02:22:00.000-08:00

There is quite a buzz going around in the Indian blogosphere about reporting of the gruesome rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl Priyanka Bhotmange, her mother Surekha and two brothers by an upper cast mob in Khairlanji, near Nagpur in Gaurav Sabnis' own state Maharashtra.

Shivam Vij had published a few photographs of the dead bodies of the victims that showed their mortal state in horrific detail. This has led Gaurav Sabnis to come up with some moral policing that he often does.

He has to say the following about Shivam Vij;

So it is unfortunate to see that one blogger - Shivam Vij, who could not have fallen from my estimation further than he actually has, has followed the same Aajtakian mindset. Under the garb of reporting the suffering of Dalits and proving his "enlightened credentials", he has plastered pictures of naked and half-naked blood-splattered dead-bodies on his blog. I wonder if he considers this Faustian decision of his to rob the dead of their last shred of destiny, a price worth paying for increased attention, more hits, and maybe a few more writing assignments.

'Aajtakian mindset' is very welcome. Aaj Tak has brought in some fresh air in the monochromic world of news channels, and if it had to take the help of some melodrama, it is ok. This is despite the fact that I still believe that Aaj Tak thrives on yellow journalism. Gaurav Sabnises of the world might play the suave urbane character and talk about Goethe's Faust or Lenovo laptops, but they can never resist the temptation of checking out on 'Aajtakian mindsets' whether it is the Aaj Tak channel itself or Shivam Vij's blog. However, they would never ever admit it just as most Indian females would never admit to masturbating.

Oh, one more thing that I noticed about Gaurav is that he is very finicky about linking posts! He does not allow comments either. That goes on to show what an insufferable snob he is. I guess he has to learn something from my great mate, Chartreuse a.k.a King Campbell.

During the US invasion in Iraq in Gulf War v2.0 (now Gulf War v3.0 beta is going on), Al Jazeera showed pictures of mutilated bodies of civilians including children killed in US air raids that the Western media never ever dared to. BBC went on to acknowledge the fact that the pictures were too graphic and gruesome to be broadcasted and that the fact that Al Jazeera by doing it was making the Arab world boil with anger.

A picture tells you a thousand more stories than a flowery post with a thousand words. The truth must be presented as it is, and if a shocking incident like the Khairlanji massacre takes place then the society should know how shocking it was. The greatest respect for the deceased who had been paraded naked, raped and murdered would be to show the world what the victims were made to undergo so that the collective conscience of the society is awakened and the perpetrators of the crime is brought to justice.

We all read news about women being branded as witches in rural India, beaten, paraded naked, most often raped, made to eat human excreta and often killed. If you saw a video ever, you would know how horrific the practice is. Just reading the story in a newspaper might stir your soul a bit for sometime, but by the evening, it would escape your thoughts. I have seen a couple of such videos shot in Nepal and I know how it felt and still feels.

Gaurav Sabnises of the world can go and flog themselves.

Also read Shivam Vij's post on his motives.

Image credits: Atrocity News and Shivam Vij

Need your help urgently

2006-10-26T04:05:00.000-07:00

I have been behaving like a madman of late. It seems that my emotions have gotten the better of me and I no longer seem to have control over my actions. The matter is personal and I need the help of my readers here on what to do. Chances are that I might someday do something drastic from where there would be no returning.

It is regarding the constant blues that I am reeling under these days resulting in a lot of alcohol consumption followed by sickly text messages, telephone calls and waking up sick and highly embarrassed the next morning. In addition, this is making me shop like hell these days and spending money on others resulting in substantial loss of wealth.

What’s surprising about my situation now is that the reason for this happened about a year back. I was pretty OK with myself till last month. I have a feeling that the changing season has something to do with it or maybe since most of the things in the reason happened around this time of the year last year.

I tried to look for the solution myself and no mater however hard I tried, I just couldn’t find it. I work for long hours. I have every distraction needed to keep my mind off the blues. However, nothing is helping me. Maybe living alone and not having people around to talk about personal things is aggravating me.

I need help to:

a) Get back to my old jovial self, and
b) Get rid of compulsive unhealthy boozing every night that will take care of my health and embarrassing actions as mentioned above.

If any one of you can suggest me an out of the box solution that might help me, please do leave a comment. I shall be highly obliged.

Thank you very much.

Priyadarshini Mattoo murder verdict: One down, two to go

2006-10-18T04:01:00.000-07:00

The long-awaited judgment on the botched up trial and subsequent re-trial of the rape and murder of Priyadarshini Mattoo has finally arrived, and it remarkably quick time this time in the Delhi High Court. It took just 11 sittings in 50 days for the HC Bench to come to a verdict. This shows that if the judiciary takes a stand, the state machineries will fall into line just as the CBI did this time by investigating and presenting the case as it should be.

Well, that’s not what I want to discuss here. The point is who should take the credits for eventually bringing the culprit Santosh Kumar Singh to book. As India Daily has pointed out, the media is trying to take the credit for making the crime and the acquittal of Santosh Singh such a high-profiled one. It credits Priyadarshini’s father Shri Chaman Lal Mattoo for being tenacious in seeking justice for his daughter.

I agree that without Shri CL Mattoo’s indomitable courage, the process would not gone forward. However, from where did he get the initial push? A middle-aged man like him would have broken down completely in the face of such adversity. Therefore, in my opinion the following factors are solely responsible:

a) The Indian Express for this, this and this that brought back to focus the miscarriage of justice on the case to public attention again.
b) Priyadarshini’s relatives, friends and earlier acquaintances who together started a mass campaign through the Internet [e.g. this and this].
c) Various TV channels highlighting the case, and the various campaigns for her justice resulting in stirring the collective conscience of the society.

Now that the first high-profile case is over with justice finally being delivered, now the attention will be upon the two other notorious acquittals – the Jessica Lall murder case and the Nitish Katara murder case. What makes the last two cases unique is one person Vikas Yadav, the main accused in the Nitish Katara case is a co-accused in the Jessica Lall case as well.

It took remarkably less time to arrive at the verdict of the Priyadarshini Mattoo murder case. The fate of Santosh Kumar Singh will be decided on Oct 31. There is hardly any doubt in my mind that Vikas Yadav and Manu Sharma – pals in real life, will most probably be pals in prison for the rest of their lives as well; that is if one or both escape

Two chicks, craigslist, hookups and confessions

2006-10-07T02:18:00.000-07:00

Of the many blogs I read often, I make it a point to visit two blogs written by females living on the either side of the globe – in USA and India. There are many similarities between these two women. Not only the colours of their blog templates are same, they seem to enjoy writing about their private lives a lot. Naturally, they attract a lot of readers. After all, reading about steamy encounters is always interesting, isn’t it? One more similarity is that they both have the same initials - CC.

However, the American shows that she is a sapiophile and enjoys giving her male readers advice on how to snare available females for hookups from the Internet, especially in craigslist. She has a good academic way of writing and not like the many typically unintelligent and grammatically challenged females around with stupid blogs. Also, though she writes on her sexual encounters right from how she picked up her guys, she is careful enough to make sure that her posts don’t smack of porn, even when she tells how important it is to warm up and use lubes for anal sex. She is classy, she is intelligent and she apparently knows what she is talking about. She is the ClueChick.

The Indian chick writes about her personal life too. Though she used to write on her sexual life like how her experience was having sex under the shower, her posts generally are too self-centered and revolve around her pals and parties. My personal opinion is that she has become a little too predictable and thus boring of late. Anyway, what caught my eye today is the mention of craigslist opening shop in India and how it has her hooked to it. She is eM, the Compulsive Confessor.

It seems the rapidly growing popular social networking site orkut will have some serious competition. Also, it will most certainly bring in some hazards. craigslist provides a perfect platform for people looking for casual encounters. However, it will pay if you can avoid scandals like the Jason Fortuna experiment.

Finally, eM can make a lot of readable confessions if she indeed goes ahead with having a few hookups through CL. Actually she should as she confessed not getting lucky for over a year now. It would be doubly interesting because we happen to be in the same city! Maybe one day…

Blank Noise Project: A cry over missing fucks

2006-09-29T01:46:00.000-07:00

I noticed this ages back when some bitches were making noises about the Blank Noise Project in the blogosphere. I thought it was some kind of a fucky-leaky idea by some freaked out sluts who weren’t getting enough cocks. Forget the cocks, they seemed deprived of even the stares or passes, which in my opinion is very normal.

Unlike most other animals, we are on heat all the seasons. So it is quite natural for men (and of course women too) too seek sex or play the ‘attracting game’.

Some females are so fucking delusional about themselves that they start believing having a cunt is perhaps winning the biggest jackpot in this universe. The point is, the vagina is there for a purpose and nine hundred a ninety nine times out of a thousand a girl doesn’t want flowers. She just wants to get laid. Nothing wrong with that either, rather, it is absolutely in line with normal human behaviour.

If the so-called teasing is without any violence then I am all for it. Physical assault and stalking are two things I would never ever approve. Why?

a) You do not have any right to harm/hurt/violate another human being physically.
b) Stalking is symptomatic of psycho-criminal behaviour. It is proved, so no arguments here. PERIOD.

The self-proclaimed moralists should know that if I have a pair of eyes to see and you a pair of boobs to show, it is my birthright to have a closer look what is being displayed in full public. If you wear short skirts, there is no harm in making an extra effort to take a peek what’s under it. No, I won’t lift the skirt up to see. However, if she is taking the elevator and I am below her, I shall move my head to see what colour panty she is wearing.

Similarly, it is my birthright to start a conversation with any female whom I fancy upon whether it is in a private party or in a public place if there is an opportunity to do so. However, I shall in no way feel free to pester anyone from entering into a conversation with me. The female has all the rights to continue or politely refuse to go into a chat with me.

The brains behind the Blank Noise Project attention deprived cunts doing whatever they can to show how desirable they are and how dangerously they live every moment outside their homes. In the process, they are managing to grab some eyeballs.

The pictures of the gals in the blog reminded me of my ex-girlfriend. She used to look just like one of them, very common, very normal. She belonged to an ultra-conservative Marwari family. That didn’t reflect in her contemporary dressing though. She always used to be in western and casuals – the way the modern girl should be dressing.

I have immense respect for the girl. She was all innocent and never-been-kissed. She was the first girl I seriously fell in love with. I still love her more than anything else and wish that she comes back in my life. Wishful thinking, I know it is history now. Anyway, I am not discussing my love life here. The story is that it didn’t take me long to deflower her and we become great lovers for a long, long time till it abruptly ended without any reason last year.

What I learnt during my relationship with her is that girls who have a serious inferiority complex only think about sex as a taboo. It is only those girls who make issues out of non-issues like the females in the Blank Noise Project are making. Else, no matter whatever masks they wear of being innocent and sensitive to stares, remarks etc, deep inside they enjoy it. After all, why not? Getting a comment from the opposite sex is always ego boosting; great for the self-esteem. If you are a girl and get a comment on your boobs being highly gropable, you must know that your boobs are capable of turning a man on.

The bottom line is that given half a chance, a sexually developed female would easily agree to jump into the sack – family backgrounds, religious beliefs and social bindings notwithstanding. Of course, if she is a frigid and don’t get wet on stimulation then she would hit the streets crying eve-teasing.

If you are a guy and don't believe me then take a gal in your bedroom when no one is around to disturb you for a couple of hours and offer her flowers or a fuck, she will go for the fuck, or at least the suck.

Why? A good fuck gives you a great orgasm and a great orgasm is always better than flowers.

And a dick is always better than doing this to yourself, right gals? Next time get your friendly eve teaser to do this to you. He will go out of his way to find a nice place where you can do it. And, he will make you a very happy gal.

Don’t believe me still? Just try it. The Guru speaks the truth.

India should not execute Md. Afzal

2006-09-27T01:51:00.000-07:00

There is no denying that I am anti-death penalty. No matter however hideous the crime is, putting a human to death is nothing short of bestial retribution. There is no place for death penalty in India; none whatsoever.

If India doesn’t spare the life of Md. Afzal for conspiring the attack on Indian Parliament that resulted in the deaths of many, it will most definitely prove what people like me think of India, which is a nation of sadists and cowards. Hanging Md. Afzal will not send any deterring message to the terrorists. Rather, it will only confirm that we are some way to go before we can call ourselves civilized.

I opposed the death sentence of the two sisters Renuka and Seema Gavit even though they have carried out the most hideous of crimes conceivable.

Only the fuckminds, perverts and the sick can see executions happening in their countries and tolerating it, be it in India or Saudi Arabia. At least Indians have a voice through democracy, so we must raise it now.

The ‘Metro-sexual’ Delhiwallah is back to his works again

2006-09-26T23:39:00.000-07:00

On Monday on my way to work in Delhi Metro, I saw a reasonably pretty chick when I boarded the Red Line in Kashmere Gate at 9:05 am. We traveled together till Welcome station. Before alighting, I managed to take a peek on her ID and got to know what her name was. She got down at Welcome too.

Reaching office, I got curious to know more about her. I logged on to orkut, did a name search and bingo! She was there with pictures and all. She turned out to be a techie like myself.

There was a dampener though. She put her status as ‘Married’ and ‘living with partner’. I though I missed the symbols of matrimony like the tiny spec of red on the forehead that the young and married hide in their forelocks or a wedding ring or maybe a mangalsutra.

Yesterday, I made it a point to travel the same time so that I can hope to see her again and look for the signs. She was there in very trendy casuals and without those signs that I was looking for. Yes, there was a gold ring all right on the ring finger. However, it hardly looked as a wedding ring. Maybe I haven’t seen too many wedding rings in my life.

