In 1947, there were approximately 568 princely families controlling our destinies. They, along with a few thousand zamindars and other members of the minor royalty, formed an elite corp, completely insulated from the rest of India. Going by their incomes and lifestyles, they may as well have been from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse as far as the rest of India was concerned. By and large, these families had no abiding interest in the progress, development or betterment of their fiefdoms and peoples and sought only to perpetuate their power, which was the source of their incomes and therefore lifestyles. The faceless masses, with their aspirations, dreams and nightmares, may as well have been from some other planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse as far as this bunch was concerned.

In 2009, there are approximately 543 princely families controlling our destinies. They, along with a few thousand MLAs, MLCs, Corporators and other members of the minor royalty, form an elite corp, completely insulated from the rest of India. Going by their incomes and lifestyles, they may as well be from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse as far as the rest of India is concerned. By and large, these families have no abiding interest in the progress, development or betterment of their fiefdoms and peoples and seek only to perpetuate their power, which is the source of their incomes and therefore lifestyles. The faceless masses, with their aspirations, dreams and nightmares, may as well be from some other small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse as far as this bunch is concerned.

We sure have come a long way!

NOTICE INVITING TENDER

Ref: VRSCRUD/000

Date: 15/10/2009

SUB: URGENT AND CRITICAL REQUIREMENT FOR 1 (SINGLE ONLY, COMPLETE IN ALL RESPECTS) COHERENT FOREIGN POLICY, SUITABLY CUSTOMISED TO DEAL WITH NEIGHBOURHOOD BULLIES AND BRATS, WITH ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENT OF BACKBONE-CONFERRING PROPERTIES, WITHOUT MAKING USER FOOLHARDY.

You are invited to submit your bids for the abovementioned in one single sealed envelope, quoting abovementioned tender number and abovementioned date, at belowmentioned address, taking into account belowmentioned terms and conditions.

Earnest money is Rs. 1 lac only. Award of tender will be based on seller’s ability to transfer large, unaccounted and non-refundable (Duh!) sum of money to numbered offshore account. Seller will be allowed to mark-up bid to the extent of 250% only of the said large and unaccounted sum abovementioned, not counting transfer fees and bank charges, which will be on seller’s account.

You are requested to submit your bids at the earliest, preferably before-it-is-too-late. (For the issuers of this tender, not the bidder.)

Sd/-

Effing Clueless

On 26 November 1949, the Constituent Assembly unanimously adopted the Constitution of India. In the debate leading up to that event, Dr. B.R Ambedkar, as Chairman of the Drafting Committee, spoke at length about the way the committee went about preparing the draft for the document that was to be the Constitution of India. But he also, in the latter part of his remarkable speech, made a few incredible observations that ring truer today than at any time in the past. Dr. Ambedkar, quite apart from being an extremely erudite man, also had great foresight.

For example, he wondered if India would lose its independence again, and said: “What perturbs me greatly is the fact that not only has India once before lost her independence, but she lost it by the infidelity and treachery of her own people”. He cited quite a few instances in our glorious history to underline this point.

And then he went on to say: “….in addition to our old enemies in the form of castes and creeds we are going to have many political parties with diverse and opposing political creeds. Will Indians place their country above creed or will they place creed above country? I do not know, but this much is certain that if the parties place creed above country, our independence will be put in jeopardy a second time and probably be lost for ever.”

He listed three things that he felt were essential for the preservation of our constitutional democracy:

“The first thing in my judgment we must do is hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives…..it means we must abandon the methods of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha……these methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy….”

“The second thing we must do is observe the caution which John Stuart Mill has given to all who are interested in the maintenance of democracy, namely, not to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or to trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions…..This caution is far more necessary in the case of India than in the case of any other country. For in India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.”

The third point he made in this connection was how critical it was to integrate and incorporate the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity in our democracy. And not just by mouthing platitudes.

Dr. Rajendra Prasad, as President of the Constituent Assembly, said in his speech that followed Dr. Ambedkar’s: “…..I would have liked to have some qualifications for members of the legislatures. It is anomalous that we should insist upon high qualifications for those who administer or help in administering the law but none for those who make it except that they are elected. A law giver requires intellectual equipment but even more than that capacity to take a balanced view of things, to act independently and above all to be true to those fundamental things of life – in one word – to have character. It is not possible to devise any yardstick for measuring the moral qualities of a man, and so long as that is not possible, our Constitution will remain defective”.