Today, we traveled together too. She was wearing a gorgeous blouse. She apparently knows what makes her look attractive. I thought she was in her early 20s. However, a closer look today revealed the light rings under her eyes. No, she never looked on war paint before. Either she is around 25 or she is into booze. Her orkut profile says she boozes occasionally. You see, women can’t have all the joys at once. They wouldn’t have to maintain their skins more than they do only if they shaved like us guys.

I have taken substantial risk in writing this post. Maybe I should have deleted the timings. If she happens to read this, she would know who this guy is. As I have visited her profile, she would know who checked her profile recently and I have pictures! Besides that, there is hardly any rush between Kashmere Gate and Welcome in the mornings, so… ;-)

Anyway, she looked wonderful today; as always.

Yummy Chinese bestial fellatio

2006-09-26T00:21:00.000-07:00

The Chinese are amazing human beings. They are different from the rest of the human race in ways more than just a few. From perverse practices like feet binding in the ancient times (that left entire generations of females crippled) to finding delicacies in leopard placenta, the Chinese find orgasmic pleasure in things that people from other civilizations might find weird, repulsive, and insane as well.

Chinese food has always captured the world’s fascination. Chinese are prolific cooks and what’s more, they can cook things that you wouldn’t like to even look at.

A few months back I read a Jug Suraiya food article where he discussed weird food like elephant trunk that he had in Nagaland. There he writes about how feudal Chinese had some of the weirdest dishes on their menu like a worm that grows in the cesspit of human excreta for a year that turns into the hors d'oeuvre for the guest of honour! Despite being a foodie myself who has a penchant to try out the most fanciful of non-vegetarian dishes, I found that quite ‘extraordinary’ indeed.

This gives credence to the adage that when it comes to having an appetite for food, the Chinese would perhaps not eat airplanes and helicopters in flying things and the furniture in four-legged objects. Everything else is edible for them.

Today, I bumped into this article in BBC News. It is about the dishes made out of the penises of various animals – from dogs to snakes, bulls to tigers and everything in between.

Not only there is a delicacy factor behind eating them, the Chinese believe that eating penises would increase virility! Well, Chinese placebos promising virility include crushed tiger bones, snake blood, bat pickles etc, etc.

Maybe, the Chinese are more sex-tensed and sex-obsessed than any other population on earth. If you promise them that drinking a chimp’s diarrheic shit will make the males last longer and applying it on the faces will keep the skins of females youthful, they would not think twice before going ahead with the experimentation.

A few will set up biz by buying a few chimps, sicken them and make them excrete and sell the stuff in bottles labeled –

Premium Chimpanzee Excrement for Youth and Virility. Satisfaction Guaranteed 100%.

Of Delhi Police, eunuchs, PCOs and spirited citizens

2006-09-25T00:14:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday Aaj Tak was showing a programme titled ‘Kinnaron ka Karkhana’ or Factory of Eunuchs. That reminded me of an incident that happened on 7th of this month. On that day I accompanied a colleague friend to the railway station straight from work who was going to Patna. We took an auto-rickshaw after wetting our throats with our usual booze around 4 pm. I usually don’t drink in the afternoons. However, that day was an aberration.

Anyway, while crossing the Yamuna bridge over Vikas Marg, ITO, we spotted a white Maruti Zen with 5 passengers and a driver – the driver and one in the front and four in the back. Only the driver and a passenger in the back were males, the rest were eunuchs.

The male in the back looked heavily drugged and was unable to hold himself. He struggled to hold on to the headrest of the front seat where he was trying to find a support for his head to rest. He seemed to be in his late 20s or early 30s.

I got alarmed at once because of the horror stories of genital dismemberments and castrations of males by eunuchs that I heard many times before. While my mate and I were looking at them, they looked back and the car sped away. However, the many red lights and the traffic snarls held it up every now and then and I was able to jot down the number of the car (that I tore off around 6 pm that day).

We lost the car somewhere near the Sales Tax building opposite the ICAI building. On reaching Ajmeri Gate at the New Delhi railway station, I tried calling the police from one of the many mobile PCOs there. To my surprise, none of them allowed me to dial 100. No amount of coaxing, threatening etc would make them yield. Then I went to the PCOs on the other side of the road. Even they won’t allow me. It was around 5 pm then when we saw a Sub-Inspector of Police. We approached him and he too seemed disinterested. However, he must have guessed that we might take the matter further and took our names down and assured that he will check the matter out. When I asked him why the PCOs don’t allow calls to 100, he said it was not the case and asked us to make the call from the PCO where we were standing.

Dialing 100 for several minutes yielded no response from the other side! I tried several times but no one picked up the phone. There can be only two reasons – a) The PCO owner doctored the phone line and the call never went through (though I could hear the ring) or b) the Delhi Police was taking a prolonged afternoon siesta. SI Kunwar Singh left the place on his bike.

Then I called up Star News’ mobile number for the crime programme Sansani. The phone was ‘out of range’.

It was almost 6 pm by then. My mate had a train to catch and it was getting a bit too boring. After that incident, I’ve decided never to seek police attention even if I happen to witness a murder taking place right before my eyes. I am undecided though if I should go to the police in the event I find myself in the receiving end of crime. I don’t have much faith left, seriously.

So much for spirited citizens.

SOS: Save Team India, kick the saboteur out!

2006-09-23T02:35:00.000-07:00

What has the Indian cricket team achieved following Greg Chappell’s appointment? Without much ado, let us take a stock of the man’s achievements so far. Since this is a post meant to criticize the man’s abilities, question his integrity with the Indian team, and motives of becoming the coach, let me first see the negatives. Of course, we shall come to the positives too, but later.

Negatives:

1. India’s best captain and one of the best ODI batsmen ever Saurav Ganguly is out because of reasons other than cricket. He scored a century in his last Test against Zimbabwe and India won the series (the first in over 20 yrs outside the subcontinent). In this process, he has antagonized not only the public but many members of the team as well.
2. Zaheer Khan, one of India’s most promising pace bowlers is not around.
3. Irfan Pathan has forgotten how to bowl those deadly outswingers and now in the team as a pinch hitter and at times specialist opener!
4. Yuvraj Singh is out of form.
5. Sehwag struggling to come out of the labyrinth as ever.
6. Dravid losing his technique, his form and his marbles too.
7. Dhoni’s fading away faster than one can imagine.
8. Humiliating ODI series defeat against the West Indies.
9. Glorious season record – 6 wins and 2 losses with 1 no result.
10. Team members turning into hapless guinea pigs in his lab of whimsical experiments.

Positives:

1. Commando training (all of 45 minutes!) in military fatigues, giving the team strength of character, Dutch courage, fighting spirit, sharpening of survival skills, endurance and lots of media publicity.
2. Entertainment on the form of making the team members play Musical Chairs to get a team slot (all in the name of ‘positive’ experiment).
3. The BCCI finally able to understand the methods of Indian coach and see merits in total disasters.
4. New soundbytes doing away with the earlier boring ones from the team management and Chappell himself. (Of course Saurav Ganguly's financial needs can be interesting to some.)
5. Reminding us all again that it was India who gave the world 0 (Zero), and be proud of it.

Despite all the above, the invitation extended to Greg by Cricket Australia to coach Australia is still valid. Of course, they can see as the whole world except the hypnotized BBCI is seeing now – Greg is doing more than a fine job in accomplishing his mission; the reason for why he is here in the first place. [I have told you about the Grand Aussie Plan before]

Greg is now saying that his experiments are paying off. (They are indeed paying off to him!) Hence, they will continue until the ICC World Cup 2007. In 168 days he will be standing before the moment of his life.

India was picking up from the last ICC World Cup in 2003 where it ended up runners up. Saurav Ganguly had the core of the team in his hands that could well be the champions in 2007. Now the head has been chopped off, the baby has been aborted. With the team in shambles, the guinea pigs still in the Greg Lab, one can only imagine what will happen to Team India when the ICC World Cup 2007 starts.

There is precious little time left to undo the damage this Aussie crook has done to Team India. The BCCI must take cognizance to the circus Greg and his joker-in-chief Rahul Dravid are doing and immediately give the Aussie saboteur the sack. [BTW, is this a mere coincidence that Greg took the team for a (farcical) commando experience just a few days before Buchanan's boot camp?]

A servile character such a Dravid is unfit to be the captain. He simply lacks what is known as – Officer-like qualities. He bats best only when he plays second fiddle to others. He is best in the team as a batsman and let him remain so. You don’t have to be the best warrior to be the best general choreographing a war. Leadership is an inherent quality, comes with the atmosphere you are brought up in. Make someone the skipper who can catch hold of an errant team member’s collar and say ‘I’ll bust your ass with the cricket bat next time…”

But, first things first. The BCCI should start typing a letter for the Aussie criminal called Greg Chappell with a touch of Aussie pedestrian vernacular that should read like – ‘Thanks for your services so far. Now piss off you pissant’.

Meanwhile, the Bongs can go ahead with Gregasura this Durga Puja.

The great Laloo Railway Myth

2006-09-22T01:17:00.000-07:00

Almost everyone seems to be impressed these days by Laloo Prasad Yadav’s work on Indian Railways. He is not only getting accolades from all over, but this man is also not stopping them from coming in. Wait! Far stopping them from coming in and basking in the glory of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’, he is actually patting himself in the back for what he did to bring around the so-called ‘turnaround’ in Indian Railways.

Last month, I wrote a post on this man on his scheduled lecture in the IIM-A. Well, I have to admit that my post was substandard to say the least because the tone was that of an emotional rant and the language pedestrian. However, the fact remains that I am not convinced at all whenever someone from the Indian intelligentsia say that he did a job that can be described as ‘great’. In my post I wrote;

As the Union Railway Minister, Laloo has managed to do ‘something’, but then it was just by ‘adjusting’ a few things here and there and nothing much.

I stand by what I said. The railways started making an upward turnaround in 2002-2003, before Laloo took office and the golden period for the railways was 1994-96. A few days back Subir Roy wrote an excellent piece in Business Standard to explain why Laloo’s great railway turnaround is half a myth. He talks about the ‘adjustments’ that I said Laloo made in the railways like – increasing the tonnage of the wagons that reflected in higher revenues. Subir thinks that it is Laloo’s best achievement so far. However, I would like to say that the reduction of accident rates was his best achievement. Then, isn’t railway safety a basic expectation for the rail yatri?

Now, Laloo is going for the spectacular. He is now mulling super-fast corridors as Mumbai-Pune and Bangalore-Chennai. This was going to happen! Such antics must be stopped at once. There is no way the focus should be allowed to shift from curing the diseases plaguing the Indian Railways like better provisions in railway platforms, better hygiene inside trains, ticketless travel, thuggery by TTEs, GRP etc, etc. Railway safety even today is far from satisfactory. Railway safety and security must be on the top in Laloo’s list of priorities. Then, the rampant corruption and pilferage that goes on in the transportation of raw materials and minerals like coal. A trip down the Dhanbad-Gaya, Dhanbad-Ranchi line will tell you how big the scandal is.

There are many, many issues. I may write in details with points on where the railways should be focusing in the coming days rather than in the accolades. In any case, no one should be praised for doing 70 percent of his duty.

That’s why he is there for in the first place, isn’t it?

Aaj Tak redefining yellow journalism

2006-09-21T06:12:00.000-07:00

Last night, going back to home from work was some experience. As usual I took a bus (usually the 221 or 236) from the place where I work near Anand Vihar to Welcome metro station. After getting down my colleague and co-passenger till Rajiv Chowk found that the mobs agitating in Seelampur managed to shut down the Delhi Metro between Shastri Park to Shahadra. (Some victory of sorts for the rioters against the government?). We took another bus (because the paise-wise, rupee-foolish autowallahs were charging ridiculously exorbitant fares owing to the tense situation that prevailed in that region) to Kashmere Gate from where we took the underground. But before that, we went to the coffee-cum-soup joint as we do six days a week near the Media Mart kiosk that has a huge plasma TV on display with Aaj Tak – channel of its sponsors – on. (Oh! It is always Aaj Tak there).

Sipping hot soup and watching the images actually made both of us rather laugh. Why? Two reasons.

The major one was on India’s victory over the West Indies in a low scoring match. There was a huge caption saying – WI ke viruddh Bharat ka aitihasik vijay (historic win by India against the West Indies) and ’83 ki yaadein tazaa (comparing it to India’s victory over West Indies in the 1983 Prudential World Cup Final win)!! This victory equal to that? You decide. For me, it was a meaningless victory against a mediocre team by a dull team in a senseless tournament in some cricket-forsaken country.
The next big news was on the riots at various parts of Delhi following the enforcement of the Supreme Court’s order sealing illegal commercial establishments and constructions. It was repeatedly showing a police officer taking aim with his handgun and shooting at hundred (maybe thousands) of rioters who were pelting stones at them. Just imagine fuelling public anger like that.

Both the above items as shown in Aaj Tak was nothing short of yellow journalism, making stories out of non-issues and nothing whatsoever by simply sensationalizing the events shamelessly.

A few days back Punya Prasoon Vajpayee stopped Joginder Singh, the ex-CBI boss just as he was about to reveal something interesting (about the UAE government’s attitude that he experienced first hand trailing a terrorist) abruptly for a commercial break. Then he never came back to the subject at all (though he promised that he would). It felt as if Aaj Tak robbed me of the information and right/pleasure of knowing something. Then a few days back when Indian passengers were de-boarded from a Northwest flight in Amsterdam in Holland after turning the plane back over Germany, this Vajpayee guy was 'educating' his audience that Amsterdam was in Germany!

This is shameful journalism with gallons of yellow paint thrown in. This is 10/10 for Aaj Tak.

Justice Pramod Kode: Reason why you can expect fair verdicts in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blast case

2006-09-18T02:02:00.000-07:00

The Business Standard carried out an article by Makarand Gadgil on Justice Pramod Kode, the designated judge of the TADA court trying the 191 accused in the Mumbai bomb blast case in 1993. The article made very refreshing read as it focused on the judge’s career, his focus on the case and his humane side.

Forget about allowing Sanjay Dutt to travel abroad for shooting, the fact that moved me was that he understood the small desires of a human being, the emotions etc. He allowed a key accused in the case to attend his mother’s funeral and during the last Cricket World Cup in 2003, he ordered the installation of TV sets in one of the most sensitive wards of the jail after some inmates expressed a desire to watch the matches.

Not only this, in order to complete the trial in quick time, he didn’t take a single day’s leave. Given the enormity of the task, it is no less than a miracle that it took just 13 years to complete the trial.

Given the state of affairs in trial courts and the judges in the lower courts in India, people like Justice Kode are holding the faith of the public in getting fair justice and expect to be treated as humans by the system.

When all the verdicts come out and sentencing/acquittals are done with, we can safely say that the judge gave it all. One can’t question the fairness of it at all.

Three cheers to Justice Pramod Kode, and Business Standard for bringing it out.

What did the Pope say was wrong?

2006-09-15T22:42:00.000-07:00

Pope Benedict XVI created much furor within the Muslim community with his speech quoting the Byzantine Christian emperor Manuel II Palaiologos in which he said;

Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

Muhammad was a shrewd leader. His new religion is extensively taken from Judaism which preceded Christianity – the religion which was prevalent and dominating during that time, and conveniently recognizing (read using) Jesus Christ as a true prophet so that the Christians can be swayed to believe him. Then the prophet’s Koran came into being – a slick, well-composed book with modern (w.r.t. the times then) thoughts, laws and a few new things thrown in, not to mention incorporation of verses justifying violent campaigns in the name of safeguarding faith in the name of god.

Muhammad was more of a political and military leader than a religious one. He used religion to instill the fear of wrath of god and using the fear of god, he projected himself as his last and final prophet whose words were god’s own words. It was the mind of a genius that eventually fulfilled most of his political and military ambitions.

Muhammad indeed brought in some fresh thoughts, some of which are relevant even now in the 21st Century. He was a progressive thinker. However, a major chunk of whatever Muhammad brought was borrowed from existing practices (remember how Moses and Jesus remained prophets in the Koran). Therefore, Manuel, though not entirely correct, was indeed correct on most counts that he wanted to say then, and now what the Pope quoted.

Ironically, the fatwas and the reactions that followed in the Islamic countries and within the Muslim communities worldwide actually second what Manuel said. They are live proofs that in Islam today we can only find things only evil and inhuman. And, I am not talking about things like this, this, this, this, this and…

Niche blogging: What is it anyway?

2006-09-12T01:54:00.000-07:00

If you thought that niche blogs are like the beautiful gal above, you are wrong. As the word beautiful has become too general, she can no longer be called just a beautiful gal. Is she intelligent? Does she have a good figure? is she a good orator? Does she look good in a swimsuit? Does she look good when she walks? Is she photogenic? Is she this? Is she that... So the word beautiful is not a niche by itself, it is way too general. Similarly, niche blogs of 2004-2005 have no longer remained niche anymore.

For example, if you are a health blogger and blog about the health and fitness, diseases and medicines you are no longer a niche blogger. A ‘niche’ blog would have been only either on fitness, diseases or medicines; only then, you would be a niche blogger.

Nah! Hang on; hang on – not so fast. The above three separate blogs on body wouldn’t get the tag of a niche health blog either. In fact, if your blog is dedicated only on one part of the whole body, like say the left ear (not the right one; mind you) or only on 500 mg paracetamol tablets only then it can be honored as a niche blog. A blog on contraceptives wouldn’t be niche enough unless it is entirely dedicated to condoms, or for that matter the pill.

One day there would be no more subjects left to ‘niche blog’ upon. That will mean that thousands would be blogging on one ‘niche’ subject. Then the word niche would stand diluted unless re-concentrated with new definition.

Ah! It’s getting finer and finer, isn’t it?

September 11: How special it is?

2006-09-11T00:43:00.000-07:00

The eleventh day of the ninth month of the Gregorian calendar or simply September 11 is special in more ways than one. Well, one can argue that other dates, you take your pick, will be just as special if not for the incident that shook the world five years ago.

However, I would like to say that notwithstanding the September 11 incident with the reputation, it is indeed a more special day than most of the 365 days (366 in leap years) in the calendar. Why? Well, check some the events that happened this day in history.

*** Ernest L. Martin, the famous archaeologist suggested that Jesus was born on September 11 in 3 BC when the moon moved in a rare pattern with Venus generating the Star of Bethlehem.

*** Hope Diamond was sensationally stolen along with other crown jewels in 1792.

*** Parliament of the World’s Religions began this date in 1893 in Chicago, which is remembered for Swami Vivekananda’s famous speech that began with ‘Sisters and brothers of America’ that triggered wild applause.

*** Mahatma Gandhi started his famous Satyagraha or Non-Violence movement today exactly one hundred years back in 1906 eventually pulling down the British Empire.

*** Hijackers crash planes in the WTC twin towers, Pentagon and Shanksville in Pennsylvania.

Another small incident happened on September 11, 2000 that caught my attention. It was about a woman’s house being burnt down by a crazy guy whom the woman met a few days back over the Internet. The incident happened in a town called Northam in Western Australia, an hour’s drive from Perth. If I remember correctly, Hutt Street was the location where it happened. If you have any further information about the incident, please share. It showed how dangerous it was to solicit for lovers on the net. You never know what lies ahead.

Pak’s Osama song

2006-09-06T23:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we’re ready to forgive;
Today, we’ve changed our minds,
Let’s all sing now;
We’ll arrest citizen Osama after all.

9/11 Amnesty: Pakistan ready to let Osama go

2006-09-06T00:50:00.000-07:00

I read this piece of news with mixed emotions. Well, mixed were the emotions because I was surprised, then I was not surprised; I was excited, I felt like a fool being excited; and then I was amused.

Pakistan is ready to forgive Osama if he decides to behave like ‘peaceful citizen’ and not like a … (What exactly do the Pakistanis think of him anyway?)

As the 5th Anniversary of the September 11 attacks is approaching, the Pakistanis seem to be in festive mood and might, just might, release a few jailed … well, whatever like Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh.

Anyway, the latest is that Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan, press secretary to Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf who made this remark over a telephonic interview with ABC has denied it when being asked over the phone by Rediff.com.

Elite blogger missing

2006-09-05T23:51:00.000-07:00

Remember the 3rd Delhi Bloggers Meet in November last year and the ‘elite’ blogger Tarun Pall (or TTG)? If you are into blogging for sometime, this name should not have escaped your notice. There had been quite a fiasco then, isn’t it? It was an absolute delight to watch the events from the sidelines as they were happening following the article in Delhi Times (the page is no longer available, but thanks to Google cache, you can still find it).

Where is TTG now? I knew he migrated from Blogger to Wordpress (which was an excellent move) but his blog is nowhere to be found. His old blog on Blogger has changed and now seems to me as an attempt to earn some AdSense money from soccer rankings. Nothing wrong in that, rather I would say excellent idea indeed. However, what has happened to his Wordpress blog? The message that I got is that TTG has decided to delete his account and the content is no longer available.

I noticed that despite his ‘death’, TTG continues to live in the blogrolls of many.

Vande Mataram Controversy: It is Nationalism vs. Nation of Islam

2006-09-04T23:38:00.000-07:00

There is a big hullabaloo these days over ‘compelling’ Muslim pupils in schools including state-funded Muslim schools to sing Vande Mataram, India’s National Song to commemorate the song's centenary on September 07. Many Muslims have taken this as anti-Islam, which has hardly come as a surprise to me.

The Muslims regard their religion as a nation – Nation of Islam (not the US separatist political party founded by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930) to be more precise. A nation sans boundaries where there is no place for nationalism or patriotism when it comes to the countries they live in. For them, they are a nation without any boundaries, fellow Muslims are fellow citizens, the Koran is their constitution and they cannot show allegiance to any other nation.

For once, I think that this time the Indian Right (read BJP and Shiv Sena) is right. The Nation of Islam is just a fantasy where as India is a reality. If this current trend of migration to the Radical Islamic School of Thought is not curtailed, I am afraid this will most certainly encourage civil disobedience by Muslim zealots and encourage anti-national activism. We are already seeing a substantial increase in the later here these days.

The Shahi Imam of Delhi Jama Masjid Syed Ahmad Bukhari is a fanatic, a dangerous man to remain within the boundaries of the Indian Union. If he cannot follow the writ of the country and is allergic to accept parts of the Constitution of India or show allegiance to the Indian nationalism, he must be declared a persona non grata by the government at once. I would also like him to face the cases in various states like Bihar where he is wanted for criminal activities. Like the proverbial dog’s tail, he is never going to change his mindset, come what may.

Vande Mataram is the momentary excuse to defy the country’s collective wishes. The meaning is much deeper. It means any country’s individual laws, pride, identity etc, just as Emir Osama bin Laden is preaching today, should not bind Muslims.

The Muslims in India have special laws. The Shah Bano case made Rajiv Gandhi commit one of the most despicable acts of doctoring the Constitution. Muslim men can also enjoy polygamy (they can take up to four wives). They have personal law boards and fatwas mean more than national laws.

Would the Muslims who support such things as above be open to the idea that when it comes to dealing with Muslim criminals they are tried under the Shariat laws? If yes, we can see a Muslim thief’s hand chopped off, a Muslim rapist flogged in public and executed, an adulterer stoned to death etc.

I would rather suggest the above happens, only then the zealots and the anti-nationals like Bukhari would know that real pleasures lie on the other side of the fence and radical Islam is dull and boring unless you have guns and rocket launchers to toy around with like the Taliban.

Muslims must rise and take this as the final opportunity to show allegiance to the country and show that India’s pride is their pride if they are interested to wash the stigma of being perpetually dogmatic and anti-nationals.

Some may believe that they have nothing to prove (which is what I believe too), but they must not forget that their cause has been made much weaker and their faith hijacked by scoundrels like Bukhari.

Vande Mataram!

Aussies pay tribute to Steve Irwin, vandalize Wikipedia stingray page

2006-09-04T03:52:00.000-07:00

The Aussies have gone berserk. They just can’t accept that their hero (he was a world hero) Steve Irwin has been killed by a lowly stingray.

So what they are doing? Well, they have attacked the Wikipedia page on stingray. The page has been vandalized causing the page to be locked for editing by new or anonymous users.

What a way to pay tribute to the departed soul. Only the Aussies are capable of such stupidity.

Even the Steve Irwin page is vandalized!

The Wikipedia page on stingray

The page edit History

Check the user Talk here

My Top 5 Steve Irwin moments

2006-09-04T02:35:00.000-07:00

I am in a state of shock now. I can’t believe that my favourite, favourite naturalist and TV personality Steve ‘The Crocodile Hunter’ Irwin is no more. I read the news just now. He died today doing what he did best, chasing his life’s passion of being with nature and wildlife. The stingray that killed him would never know how much Steve did for the cause of conservation and wildlife.

Steve single-handedly turned public opinion towards nature conservation and preservation of wildlife all around the world right from Australia to Asia to America.

My top 5 Steve Irwin moments are:

His taking over of Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park and running it as Australia Zoo in 1991.
Marriage to Terri in 1992 – an equally motivated and champion naturalist.
The Crocodile Hunter television series that changed how people looked at nature and wildlife.
When he carried his infant son Bob within a meter of a huge crocodile in 1992. The act almost threatened him with legal actions following a huge public outcry accusing him of child abuse.However, he maintained that the child was never in danger and his wife supported him too.
His death today by a stingray while on an underwater shoot! Fatal attacks by stingrays are virtually unheard of, so for an expert like Steve Irwin to get killed by a stingray is amazingly surprising for me.

My top 5 Steve Irwin television moments are:

5. His trip to the bazaars of Taiwan where animal products are sold as medicine and the manner which he explained the horror behind it without making it seem very bad. Maybe he did it knowing that children would be affected if he started narrating the pain and the horror those animals have to go through. In the same time, he got his message through the adults. He probably risked personal safety filming those shops.

4. Getting his son Bob that close to the croc while feeding it a dead chicken. Phew!

3. Getting too close to a wild Asiatic elephant in Thailand in the dense jungle groove. He knew that the elephant could outrun him in the groove and trample him in no time. He was completely exposed; and there were two of them there!

2. All his croc-wrestling moments. All of them. I can’t pick up one here.

1. This is the best. Being ‘kissed’ by a Fierce Snake regarded as the most venomous (in terms of potency) of all land snakes in the world. The scene left me breathless!

We need more Steves in this world.

Of Bongs, demons and Aussies

2006-09-04T00:11:00.000-07:00

The Kumartuli artists are busy now. In fact, they are very, very busy. Durga Puja less than a month away and the famed idol artists are the ones who are working overtime these days.

Every year, I keep an eye on who will turn out to be the demon god Mahisasura for the year. Mahisasura took forms of notorious executed and ‘encountered’ criminals like Dhananjoy Chatterjee and Veerappan. The form is usually reserved for the villain-in-focus of the year.

No wonder, this year, the undisputed villain of the year is the Aussie saboteur Greg Chappell for getting one of Bengal’s brightest sons Saurav Ganguly out of the team. The Deshabandhu Road Sarbojanin Durgotsab ordered that the idol of Mahisasura be modeled on India’s Aussie coach.

However, the Kolkata police stepped in to put a dampener. They have issued orders to the artisans that they just can’t do it. The artisans meanwhile are crying foul. They believe it is like interfering with their artistic freedom.

Why would the police interfere? What a shame, isn’t it? The Bongs don’t deserve to be robbed of such fun especially during their biggest festival.

A special thanks to dhoomketu, because it was in his post I got the news and the picture.

Adieu Andre

2006-09-03T22:33:00.000-07:00

I first saw Andre Agassi’s first full game in 1988 US Open semi-finals against my then favourite Ivan Lendl. Andre had his hair dyed blond and wore denim shorts during the match that he lost in straight sets. It never occurred to be that he would eventually turn out to be one of the legends of the game.

His retirement yesterday after over two decades of entertaining tennis fans made my heart heavy. I wanted him to win, at least go out as the great Pete Sampras with a Grand Slam trophy in his hands. Alas, the backache and Benjamin Becker was too much for him. However, he didn’t go out with a whimper. The 5-7 7-6 (7-4) 4-6 5-7 defeat is a sign that he gave it all.

I grew up watching Andre Agassi and Sachin Tendulkar. I will always remember Andre for his denim shorts in the 1988 US Open, his hair, his colourful getup in the tournaments, his first Grand Slam – the Wimbledon win, his great matches with great rival and friend Pete Sampras, his inevitable wins against Boris Becker, his marriage with Steffi Graf, his tears and his smiles. Andre Agassi was perhaps the most well-behaved player on the circuit. With him gone now, will we ever see another player winning all the four Grand Slams? Can Roger Federer ever win the French Open?

Thank you Andre for entertaining us all these years. You have always been a treat to watch and one of my all-time favourites. Wish you and your family all the best for your life ahead.

Bootleggers: In dry-day service of humankind

2006-09-01T23:31:00.000-07:00

You always run out of booze when you think you just started enjoying the feeling.

Many brothers (and sisters) who love their booze would agree to the above statement. And when your bottle runs dry, it is usually the curfew time for wine shops around. So what do you do? Run to your friendly bootlegger, he will always be there to enhance your spirits for a few extra bucks.

In Delhi, bootleggers are flourishing, while the government is losing. The archaic moral policies of the Delhi government that include shutting down of wine shops sharp at 10 pm and uncountable dry-days means that with every visit to my favourite bootlegger, my love for him increases.

Last night was such an incident. The booze ran out at 11 pm just as the small party was warming up. We scooted to our familiar Shastri ka dukan in Chowkhandi (near Tilak Nagar - Subhash Nagar) in West Delhi from my flat near District Center in Janakpuri.

The Shastri was there – a muscular man in his 30s with a mane that will turn many females green. And I had my bottles. Life would be so dull and boring like the Delhi government without people like him.

Thanks for being there friend.

Random thoughts on religion and software

2006-09-01T02:48:00.000-07:00

First, this is the headline that got left behind: Open Source religion – a short proposal.

Okay, I have been writing a lot (no links due to obvious factor of anonymity) on software and of late more on pros and cons of Open Source and proprietary software. Then here, I had been writing on Hitler and religious fanaticism (as you might have chanced upon). This has resulted in the concoction of a cocktail of thoughts and I started thinking how religion is like software today.

Islam is to religions what Microsoft is to software - predefined, and with proprietary verses.

Islam behaves like Microsoft as well – monopolistic and radical. There is little or no opportunity to work upon, modify and enhance the fundamentals. The whole operating system of Islam is the Koran - just like the Windows OS. You have everything on it. The mullahs define it and the laymen follow it blindly just like Microsoft gives its customers a finished product that does almost everything he wants his OS to do. It is very difficult to build add-ons or extensions unless Microsoft is literally forced to part with its source code.

Sufism was what I would term as Islam Lite. It flourished in the middle ages, but then the monopolistic practices of mainstream Islam killed it.

Compare that to say Firefox, god bless this browser. You can develop and users can add any number of extensions to Firefox.

Two more things on that:

i) Islam in religions is therefore like Microsoft in software biz – has a good popular finished product (read Windows OS) but without any scope for outside enhancement, modification, customization outside MS-set parameters.
ii) Modified Islam – like the Ahmadiyyas or the Imailis are often not recognized by mainstream Islam and look upon them as illegal and cracked versions of the main OS which was developed back in the 7th century.

Similarly, Roman Catholicism and Judaism are like proprietary software as well.

Hinduism on the other hand can be likened to true Open Source software. You have all the freedom to develop, change, modify, or even start new extensions based on the fundamental principals. There are hundreds of streams, cults, sub-faiths, off-shoot religions etc. You too can start your own cult and it would be perfectly accepted as a part of mainstream Hinduism. Not only that, with a little bit of 'kernel programming' with new philosophies, ideas and thoughts, you can start an entirely new religion – like Sikhism, Jainism or Buddhism.

Other variants of Christianity too have similar Open Source qualities.

To end: I am looking forward to the days of open source religion – like Firefox, extensions including.

If you happen to read this, do let me know about your thoughts. Feel free to modify, enhance or edit whatever I said here in your comments. It would be very interesting to hear your views.

The Guru will be back soon. Au revoir.

Update: A friend has pointed out this migration from proprietary to Open Source.

The killer sisters will swing; we are animals after all

2006-08-31T22:59:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Court of India has upheld the death sentence on the two sisters who brutally killed toddlers they kidnapped from across Maharashtra for over several years. Renuka and Seema Gavit along with their mother, in their greed to make money, kidnapped over a dozen small children and sadistically killed them after when they began becoming nuisances.

What turned the case was the turning of state witness by the husband of one of the sisters. He apparently sang like a canary after assured of acquittal of the crimes that he was a collaborator in.

This is what the division bench of Justice KG Balakrishnan and Justice GP Mathur said;

“We do not think that these appellants (convicts) are likely to be reformed… and they are a menace to the society.”

One victim’s mother in TV said that she was very unhappy that they were doing to die hanging. She wanted the sisters to burn at the stake! I can understand you feelings madam, I really do.

Well, well, well, retribution is what the society wants, isn’t it? You are most likely to have your pound of flesh in this case. Then why only hang them and not burn them at the stake as the mother wanted? That would definitely pacify the fire, sorrow and anger in many hearts.

How about something like this in front of the public? Wouldn’t it be a wonderful sight for the society?

Death penalty still in India is a shame. No matter how hideous the crime is, we just can’t carry out murder in the name of lawful justice.

The Guru thinks that it only shows that we are animals after all, no matter however hoarse we may cry claiming to be civilized. No, we are not, and I have told you so before, haven’t I?

Now if your argument is that we should behave with animals like animals, then next time a dog bites you, catch hold of it, tie it up and bite it back.

Student Unions: Ban them first and then skin them

2006-08-31T00:23:00.000-07:00

India is going to the dogs (if it hasn’t already). The murder of the 61-year old Professor H.S. Sabbarwal (of Madhav College, Ujjain) by student activists is reminiscent of the fact that we are now trapped in a quagmire that we might never be able to come out of.

Political parties directly patronize student unions in India. In fact, the mainstream political parties directly fund these parties and almost all of them are affiliated to one political party or other.

What have these unions done for the students? In fact, these unions have turned into organized gangs of hoodlums, hooligans, criminals and terrorists.

Things have come to such a point that the only remedy is that the government should first ban all student unions immediately now following the parliament passing a law that will:

a) Ban all funding to these unions by political parties.
b) Make affiliations to mainstream political parties illegal.
c) Restrict the activities of these unions to only the local campuses.
d) Make it illegal for the unions to be national in nature and declare names such as Akhil Bharatiya or All India, India, Bharat etc as anti-national.
e) The activities of these unions should not be beyond cultural, sports and academic nature, though they may take up genuine grievances of students to the concerned authorities.
f) Make campaigning beyond the campus boundaries during student elections illegal.
g) Enforce an upper limit in age of the candidates contesting the elections. (There are thousands of student leaders who, to stay in power, stick to the campuses for decades and well into their 40s). My recommendation is that the upper age limit of students contesting elections should not be more than 25 (that’s the lowest age for becoming a Lok Sabha MP). Only then, the unions would have a ‘student flavour’.
h) Lay down stringent punishment for the violators of this law with up to life imprisonment.

I have been a student myself and all that I have seen during my university days is bullying, blackmailing and thuggery by these unions and their activists and nothing else. It is not without any reason I am so critical about these student federations. If we don’t take this matter seriously, it won’t be long we would go the Bangladesh way where student bodies create civil war-like situations every now and then.

As far as the latest crime is concerned, the culprits must be brought to justice. The manner they carried out the murder of the professor is atrocious to say the least. Since I am not in favour of the death penalty, I would definitely like to see them flogged in public (students do need an occasional whacking, don’t they?) and sent behind bars for a life of hard labour.

The political parties need these unions and the unions’ henchmen need these parties. So will this really happen? It is time for the real students to stand up now and demand that since it concerns them, they should have the final say. Only a miniscule minority of the student population in India is involved in active student politics or are active student union members. Those criminals should immediately be uprooted from the campuses.

The advice of the Guru is to start afresh and a bit differently this time. After all, the students are the future of our country.

We need not be Hitler's apologists if we can’t be…

2006-08-30T22:28:00.000-07:00

This month’s flavour was certainly Hitler owing to the furor caused by the restaurant named Hitler’s Cross in Mumbai. I wrote a post on why it wasn’t such a big issue. I wasn’t surprised to see people labeling me as a Holocaust denier or a revisionist.

Let me clear the air here. I am NOT a Holocaust denier neither I am a Holocaust revisionist. My position on this is ambiguous at best. I am not saying that the Holocaust really took place, and I neither deny it. If I may put it this way, I would rather take the 5th Amendment. But hold on! It doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion. I have very strong opinions on this and in due course of time through my writings here, I would let you know what I really believe in and why.

As of now, my question to you all is this – Is it proper to be only Hitler’s apologists and not be the apologists of Mussolini, Hirohito, Stalin and Mao? We can’t be partial in our approach; or can we?

The commies in India and all over pride themselves by associating themselves with mass killers like Stalin and Mao. Their portraits are displayed all over their offices, rallies, political banners etc. They even salute each other in the commie way. Why symbols of Stalin and Mao are not banned? The crimes Stalin and Mao committed against humanity are far worse than what Hitler did prior to and during the World War II.

When Hirohito died on January 7, 1989 India declared a day of National Mourning the next day. I still remember as a school kid, I was looking forward to watch the Hrishi Kapoor flick Karz in Doordarshan. It wasn’t often that you saw a relatively successful movie in the only channel that was available for us Indians. The only time a Hindi movie was broadcasted was on Sunday evenings and the Friday late night ‘adult’ movies. They dropped broadcasting the movie and instead they played the boring flop Ratna Deep. Does anyone of you remember that? [I am impressed I still remember that!]. Anyway, one can argue that Hirohito never actively encouraged many of Japan’s Wartime crimes like Japan’s Manchuria invasion and the genocide that followed, and most were carried out without his knowledge. I just can’t help but laugh at such suggestions. In fact, he was the mastermind behind the outrageous atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Forces.

I know if ifs and buts were pots and pans, there would have been no tinkers. However, what if Hitler had won the Second World War? We would most certainly have had diplomatic ties with Germany and perhaps many nations would have declared national mournings on the death of Hitler!

If we need to give ourselves some kind of credibility, we must stand up for what is right and must be able to call a spade a spade, come whatever the consequences be. We simply can’t be the apologists of one monster and followers and well-wishers of other and perhaps greater and hideous monsters.

We simply can’t!

The evil joker will teach management now

2006-08-30T00:29:00.000-07:00

Now, of all the people Laloo Prasad Yadav will don the role of lecturer at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad in September. Maybe he will have something to say about how to avoid failure. After all, he failed Bihar as a state in every respect, pick whatever you would like – from law and order to development.

How he managed to bring a whole state into such a situation in his 15 years of misrule is a miracle by itself. As the Union Railway Minister, Laloo has managed to do ‘something’, but then it was just by ‘adjusting’ a few things here and there and nothing much.

I remember during my days as a management student, there was a mention of a Nazi (I don’t remember the name) with a picture in one of my textbooks where he was giving some kind of a note to Hitler citing 6 million Jews were exterminated. The question was whether the guy was a great manager having achieved the Herculean task of exterminating 6 million people systematically.

I am not suggesting Laloo is a Nazi or something like them. However, given what he did to Bihar, I couldn’t help but put the above as an analogy.

Stupidity unlimited: India ‘concerned’ about Balochistan

2006-08-30T00:10:00.000-07:00

I was shocked to hear the press briefing by the MEA guy Navtej Sarna expressing India’s ‘deep concerns’ into the recent trouble in Pakistan’s Balochistan province following the killing of Baloch tribal chief Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti. Well, the world knows the brutal campaign the military junta is carrying out in Pakistan and the province has been historically a hotbed of secessionist movements is also not unknown to the international community.

Is it tit-for-tat for Pakistan’s interference in India’s affairs (read Kashmir)? Well, the world knows how Pakistan is actively supporting and sponsoring terror campaigns against India and has been doing so for over two decades now. By adopting the current stance, India has lost out significantly on being on the moral high ground when it came to India-Pakistan trouble in front of the world community. The Indian government’s act was like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Indian agencies like the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) might be involved in fermenting trouble there, but remaining silent on Pakistani internal affairs would have been golden. Now, the world community will be inclined to believe that India is behind the current crisis in Balochistan. Already, Pakistan had been accusing India of involvement in terror activities against Pakistan. Not surprisingly now, Pakistani authorities have latched on this stupid act.

It is highly embarrassing to be an Indian now under the present government that has an IQ of a squirrel when it comes to foreign affairs. It has put over a billion Indians into shame. Does the government realize this?

Shame, shame!

My Top 5 Hrishikesh Mukherjee moments

2006-08-29T02:24:00.000-07:00

The doyen of Hindi Cinema, Hrishikesh Mukherjee is no more. His final rites will be performed today. He has left such a legacy that it would be next to impossible for any other filmmaker to contest. There is no one today who even comes close to the genius of Hrishida.

Although it is not possible to pick up the best moments of some of his most famous and highly acclaimed films, the following scenes from the movies come back to my mind repeatedly. Here they are and mind you, they are not necessarily in the same order of my choice.

* Aashirwad (1969) : The song Ashok Kumar sang - Rail Gaadi. It was the first song sung by the actor himself that sounded like the actor after KL Sehgal. Though many other actors sang their own songs in the movies especially Ashok Kumar’s famous younger brother Kishore Kumar, somehow I don’t find them as sung by the actor himself.

* Anand (1971) : When Rajesh Khanna meets Johnny Walker for the first time.

* Guddi (1971) : The moment when the impressionable Jaya Bhaduri meets her hero Dharmendra and gets awestruck

* Abhimaan (1973) : When Amitabh Bachchan comes to bring back Jaya Bhaduri and the way she lowers her eyes and rubs her feet against each other.

* Golmaal (1979) : The way Dina Pathak runs back home as Mrs. Vimla Srivastava, enters the house through the window to become Amol Palekar’s ‘mother’ again as Mrs. Sharma.

I’m sure to regret going ahead with this post because I know very well that the moment I publish it, I would ‘remember’ several other moments. Nonetheless, I am going ahead. Do let me know if you have similar Hrishida moments to share with us.

Finally, I salute Hrishikesh Mukherjee for his contribution towards Indian Cinema. Bollywood would never be the same again, ever.

Also read full2faltu's excellent article on Hrishikesh Mukherjee.

Darrell Hair, ICC and Cricket Australia: The mask has fallen; I stand vindicated

2006-08-27T23:13:00.000-07:00

A few days back, I wrote a post on how Cricket Australia has an active agenda to dominate the cricket world. With Darrell Hair’s offer of resignation in lieu of $500,000, Malcolm Speed’s comments and ICC’s serious thoughts on ‘compensating’ Hair (that it has since denied) vindicates whatever I said.

To strengthen my stand further, now Cricket Australia is suggesting that the umpires for the Ashes series should be from Australia and England only. In other words, they are now insinuating that non-whites would be unfair to them (or they don’t want their matches to be officiated by non-whites?).

You know the real story now, right? My ‘Conspiracy Theory’ is hence proved.

Hitler’s Cross: Nothing much to be crossed about

2006-08-26T02:39:00.000-07:00

A few days back there had been quite a furor over a new Mumbai restaurant for its name – Hitler’s Cross. The restaurateur Punit Shablok claimed that the motive choosing a name like that was to differentiate itself. Nothing in the food menu suggested of Hitler or his Nazi Party. Only the name of the restaurant was such with a big picture of Hitler and the Nazi Swastika inside. Of course, the Swastika was all over – in the cutlery, signs, menu card etc.

As expected, the Jews were the most hurt. They believe that Punit Sablok by naming his restaurant as such was promoting Hitler. Sagarika Ghosh in CNN IBN questioned Punit if he had any idea about what the Nazi ideology or Nazism was, and as expected, Punit fumbled with words. It is a different story altogether, whether Sagarika himself knew much about Nazism.

Solomon, the King of Indian Jews (Jewish Society of India chairman Jonathon Solomon) was saying how misinformation (or no information on historical facts) has made today’s youth so insensitive, blah, blah, blah…

The Japanese killings of prisoners during the World War II were much worse than what happened to the Jews in Nazi occupied Europe. We tend to forget the Rape of Nanking, the Ambon torture and killings of Australian troops (especially the airmen), the tens of thousands of prisoners and forced labourers who perished working in horrific sub-human conditions building the railway lines in Thailand for the Imperial Japanese Army. The movies The Bridge on the River Kwai and Blood Oath are small depictions as to what the Japs did during World War II. Then don’t forget the Korean Comfort Women and the horrors they faced every moment.

The Nazi persecution of Jews pale in comparison with the horrors the Japs subjected to their prisoner of wars and the inhabitants of their occupied land. The plight of Asians under the Japanese was far greater than one can imagine; many folds of what the Jews faced at the hands of the Nazis.

Yet, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito not only managed to escape prosecution and execution but also stayed as the Emperor of Japan albeit without powers. Japanese politicians show little or no remorse of what their Wartime predecessors did and routinely visit places like this to pay obeisance to war criminals.

The Holocaust itself is a subject matter of debate. I firmly believe that in order to justify a land for the Jews (creation of Israel out of nothing but biblical references), the West had to create a story so horrific that humankind is moved enough to accept and support Israel. The West had to save themselves from the embarrassment because it was the European nations who were mainly responsible for whatever happened to the Jews at the hands of the Nazis. It is a historic fact that the Christian world always hated the Jews and have always persecuted them. Remember Shakespeare's Shylock in The Merchant of Venice? However, we all know now what a wrong move it was.

Where are we? Was Auschwitz any different from Trnopolje? Did you ever see the pictures of those held in the Bosnian detention camps as recently as in the 90s during the civil war Yugoslavia? Are they any different from those held in the Nazi concentration camps?

The Jews are no more precious than the others who suffered during the World War. Yet, why is this hypersensitivity and hyper-activity when it comes to anything that is vaguely anti-Semitic or goes against the interest of the Jews? Today this has resulted in anti-Islam wave across nations. The Muslims are systematically persecuted all over; racial profiling, discrimination and what not.

Hitler’s Cross is just a sign. There cannot be a single school of thought in a democracy. If Hitler was a monster, Hirohito was a greater monster and in the post-War era, Mao Zedong was an even greater killer.

Who will ban all signs of the commies, who will severe all ties with the Japanese politicians. The question is who will bell the cat?

Punit Sablok, I am very sorry that my beloved democratic country will never get your point.

India: Overwhelmingly a nation of the shameless, heartless and sadists; well on the road to be the next America

2006-08-23T23:50:00.000-07:00

On August 14, 2004, Dhananjoy Chatterjee was hanged in Kolkata for the rape and murder of Hetal Parekh, a teenaged schoolgirl. The way the guy was hanged brought about a sense of revulsion in me. It was almost choreographed like the lynching of blacks in America that went on well into the 20th Century. There was a great debate on whether the guy should have been executed at all and I followed the lively debate in the Sify Discussions and you can see how it went. I was particularly impressed by the post of goldenarcher and was amused by the replies it got.

That was two years back. This is 2006 and we see the same old sadistic mentality, this time not by the 'System' but by vigilante justice. The lynching of four youths in Bihar’s Ara district in the presence of police is testimony to the fact that somewhere deep down our hearts, we are sadists. The bloodcurdling scenes of the youths being beaten and then choked to death in front of hundreds of people, media and the police have left me with deep doubts on whether I am a member of a civilized society. If I go by the definition of 'being civilized', I can see no reason why I shouldn’t categorize myself with the savage. And, we criticize the Taliban, the Iranians for barbarism!

Then comes the tragic death of five people who drowned waiting for help for eleven hours (!) in the River Khari in Pali Rajasthan. Eleven hours and a distance of just over 100 meters to cover, yet nothing done to save the ill-fated guys. If you put yourself for a couple of minutes in their positions mentally when they were waiting to be rescued, crying and waving for help for eleven long hours, you can imagine the horror they went through. District administration officials, police, firefighters, soldiers and the hundreds of onlookers were not enough. There was no aerial attempt to rescue them, no full-hearted effort at all. Eleven hours, just imagine it didn’t happen in a flash before anyone could understand! Then came the classic from Vasundhara Raje – 'Should the on looking minister have jumped on the rampaging river to save them?' Thick-skinned people have no shame, no remorse, and no emotions at all. Khulla Panga has an emotive article on this.

A few weeks back, the rescue of Prince captivated the national imagination. Tears were followed by prayers all over the nation by all the faiths, which was followed by overwhelming good wishes to the rescuers followed again by tears – this time of joy when the boy was eventually dug out. Similarly, a few months back, when a certain TV channel showed how an old woman was treated by her daughter-in-law, it invoked some strong emotions across the nation.

What does this show? We are same (or maybe even worse) than what Americans were until it suddenly metamorphosed itself to a great country championing freedom and human rights (at least on the surface level). However, if you scrap the surface a little you would find that the criminal justice system in America is one of the harshest in the entire world. But then, it is reminiscent of the barbarians they once were (not so long ago). The more evolved than the rest were able to convince the lesser evolved into doing things covertly and thus we see America the way we see it now. Guantanamo Bay, secret prisons, Abu Ghraib and Afghanistan is the hidden face of the monster.

Great Britain became the superpower that it was after a history of disemboweling prisoners, torturing and swinging them from the docks of Greenwich and all over the world. It became successful but then America succeeded Great Britain as the next superpower following a campaign of public lynchings, racial discrimination, juvenile executions (that the Supreme Court banned recently in 2005).

Does that mean India is next on the line to be the next superpower? Well, the signs tell all and we indeed are on the path to become one in the next 50 years or so. Nah! It won’t be China for all the nations that became true superpowers were democratic from the start and with a thriving intelligentsia with the freedom to change thoughts. China can become the next superpower, but it is destined to be doomed like the Soviet Union, unless of course it goes for a full and true democracy. So India it will be!

The Guru will be back soon with his thoughts and view. Au revoir.

Ustad Bismillah Khan: The legend who got everything but what matters most

2006-08-22T00:45:00.000-07:00

The shehnai maestro Bismillah Khan is no more. It gives me immense pride to say that I had the opportunity to see him in one of the lanes dotted with zardawallahs (scented chewing tobacco vendors) that lead to the Dashashwamedha Ghat in Varanasi way back in 1994 just the month after I appeared for my higher secondary exams. I had heard so many things about the great Indian musician that I stood in absolute awe when I saw him coming from the opposite side accompanied by an elderly man and a few youngsters whom I thought was his relatives. One of the zardawallahs told me that it was indeed Bismillah Saheb and I suddenly felt like I was seeing a rock star, something like my father facing John Lennon in the 60s. He was wearing cotton kameez and pyjamas and had finely trimmed white beard (which always fascinated me) and the trademark Gandhi topi-like cap that we saw so him in many times. I guess he was coming from attending a formal occasion then.

Anyway, that was 12 years back and I was just 17. I know it would be very hard to believe, but I loved his shehnai and even as a child I remember when one of my maternal uncles asked me to guess who was playing it on the radio, I promptly replied – Ustad Bismillah Khan!

It gives me a lot of grief really to know that though he might have been bestowed the highest civilian award – Bharat Ratna, he died literally in penury. Bismillah Khan himself had this grievance against the government. A man who prided himself to be an Indian, who took Indian classical music to dizzying heights across the world, who mesmerized the entire world with the haunting, electrifying and emotional tunes of his shehnai, a man who had been an epitome of communal harmony in this world deserved much more than what he got.

At least the nation showed the kind of respect the he truly deserved by declaring a day of national mourning and bid him the final farewell with full State honours complete with a 36-gun salute.

Alas! Bismillah Khan got everything life – fame, respect, honours but not what he needed most – a life of relative well-being. Hope he forgives us all.

Bismillah Khan’s legend will live on as long as the shehnai continues to sing.

Darrell Hair: Part of larger Aussie conspiracy

2006-08-21T23:04:00.000-07:00

The Australian Cricket Board or Cricket Australia as it is known now has elaborate plans for world domination in cricket. So far, it has been fairly successful. Well, right from scheduling their test matches to use saboteurs (by infiltrating them into successful teams) to planting umpires like Darrell Hair.

Let me explain each one of them briefly.

1. Clever scheduling of fixes: The Aussies play cricket when it's Summer there and tour places like the Indian Sub-continent when the cricket playing season is the worst, that's early Summer or late Summer but never in late Autumn or Winter when it's the best time there. This has improved their ratings and wins more than their playing skills ever had. Except for the Ashes, it has always been advantage Australia whenever Australia tours abroad. However, that's advantage only half lost as England plays in Australia when it is burning like hell there.

The Aussie Board must be patted on their backs for thinking so deep and schedule their cricket playing season at home during November - January so to carry out what I would term as -- Daylight Robbery. Has anyone thought of this before? Maybe, here is one reason why most of the Ashes contests went to Australia notwithstanding some of the very fine players they have produced.

So that way, it takes over twice the effort for Test playing Nations to beat Australia Down Under. Perhaps that's the reason why it was West Indies that beat Australia there last in 91. Cricket in West Indies is played for the first half of the season with the second half going down the drain literally due to the rains.

2. Using saboteurs: Greg Chappell is a prime example of how he used Saurav Ganguly during India’s last tour Down Under in 2003-2004. I won’t be surprised if Cricket Australia has used him through Ian to infiltrate into the Indian dressing room and start the rut. What did we see then? India under the aggressive Ganguly dominated the Test series. It was under Ganguly the team developed aggression and the right kind of players were picked up. Greg Chappell ‘helped’ Ganguly on his technique to play on fast and bouncy pitches. Now it seems he was just using Ganguly as means to get into the Indian dressing room as a coach so that he can destroy the team and get the mentor of the team, Ganguly out. It serves Australia’s motive right - Come what may, we don’t want to have any competition.

Now as a reward for his service to the cause of Cricket Australia, Greg is invited to coach the Australian team. Also, the ICC might have a few motives to see Indian Cricket divided. A little investigation would unearth the truth.

3. Planting umpires to instigate teams into wrongdoings: What Darrell Hair did was all according to the Great Aussie Gameplan. It was well thought of, planned and executed. It started with saving Shane Warne from being overshadowed by not only the greatest spinner, but the greatest ever bowler Muttiah Muralitharan. He called him for chucking and the hell broke loose. However, the coward Darrell Hair is, he couldn’t call him for chucking every ball Muralitharan bowled. If he did ‘chuck’, then he didn’t chuck only the three balls that Hair called!

This time around, Pakistan was on the verge of winning the Test. Pakistanis are infamous for their ball-tampering exploits. Darrell Hair didn’t like the Pakistanis much. Cricket Australia had a long-term agenda in place. Darrell Hair got his moment, the opportunity he was looking for as he was already at crosshairs with the Pakistan Cricket Board and the team. What he did at the oval will go down as one of the worst acts in the inventory of the blackest deeds in the annals of the glorious game. Then, did anyone follow what Malcolm Speed had to say about Inzy and co? Speed is an Aussie too!

England (read ECB) meanwhile is playing innocent in the whole affair. After all, Hair was not their appointed umpire. However, in my opinion ECB should have come out and spoke against the ‘forced forfeiture’ standing beside their guests. Why did not they protest against his appointment in the series against Pakistan given Hair’s penchant to stir controversy against Asian teams?

If the Pakistanis tampered the ball, they deserved penalty, however not in the fashion that happened at Oval.

Darrell Hair not only mishandled the matter, but in his enthusiasm to award England the game against Pakistan, he unwittingly dropped his mask that exposed his racist face.

Reservation in India: Congress leading India back to Quit India days

2006-05-15T15:08:00.000-07:00

When our constitutional fathers were scripting the articles on reservation for the backward sections of our society who were subjected to the abominable caste system in India from times immemorial, they had the noble idea of actually bringing about the upliftment of the sections of the society who were chartered into the schedules of various development mandatory initiatives and programmes. The idea was to bring the whole population to a level playing field in the years to come.

What did they do wrong? In the nascent democracy that India was in the 50s, they should have actually reserved a quota of 50% in education, employment etc with 5% of it skimmed off every 5 years so that in 50 years there would have been no quota, no reservation, nothing at all. The children of 21st century India would be at least socially equal.

In 1989, VP Singh, the loser politician and his coalition of populist politicians played the Mandal card – the Commission headed by BP Mandal who advocated reservation for not only the members of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, but also the Most Backwards and the Other Backward castes. This resulted in large-scale anti-Mandal protests and scores of students committed suicide, often in public self-immolation bids as shown by the DU student Rajeev Goswami (who later went on to become the General Secretary of the DU Students Union, later resigned into the clouds of oblivion and died in 2004 as a handicapped baker in his mid-30s). Scores of young people died and the period itself registered as a black period in the annals of free India.

17 years hence, the derelict politician Arjun Singh, who once missed the PM’s chair owing to some internal bickering in the Congress after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination and now a man with one foot on his grave and the other on a banana peel, is trying to invoke the ghost of the Black Era of 1989-90. He is doing his best to put old wine in a new bottle with the motivation which is just what made the VP Singh government commit hara-kiri.

VP Singh now is irrelevant to India’s politics now. Arjun too is, but then the Congress-led UPA is holding the reins of the government. It is this reason only why the actions of the imbecile is being noted. Congress is the main culprit here for allowing the imbecile Arjun’s childish behaviour. However, his ain’t gonna last long. Already we are seeing countrywide protests with medical students showing the leading light. Others have joined the agitation as well and it is gaining momentum like nothing before.

India of 90 and India of 2006 is as different as chalk from cheese. This time there might be lesser number of self-immolations, but then the avalanche might just prove what many had been suspecting before:

As the candlelight flares up just before getting extinguished, the Congress is also showing the same characteristics before being completely resigned to history. They are hell-bent upon trying to move India back to the days of Quit India movement when we were backward, deprieved and illiterate; but then, it is unwittingly putting India even further back, as far back as the time when the Bolsheviks stormed the Alexander Palace during the October Revolution in 1917 in Russia which was followed by the execution of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Romanov, the last Tsar of Russia. [The point here is that we are going backwards in terms of development, so don't get lost here.]

Why am I saying this? Anyone noticing the march of the Reds since the last general elections? Is the Maoist movement escaping your notice my dear friends or for the fact the Commie-in-Chief, Comrade Karat and other members of his cabal holding secret meetings or negotiating with the ultras who can sing only one song – China’s Chairman is our Chairman? The day is not far off when the commies will overtake India and other parts of the Subcontinent like Nepal.

We are in deep shit folks and we have nothing but ourselves to blame for this. The time is now to act and uproot the UPA and its ‘outside supporters’ for they are the ones who will destroy us.

The text book to read now is George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Remember the 'Revolution', the pigs?

That's all folks. The Guru will be back soon.

Au revoir.

DesiPundit: Rapidly becoming irrelevant

2006-05-13T16:02:00.000-07:00

DesiPundit was once upon a time my favourite ‘Web 2.0 joint’ from where I gathered info about whatever the Indian blogosphere was abuzz with. Alas! It is no more the same now. The ‘plan’ or the 'scheme' is being hijacked and only a selected few bloggers from India (which includes some really substandard ones) manage to find some sort of mention in it again and again.

It has lost really all credibility. This time it was too much for me to digest. It posted a Tamil blog in Tamil script and that only the Tamils can understand.

There was no attempt to translate the content either. It makes no sense to me as it wouldn’t to the rest of the country.

Not relating to the post in DesiPundit; I would like to say that Tamil is no Hindi and notwithstanding what JJ’s demand’s are to make the language a national language (which the previous govt. didn’t accede to proving that it hadn’t lost its marbles then), Tamil is in reality just another language like the score and half India has. It is not spoken by more people in India or abroad than Bhojpuri or for that matter Marathi or Bengali. In any case, it is not even understood by about 80% of the population if not more.

The auto-rickshaw drivers in Chennai would like to differ though. Have you experienced it? They are a scum-rotten bunch of thugs actually.

Lastly, a word for DesiPundit. If you want some sort of credibility for yourself, refrain from such things. If you can't, work a bit more, take pains translate such posts. Also, try to look beyond your nose, there are more bloggers than the ones you are hanging to for over a year.

Google Analytics vs. StatCounter: Round One goes to StatCounter

2006-05-10T14:33:00.000-07:00

I received an invitation from Google the day before for participation in the Google Analytics program. Google acquired the much-hyped Urchin a little over a year back, which was regarded as the best web stats provider with lots and lots of details.

I promptly inserted the invitation code and signed up for Google Analytics. Actually, this very blog of mine has both StatCounter and Google Analytics code inserted in the template. Having said that, I would like to make it clear that I would use Google Analytics for all the websites that I own for it certainly has some tools that I would need for as the erstwhile Urchin tag said – ‘For Deep Analytics’.

Anyway, that’s not what I am writing this post for discussion. Actually, in the two hours I spent on analyzing Google Analytics, I have found that it had too much frills. Not only that, I found the following ‘snags’ in it:

a) The stats were not real time. There is a considerable delay in stats updating.
b) Mysteriously, the 3rd graphic in the ‘Executive Overview’ that has a world map which shows the cities most of your visitors came from is missing now. It has been like this for the last two hours now. I thought that I might have clicked off something unwittingly in the settings but then it wasn’t the case.
c) On click opening a link in a new browser, most of the times it asks for signing in again. Strangely, if you happen to close the window without signing off and reopen the browser soon enough, you would gain access to the admin panel without even signing in! Some faulty cookie scripting is responsible. There is no security issue here.

There would be a few more bugs like these; I am sure of it. If you happen to find any, please do let me know.

Anyway, talking of StatCounter, well, it provides real time stats, the user interface is very friendly and you will get all the details that you would ever need. Creating projects is perhaps the easiest there and the whole setup is as clean as a whistle.

A few months back, I was wondering if StatCounter would survive Google’s deadly game where it purchases an already established web company and distributes it for free thus killing competitors of similar services. Very Microsoftly, wouldn’t you agree?

Anyway, back to Google Analytics now. If this remains the state of affairs, StatCounter need not worry. It will still have many, many buyers. Have you noticed that if Google happens to be the first one to innovate something (like its AdWords program), it charges a premium?

Before winding up, I would like to share a curious observation I made while signing up for Google Analytics today. I was given a link to sign up for a Google account if I didn’t have one already in order to get entry to the Google Analytics program in the invitation letter.

Since I already had a Gmail account I didn’t. Just used the one that I had and signed up for it. I thought you got a Gmail account only through invitation and can’t sign up that way. Well, then what is this? Would someone try and let me know? I could’ve done that myself, but would really like you to try out. *HEH*

Now Google is going the MSN Passport way where you can have access to a wide range of services with one single user ID. Passport is now history, but history repeats itself and its latest avatar is Google.

Did I hear someone say déjà vu? *wink*

The Guru back to basics with comments on a bloated snob, Google and Microsoft in his vitriolic self

2006-05-04T15:03:00.000-07:00

Ok, I have to confess (rather admit is the correct word here) that I have finally got over the bug that bit me recently to follow some current affairs news and analyze them like the wanker from al-Qaeda sentenced to life in prison and Kaavya Vishwanathan, the Harvard sophomore who landed in some real hot soup and found much to her dismay that it wasn’t curry after all.

One more confession; I would like to make is that I do have a penchant for reading the blogs of some airy-fairy females, some snobby males and some who consider themselves like mega stars (as their attitudes belie) like Gaurav Sabnis, the accidental hero of Indian blogosphere in 2005 owing to the IIPM scam.

Though I knew that he was a lamer (as most of the fancily labeled IIM grads are) for the first time I felt that he exposed himself when it came in analyzing companies.

Let’s hear what he says;

“I have never been a big fan of anti-trust laws, but even under that premise, this reeks of hypocrisy. Firefox and Opera, both have Google as the default search engine...
You may want to point out the holes in Google's argument, and call it hypocritical. But it would be futile. I'm sure even P&B know how ridiculous it is. But you see, Google is a corporation now. And M$ is its competitor…”

Well, being a geek and Gaurav’s senior by a couple of years in Management studies from Bangalore (the then happening city in information technology) from the mid-nineties through 2000, I know what the MS phenomenon was (and for the matter it still is) and what the Google phenomenon is now.

I have never been a fan of MS, but I must admit that MS has been a part of my life since 1993, and yes, that was before the Windows 95 days. Having said that, there was a time when I truly loathed Microsoft but in the same time made Bill Gates my guru subconsciously.

Anyway, Google may have procured Upstartle, the makers of the online word processor Writely, pegged as the competitor to MS Office [upon which, my good mate Om has a great analytical article], did make some waves with it’s AdSense initiative and made noises here and there, launching GoogleTalk and supporting the standardization and evolution of these protocols through the Jabber Software Foundation’s community standards process and subsequently launching the GoogleTalk API.

But, is Google’s arsenal stock good enough to take on Microsoft? Well, as far as I am concerned, Google’s search monopoly is under threat now from MSN search (and I am serious), Yahoo! has launched its own text ad program and MS is going to follow soon. Google isn't exactly doing as brightly as people percieve it to be.

In fact, Yahoo!, though not in the watch list of those who are waiting to see the demise of MS, is making the best and the correct moves now by procuring the right type of companies, web 2.0 companies to be precise. Flickr, and del.icio.us are under Yahoo’s kitty already.

Nah! I am drunk tonight, so excuse me folks for not going into deep analysis. The bottom line is that Google is not threatening MS; Google is just hype only. Google is not even close to Yahoo! and MS faces no competition from Yahoo!

I promise to discuss Google and MS in the next few days; but would like to urge to remember the truth. I also promise to discuss Google’s Page Rank, which I believe is the worst conning marketing gimmick by a new economy company in the last 2-3 yrs or so.

I dunno what will happen in the next life, but in our lifetimes, Microsoft Corporation will be the number one company as far as information technology is concerned, as it is now.

One must remember, we may loathe MS, but we can’t wish its demise or even afford to wait for it. After all no cow died because of a curse spelt by a vulture, isn't it?

IIM Lucknow might have taught Gaurav the Principles of Management, but I doubt if it taught him anything else apart from those second hand thoughts leftover by real thinkers.

IIM Lucknow, or for that matter all the IIMs in India are 3rd Class institutions when you compare them with institutions of repute around the world. Since we are Indians, we tend to give them much importance despite the fact that those mills produce the abominable babu characters that we come across in a typical sarkari organization in the country.

The only difference is that the IIM babu suffers from an artificial superiority complex brought upon by the labeling they get from socialites who discuss their sons (and sometimes daughters) getting admission in them over a peg or two of whisky.

That’s all folks from the Guru tonight! I promise to bring you lots of Google, Microsoft and ‘derelicts of the real intellectual world’ like the Sabnis bloke cooking bhurjee in Marathi, which is as a matter of fact, his best attempt in the Indian blogosphere.

Au revoir.

Moussaoui wins the win-win game, can seriously hope to walk free now

2006-05-03T14:52:00.000-07:00

It seems like a fairy tale script going true for the radical Zacarias Moussaoui, the French citizen of Moroccan origin who prides himself to be an Al-Qaeda alumnus. The jury in the trial of Moussaoui reached a verdict that he rather is sent in prison for life than being executed. Wow!!

This proud member of the terror organization went on record that he was very happy to see Americans losing near and dear ones in the 911 attacks that he failed to be a part of directly.

He ridiculed the relatives of the September 11, 2001 victims, mocked the Americans, the judiciary and far from showing any remorse, proudly declared that he dreams that the US will release him in a prisoner exchange programme.

Well, the jury could have decided that he died. If he was sentenced to be executed, his dream to be a free man owing to a prisoner exchange programme would have died with him for it was quite possible that a high value American target wouldn’t have fallen prey to terrorist abductors.

Sparing his life actually gives him enough time to live on that hope and as things stand now, the Americans have actually played in the hands of the mastermind whose master game-plan gave him everything that he wanted.

The end result? Well, Moussaoui actually slapped the American public right across the face, mocked at their misery, made them spend money on his trial and investigation yet got away scot-free. In the prison, he can hope to live many, many years. His security is guaranteed by the American taxpayers’ money and the food he eats in the pen, no to mention his healthcare.

One day, he will fly out on the taxpayers’ money just as many of his accomplices were flown in to the legal and territorial limbo controlled by the Americans called Guantanamo Bay.

Americans are stupid, the Moussaoui trial proved it and the jury stamped its verdict on it that reads – Yea Mr. Zacarias Moussaoui, we agree with you, we all deserve to be buggered by you, after all we are a nation of idiots epitomized by our president who had been a village simpleton all his life.

Some guys will never ever be able to realize this like this bloke called Raymond who is so euphoric about the jury decision and this another epitome of the stupid American citizenry called Tony too is dancing despite getting smeared in shit Moussaoui excreted for the Americans in the courtroom.

Bravo you idiots, rejoice to your hearts content. It will be worthwhile to see how your monkey faces look like when the Moussaoui guy who dared you all walks free just as he predicted.

The Kaavya Tale: Insecure and yet to grow up Gawker Media bares its racist skin

2006-05-03T08:12:00.000-07:00

Pathetic blog network Gawker Media and its cronies have left no stone unturned in launching a vicious attack on the teenaged Harvard sophomore Kaavya Vishwanathan that has all the signs of underlying racist connotations.

The West even in the 21st Century is yet to come to terms that the power shift of the world is taking towards the East and by this I mean intellectual, economic and military power. The West has spawned not one but two generations of plainly stupid populations riding on the inherited wealth they got from their highly enterprising, wise, hardworking and at many a time opportunist forefathers. A glaring example of this is the entity called Gawker Media with its sub-standard editorial panel and even more sub-standard and pathetic content. The best example comes from the fact that despite such cheap and kiddish takes on serious issues, it still gathers to draw a good number of visitors who gulp the shit they dish out every now and then.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the commentators of the blog need to be first approved by Gawker, else you can't go and post a comment on heir blog. Their gaming blog Kotaku is already seeing a decline on visitor levels. I sometimes wonder if they are run by a bunch of kindergarten dropouts who happened to get an idea to start Gawker.

Kaavya is a teenager, student of a premier school in America, beautiful lass and what's more is that she is already rich and famous. This was too much for the subscribers of the Gawker School of Thought to digest for they don't come near the intellectual levels of her disposed sanitary napkin.

Kaavya has already said that she was strongly inspired from Megan F. McCafferty's works. How can she be accused of plagiarism when she didn't lift the theme of her stories?

The book that she composed – 'How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life' is a totally original story. She might have used passages similar to her idol McCafferty, but that's all right.

Musicians, actors and politicians etc do try to emulate their idols and often they subconsciously use notes, mannerisms and ways of their heroes. Does that mean they should be labeled as cheats and plagiarizers?

Does anyone of the pathetic registered commentators of this post by Gawker know that even John F Kennedy's famous quote – "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" – is also a plagiarized quote?

[P.S. I am unable to recall the name of the 19th bloke who said this, I vaguely remember that he was either a Judge or a Senator who first quoted this from where Kennedy was 'inspired'. I shall update you as soon as I find the names and maybe the links. In the meantime, if you know then please let me know.]

So Kaavya has done only what many famous people did before. Kaavya has done something that Gawker's re-writers of posts do for a living. Only difference is that at 17, Kaavya wasn't able to fine-tune what many do and what Gawker certainly does day in and day out for its sustenance.

Suryanarayana beheading: An ‘accidental’ suicide

2006-05-01T14:12:00.000-07:00

K Suryanarayan, the engineer abducted and beheaded by the followers of a subhuman philosophy called the Taliban today, might have thought of one thing before his head was yanked off. Then, I am sure his confusion over his own thoughts must have made him feel utterly miserable.

“Why did I come to Afghanistan of all the places? If at all I did, what was the motive? Was it Manjula, or was it the young Sapna or both of them with their children? Or was it simply because I have had enough of adventure with bigamy and got away without anything thrilling happening, so decided to try for something dangerous? Anyway, whatever it is, I can’t really say whether I should have pushed myself this far.”

The official version from the first family (whose images were on almost all newspapers) was that he went to Afghanistan for the better future of his kids. Ok, every father no matter however bad once in a while thinks about the well-being of his kids. So can’t really blame the mom for claiming that the bloke went there for the kids.

Anyway, forget the family affairs now that are turning out to be utterly disgraceful for the reputation of two women and the future of a few innocent kids. To be honest, I have least sympathy for both the women now shedding tears over the prospect of losing the ex-gratia amount declared by the government and the other benefits that will follow.

The Taliban as we know are a bunch of retarded freaks that had been made dangerous by Uncle Sam in connivance with the Pakis by arming them. Now these retards have tried quite a few things spectacular and achieved moderate success. Those who were lucky enough to have been captured by Uncle Sam’s agents are now learning the ways of the civilized world that they would never have the chance to emulate. So they would die with voids in their hearts of having ‘missed out on the real fun’

Now back to Suryanarayan. How on earth can anyone land up in a place like Afghanistan given the situation there and the prevailing atmosphere for unguarded foreign civilians? I don’t think that the earlier beheading of Kutty got lost on him.

The story is simple; the lure of lucre is far greater than the risks involved in getting one’s head yanked off. My heart goes out to Kutty who didn’t have too many choices as a BRO member but to head towards Afghanistan. But as far as Suryanarayan is concerned, I just can’t accept that he didn’t have choices either.

Well, maybe he didn’t, greed didn’t allow him any choice. The blogosphere is being verbose against the Taliban. Well, they are like blaming fire from burning, rotten scum from stinking, dogs from barking, sun from lighting. The Taliban did what they are meant to do in this planet.

Suryanarayan wasn’t a ‘fearless’ human being. He was plain stupid, or maybe greedy or it was just a case of suicide, but accidental. In any case Afghanistan is no place to work.

As far as this guy is concerned, he is simply mad.

As for the two women out there, all I can say is – Happy Sobbing!

Rajkumar death: Bangalore population’s lack of spine exposed yet again

2006-04-26T14:46:00.000-07:00

I can be called as a bona fide man to comment on Bangalore and Bangaloreans. I spent the best years of my life in the city for my graduation and post-graduation from the Bangalore University.

I have had a very good time out here in my five and half-year tenure as a strapping young student from Bihar who never saw so many neon lights in his life as the Commercial, MG and Brigade had to display. That was in the mid-nineties through 2000.

The best thing about Bangalore then was the free society, the pubs, the bars in every corner and the babes with the shortest skirts you would ever see. I fluctuated between New Papareddypalya to Puttanahalli in JP Nagar where a hyacinth-infested lake stifled many a bird (at least that’s what I believed). The favourite joints in both the places were Swamis’ eateries. The Papareddypalya Swami died (I learnt about that in 2004) and Puttanahalli changed beyond words. The Oxford Dental College and the Oxford Physiotherapy College were no longer what they were during the times of Vismadh and Jasmeet. Of course Bob and Mickey, the Papareddypalya refugees to Puttanahalli weren’t there as well.

The worst thing about Bangalore was that the locals who prided in calling themselves ‘Bangalore localites’. They believed that it was a godsend opportunity for them to milk the students from other than south India in whatever possible way they could for money. Little they did understand that there were many stories behind each guy/gal sent to Bangalore for studies and how their families arranged money. They were always on the lookout for the slightest opening that could be exploited for some quick cash.

“Oh you have a bike? No probs just surrender us the papers; take 15K @ 20% interest on the principal a month. Yes, we would definitely deduct the first month’s interest right at the time when we give you the cash. As long as we are there and you have something to pawn, never worry about cash.”

Young guys were taken in. They boozed, made merry and lost everything, often their educational careers as well. Even the private colleges were run by blood-thirsty vampires like the ones in Papareddypalya and JP Nagar. Yes, blood-sucking money-minded vampires they were, an overwhelming population of heartless, unsympathetic and thick-skinned bastards, who would not hesitate to pimp their own mothers’ asses.

In autumn 2000 I went there along with a guy whom I used to study with in Bangalore to get his mentally screwed brother checked in National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS). I had to wait in the specimen collection centre to get the result of his blood test when I blundered calling Mickey to pick me up from – the specimen collection centre! Well, he couldn’t help but tell me that he knew all the while that I would indeed end up in the ‘Specimen Collection Centre’ of NIMHANS one day!

[Nah, I ain’t a mental case or a specimen to be showcased in the NIMHANS Specimen Collection Centre.]

Anyway, during that time the ‘encountered’ brigand Koose Muniswamy Veerappa alias Veerappan abducted the Kannada actor Dr. Rajkumar. For the 11 days we had been there, there weren’t any bar open, no entertainment, nothing. We had to pay the ‘localites’ twice the amount for our booze during the stay. Then, when we returned without seeing any improvement on the mental status of the psycho, the bars suddenly opened. Rajkumar was released and he landed in Bangalore in a chopper; just like it happens in the movies he acted in. It wasn’t that the local population wasn’t quenched of their ‘spiritual thirst’ during the abduction drama; there was always the bootlegger round the corner, the CSD canteens and of course the Tamil Nadu border.

Ok, the old actor died, he was 77 and quite ripe to die given his lifestyle (that I am simply not interested to elaborate here). The chap whose release from an outlaw cost 100s of crores of rupees for both the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu governments, on whose release efforts by the public by the way of shutdowns of commercial establishments cost the exchequers of both the states by the millions and who at the end of the day chose to pay a ransom of 30, 00, 00,000 rupees (about 8 million US dollars then) is simply not worth any respect.

Acting on movies and in the process entertaining people is one thing, but engaging in criminal activities with a staged drama of getting kidnapped by a top outlaw with the intention of financially helping the brigand is another thing.

I don’t want to disrespect the guy who had a fan-base in the entire Kannadiga population, for all the members in the population don’t deserve rebuke.

What I want to bring to the attention of all of you here reading this as well as the Bangalore localites is the fact that despite priding yourself as the most advanced population in terms of silicon technology, do you have the count of how many cricket matches you chose to expose your uncivilized existence?

Rioting (causing deaths) on the death of a man whom you worshipped as the god you never had is a perfect example of the culture that I saw during my student days there, which is, deriving some sadistic pleasure out of others’ misery.

The ones who burnt the cars of people were simply jealous of the cars that glittered in their eyes. The government banned festive hunting, there, yet they continued doing so. Go to Shivagi Nagar or Kalasipalya, you would see how sadistically they thrash and prod the bulls into pulling massive amounts of loads.

This is in the city of animal welfare, information technology and numerous private institutions offering the ‘very best of education’.

The phenomenon of Bangaloreans getting berserk is not the main thing here, for they are yet to evolve to the level of civilized humans. The objection here is that despite exposing themselves like this, they still are shameless and audacious enough to call themselves ‘advanced’.

I am laughing now. Shame on you Bangaloreans.

[Please note that by the word Bangaloreans, I have meant an overwhelming majority of the local Bangalore inhabitants that include (apart from the Kannadigas) most of the 3rd generations of the immigrants from parts of the country other than the South and 2nd generations of South Indians settled there.]

The ‘Metro-sexual’ Delhiwallah

2006-02-01T23:30:00.000-08:00

Since the Delhi Metro’s Blue Line from Dwarka to Barakhamba Road became operational, I had been taking that for work in East Delhi. This way, I ride all the three lines – Blue, Yellow and Red twice every day, on my way to work and back. Six trains in all and six hundred reasons to stay interested throughout the trips to and fro.

Yesterday however, I was offloaded in Subhas Nagar as reported in India Daily on my way to work due to some snag in the electric lines along with quite a few trainloads of passengers that really ran into the thousands. Later on, the morning papers today reported that a bird who decided to jettison droppings on some electrical device caused the snag. What caught my eye wasn’t what was being reported in the post, but the line – “I can’t even do my normal bird-watching, if you get my drift” in the text message sent by the blogger to his workplace. Mate, I got the drift, I got the drift! So you see, you can’t blame me for the only one with a roving pair of eyes. We must be in good numbers out there, we sure are!

I must admit that though I am the ‘Chosen One’ by the guy upstairs himself, I am not above having any fetishes. I have feet and long hair fetish. If I happen to notice a girl from a distance with great hair, I try to get close so that I can have a look at her feet. A well-maintained hair and well-pedicured feet on lacy footwear exposing the beautiful toes is my biggest turn-on actually. However, any footwear showing the maximum of a beautiful foot is also a great turn-on and if the girl is wearing an ankle (and calf) exposing lower clothing like a skirt, shorts or capris, then there is nothing like it. It would have already made my day. Feet with long toenails look ugly, unhygienic and most of the times grotesque as well. No matter how well polished/coloured they are, it looks gross.

Winters are not very good time for the likes of me as most of the lower limbs tend to be covered, legs, ankles, feet. It sucks to see a female in sports shoes and round snub-faced boots. Gosh! How could they wear them? It sucks even more when they wear socks in their floaters. That’s the biggest turn-off really. If you belong to my club, you would understand what I mean to say and agree, won’t ya?

My fetish for hair is a big complex one. I simply dig for long hair, but then any well-done hair – be it shoulder-length or chic, a neat ponytail or let-loose curly – attracts me. But then, I have a condition, the hair shouldn’t cover the sides of the face so that profile of the face isn’t visible. Women who think that they look very good, smart or sexy may put to rest their thoughts on this. I come across countless such females who are ‘hair-all-over’ without a visible face and no one has the time to overtake and then turn around to see her face. If it is not visible from at least a side angle, it simply isn’t worth seeing.

Like the beautiful-good footwear-ankle/calf exposing lower dress combo, the hair-ears with nice rings combo is the most attractive here. So if you are one such female and reading this, you know what to do next time, right? Make sure that the side strands of your hair are tucked behind your ears so that your face is visible next time you decide to take a public transport, especially the Delhi Metro; I might just be watching you.

In the last Winter (it’s Spring now if it escaped your notice), I found myself deprived of the pleasure of seeing beautiful feet to my heart’s content. So, to make up, subconsciously though, I developed this ‘adventurous habit’ of trying to touch the tresses of the pretty birds with a sudden ‘accidental’ brush with hand in the overcrowded morning trains, especially during boarding and alighting.

Will tell you a secret; the best chance to brush your hand with the gorgeous tresses of a female comes when you are traveling in a bus and seated behind one such endowed pretty thing. All you need to do is hold the top of the seat above the seat before you, right behind the head of the girl and she will oblige you herself. You don’t need to do anything and no one can blame you of eve teasing for it is fully justified to hold on to something when you are having a really bumpy ride! (You are most welcome!)

Au revoir folks. The Guru will be back again with his stories, thoughts and jnan sooner than you may expect.

An imposter, a book fair, a chicken leg and a couple of celebrities for you today

2006-01-29T08:45:00.000-08:00

I finally got the time to sit down and pay attention to my blog that had been laying orphan for quite some days now.

The last week had been very hectic. For a guy who loves to laze around, a 17-hr working day and 6-day working week is a bit too much. Still carrying on; I have the belief that with my extra-ordinary talents in almost anything from lovemaking to making hay I am going to earn more by working less sooner than later.

This week, I had been visiting other people’s blogs to see what they had been writing. I know of an imposter here in the blogosphere from New Delhi who blog as a female drawing hundreds of visitors in ‘her’ blog everyday. No links here, because I don’t want to upset his applecart. Besides if he is having fun playing a ‘she’, let him have it.

She being a ‘he’ knows very well what would attract males – salivating, frustrated and opportunistic males. So ‘she’ plays it up a bit, shows ‘herself’ as a vulnerable single female in her ‘twenties’, living independently with a penchant for discos and drinks. *Perfect recipe for getting genuine and not so genuine male and often female sympathy*

He is so successful in playing the role that his blog gets a huge number of comments on each post and from June 2004 till now with an average of less than one post per day the blog’s Google PR has become 5! What’s more, it is certain that his blog would get a higher PR as Google would update its PR soon.

‘She’ had been blog-rolled by virtually every serious blogger from India (save a few maybe) and is all over the blogosphere. Good job mate, keep it up. The world is full of gullible guys who would do anything to get under the pants of a girl. *Ah-em!*

So next time you feel for any blogging female’s tears, think twice especially before posting a comment. Someone might be having a mighty good laugh at your heart’s expense. So much for feelings. *Sigh*

Anyway, I am Beau Peep, it is my duty to give jnan. That’s why I am here for, so don’t mind if I induced some confusion in you. After all, we humans are all fallible.

Well, yours truly went to the World Book Fair at Pragati Maidan. I felt that this year, there is something seriously missing in it. I really don’t know what it was, but if you had been visiting it for some years now, you would feel it. IBH didn’t come this year; the crowd was not as enthusiastic as you would expect to see on a sunny Spring Sunday afternoon and this despite Delhi Metro cutting short the commuting time so drastically along with the grind of taking a bus or driving from a far-flung corner like Dwarka. Apart from the entry fee of five rupees, everything else seemed to be really unreasonably priced. The chicken-rice that I had was very poorly made and it sucked big time to buy a glass of water for 5 bucks!

I then saw Mrinal Pandey for the first time in my life for real. I was really infatuated with her at a certain point in my boyhood. She grayed quite unbelievably, but her cheeks were as luscious as before. Then I hopped into the Youth Centre to see Srikanth answering questions. He must have answered the questions that were being asked a million times before. Well, this wasn’t the first time I saw him. In fact, it was the first time I was at arm’s length to him. That felt really nice. After the tête-à-tête session was over, people almost mobbed him when a ‘civilized’ female started asking the crowd to show (read prove) that they have indeed evolved.

So there you are folks; all over now. I suddenly realized having dinner is important than blogging, especially when you only devoured the leg of the pathetic chicken who laid its life for the cause of a damp book fair.

Au revoir. Hope to meet you through this soon again.

A thing of innocence is beauty & joy for ever

2006-01-16T04:34:00.000-08:00

How many times we have seen how a small incident can make our day and remain with us throughout the day as a feel-good factor?

Today, it happened with me on my way to work at Kashmere Gate Metro Station.

I travel to Shrestha Vihar (near Ramprasta, Anand Vihar ISBT) to my work from Janakpuri East (I live just across the road from the Janakpuri District Centre). From this month I have been taking the Metro as it cuts down my commuting time by a good seventy-five minutes. So I have to change trains first at Rajiv Chowk from where I take the Yellow Line to Kashmere Gate and from there I take the Red Line to Welcome. Then it’s bus till Ramprasta Crossing from where I walk down to work.

It so happened that while talking the elevator up from the underground at Kashmere Gate around 9:30 in the morning, I saw this girl in her late teens with the sweetest face you would ever see taking the elevator down. Putting her first step, she lost balance slightly, and quickly took the step back. She looked around to see if anyone watched and her eyes met mine.

She smiled at me blushing in embarrassment for being spied nearly tripping and I smiled back, more with my eyes reassuringly, as if to relay that it was ok, we all lose our steps every now and then.

That was the most fabulous natural smile I have seen for a long, long time. It got over in a moment, but made me think of her the whole day and god knows how many times I might have smiled to myself.

Maybe we might meet again; she may not remember me at all, but I shall remember her for a long, long time to come now, really.

A joke called Sathya Sai Baba

2006-01-11T23:29:00.000-08:00

I have been reading with some interest about the ‘war’ that is going on between the two camps – Sathya Sai Baba Worshippers and Anti-Sathya Sai Baba Activists in India Daily. The comments and the links in them had been really educational to say the least.

The latest comment by a certain Tony O’clery was the best of the whole lot as it was light, humourous and factual. It says;

"Is the voice of an omniscient PurnaAvatar? Of course not it is the voice of a confused human being. Sai Baba again is proved a fake out of his own mouth. From,,,Steels site. The 1996 Christmas Day Discourse (also videotaped and sold by James Redmond) Here are some of the statements (as they were interpreted on the spot) which this amazing videotape registered: 1. Three hundred and fifty years B.C., before Christ, Jews lived. However, among Jews, there were religions such as Islam and Christianity. People of that land, they are all Jews. That land is the birthplace of both the religions, Islam and Christianity. The Hebrew language was very prominent. This Hebrew language is more or less equal to our Sanskrit. ... 2. Christianity is not just 2,000 years in its origin. It was there even before Christ, 350 years. There the divinity is explained very clearly. 3. The name and the fame of Jesus Christ have spread far and wide. Here, at this moment, there are two schools of thought. The first group of thought - Roman Catholics. There is another group that fought with this group. This group is called Protestants. As they protested, they are Protestants. So among Jews there are these two groups: Catholics and Protestants. The difference of opinion has increased day by day. This led to Jesus, whose life was in danger. Jews there in Jerusalem did not permit Jesus to go there. Like this, religious conflict and fighting was ever on the rise. There were 250 schools of thought, divisions there. They also monopolized certain countries. Because of so many groups there, they all attempted even to harm Jesus. Romans on one side. Catholics on the other side. Luther on another side. There were so many groups that went on changing. All these differences are based on violence, and that led to madness. Because of this attachment to group affiliations, naturally there was conflict and fighting. Religious affiliation leads to ego. This led to confusion among them as to what Jesus said right or wrong. Doubtless, the SSO editors saw that SSB had had a bad day. They thoughtfully cast into oblivion SSBs extraordinary statements on Christian and Jewish history, but readers of their official printed version will never know that he made these statements because all they will see in Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. XXIX is a brief editorial note on page 393: [Bhagavan gave a brief account of the Jewish concept of the creation of the cosmos and referred to the birth of Jesus as the son of Mary and Joseph.]"

That was most extraordinary of Sathya Sai Baba (SSB). In fact he seems to be an illiterate who is rather very sharp in conning gullible illiterates. I once saw a video where the charlatan puked a lump of what seemed like a golden metallic ball and claimed that it had the mystery of the cosmos hidden inside it!

Amazing though it may sound, such theatrics goes down very well with the highly illiterate masses in India. The ones who are not so, but are believers in his antics are folks drunk in religion and superstitious to say the least.

The higher-ups and politicians play by SSB's game despite knowing him as a con man because they need his clout over the illiterate masses to manipulate political maneuvers.

This guy SSB deserves two things if not anything more:

a) To be applauded for his genius in conning so many people
b) The rope’s end of course for being such a cheat

The westerners who flocked en masse to him were because they desperately needed spiritual solace and a getaway from the sinful, stressful, materialistic lives they had been living and what better person they could come to than the most well known ‘guru’ in India a few years back? One can’t really blame the westerners for this; after all they came with a good heart in pursuit of real peace but unfortunately got conned by the one whom they trusted most.

Anyway, keep the fight on Baba Bhakts; this is some entertainment you are providing.

Read the India Daily article and the comments that followed on the con man called Sathya Sai Baba here.

Enjoy yourself!

Stand up for yourself, Gaurav

2005-11-28T13:19:00.000-08:00

Gaurav Sabnis is perhaps the most well known and most read blogger from India today after IIPM trebucheted him to superstardom by taking upon him for writing about the institute. It cost his job (he actually resigned) but that is nothing compared to what he earned during the last one month or so — recognition, admiration, fan following and a few other good things. He is not only very clear in his writings; he is very good with the English language too. Besides, he has got a good reservoir of intellectual wealth and is capable on commenting with in-depth analysis on a wide range of topics. I must admit he is by far my favourite Indian blogger currently. If you are into blogging for sometime now, you couldn’t have missed his name in the Indian blogosphere. So much is his presence in the Indian blogosphere and so big is the readership of his blog that is linked to virtually from everywhere, I am afraid he is capable of changing public opinion almost single-handedly.

However, as a human being, he too is not above shedding responsibilities at times and running on emotional fuel. Today, he wrote about losing respect for Greg Chappell, the coach of Indian cricket team. Why? Not because he gave the Kolkata crowd a mid-finger salute, but because he apparently denied having done so! Gaurav is seething against Greg; his over-boil has poured all over his post today.

He writes; “I think Chappell was well within his rights to show the crowd a finger. After all he was being boo-ed and heckled. If booing and heckling is a valid form of expression, why isn't that gesture acceptable? I see nothing wrong with it.” He further writes; “Stand up for yourself, Greg. The crowd deserved a finger. It got what it deserved.”

I guess what he meant was that if the obscene gesture was made towards him he wouldn’t have minded it if he showed his frustration by booing a dismal entertainer for whom he paid to watch perform. Maybe if Greg dropped his pants and flashed his penis, only then Gaurav would have taken offence.

It is unbelievable that someone who quit his job taking a principled stand on an issue is ranting spinelessly in the fashion he is now. For his thoughts on this, Gaurav Sabnis deserves a middle finger; Greg’s middle-finger shoved deep inside him. Reason? Greg’s middle-finger was not targeted on somebody particular but at the general Indian fan. If Gaurav liked it so much, he must not object to this too, right Gaurav?

Why this blog? The reason is divine

2005-11-13T21:48:00.000-08:00

Of late, I had been feeling quite miserable at the thought that how the world is so poor spiritually and intellectually despite me being around to enrich it much more than the collective gyan (puritanical way of spelling is jnan meaning knowledge) of the prophets and the charlatans whose followers run in the billions.

I had a divine vision a few days back, a vision where Mr. God called upon me and said; "Peep, is this why I sent you in the world; is this why I loaded all your camels, donkeys & mules (and also a few elephants that he forgot to mention) with intellect, deep thoughts, philosophy and talent in everything that you take them all and laze around without remembering your real purpose on the planet? Remember, Peep, remember that you are the chosen one; I myself chose you to represent me on Earth and spread the gyan that mankind desperately needs at this hour; especially when a certain earthling from a measurement called America is already claiming to have spoken to me, and spreading lies that I asked him to do this and do that. Peep, start doing what you have been assigned for, don't forget your divine duty. I shall be there to guide you, as and when you shall need me. There is an excellent medium these days called Internet. Use it freely to spread your message. Tell the world of your life, experiences, philosophy and spread your teachings. Start a blog, people will read, more and more people will know about you and spread your message even further. No, don't attempt to take your message through MSM, they have corrupted themselves, they have sold their souls to the devil, I have rung their death knell, their days are numbered, blogging is here to stay, it will only grow from strength to strength. You have the unique advantage, the advantage of being the first cyber prophet son, the net savvy Son of God. So go on, enlighten the world son. MAY THE FARCE BE WITH YOU!"

Now that you know the reason, now that I have the 'medium', now that you and I are connected, this blog is born. You all are welcome here not only to de-prostitute your souls, but to get unadulterated gyan.

Param Guru Beau Peep