The rising trend of politicians and parties to relegate the larger interest to the garbage bin and focus on self-aggrandisement instead, the increasing prevalence and acceptance of unconstitutional and usually violent means of protest and of making your voice heard,  the growing cult of nepotism, dynastic succession & absolute power as well as our apathetic surrender of the reins of the country to those whose place is actually in prison -  all in the name of the will of the people – this was foreseen, more than sixty years ago, by those who gave us our freedom and our constitution.

Eerily prophetic, both of them. Our country truly misses leaders of this calibre.

*

If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, we sure as hell haven’t paid for ours.

Utter Fucking Crap.

I was having no luck getting an auto-rickshaw yesterday, and was resigned to a spirited sprint in the rain (admire the alliteration?), when I saw one just ahead of me, with the disembarking passengers paying the driver what they owed him. As I ran towards the auto, I thought I caught a smirk of sorts from one the passengers as he walked away.

The driver leaned across and said something in Hindi that I couldn’t catch. I thought he was saying that he couldn’t go, or wouldn’t go, or some such thing, and I geared myself up for another one of those fights – till I realised that what the driver was saying to me was “Bhaisaab, mujhe abhi number 2 jaana hain”.

Which is the Hindi Victorianism for “Dude, I so gotta take a dump right now”.

He’d apparently told his previous passengers to get off as well…..and that is why they were laughing as they walked in the rain.

Shit happens.

What does it take to get desis moving?

Well, in the pubs I frequent, it could be any one of four songs; until any one of these songs is played, we’re all there, staring into our drinks and minding our own business, or talking to other members of our group. But when the song begins, we feel this incredible urge to join in – even if we only know the refrain. Some may even want to make a few moves, and there’s a lot of foot-stompin’, clapping, shaking and a horribly out-of-tune chorus that invariably accompanies these songs.

And it’s always one of these four songs:

I personally don’t rate any one of these songs very highly.

Take Another Brick in the Wall. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why this song is preferred to other fantastic songs in the same album – Mother, Goodbye Blue Sky and Comfortably Numb among them. But everyone, without exception, perks up when this number is played, and starts mouthing the lyrics.

Similarly with I Want to Break Fee. Many other brilliant songs to choose from – Don’t Stop Me Now, It’s a Hard Life, Bohemian Rhapsody, We are the Champions, Man on the Prowl – and this is the song that brings the house down.

Money for Nothing has to be the worst song ever from the Dire Straits stable. Brothers in Arms wins top honours in that particular album – though Why Worry and So Far Away are also very good. OK, so they’re not exactly pub songs, but what’s wrong with Walk of Life? And if I have to go across albums, why not Sultans of Swing, or even something like Heavy Fuel? And let’s not even talk Shakespeare or go down the Telegraph Road.

I have saved the Doors for last because I always seem to rub people the wrong way when I tell them that, in my humble opinion, this is the most overrated band in history. And they still managed to come up with songs better than Roadhouse Blues. So, if someone must play the Doors, play another number instead! How about Light My Fire?

What do you think? Do you have a list of songs that you are absolutely sick and tired of hearing?

Why all this uproar about Shah Rukh Khan being detained and questioned by an American immigration official? It is unfortunate, and nobody likes it when it happens, but it is a fact of life. Happens to all of us brown-skinned people all the time. So he’s a superstar in India. That does not mean an American immigration official should know him. Last I heard, SRK hadn’t been issued a diplomatic or otherwise special passport by the Government of India that would enable him to be shown some consideration, or even exemption from such procedures. (Trouble is, in India, everybody and her son-in-law probably wants – and has – that exemption, so it probably wouldn’t count for much even if he had it!)

We have all been ‘selected at random’ for special checking in the US. I have had to take off my shoes once. On another occasion, my checked-in baggage had been opened – locks and all – and a card left in which said my luggage had been ‘randomly selected’ for inspection by, if I remember right, the Transportation Security Authority. Sure. It was randomly selected from a bunch of luggage that belonged to other brown people who also had funny, foreign sounding – perhaps Ay-rab – names. Many people I know have had similar experiences. None of us liked it. But hey, shit happens. Having said that, at another time, an immigration official, on seeing I was from India, actually spent 5 minutes raving to me about how beautiful Aishwarya Rai is. Perhaps there’s a lesson for SRK in there somewhere. If you want inconsequential immigration officials in the US to recognise you, act in crappy Hollywood movies instead of crappy Bollywood movies.

And yes, neither the US government nor anyone else has asked us to bow and genuflect and generally be model servile Indians when Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and others visit India. It is just our pathetic mindset which makes us roll out the red carpet for every white jock and bimbo that visits India. Just because we do it doesn’t mean that every other country abandons its processes or procedures – whether right or wrong, justified or not is another matter; but they exist -  to accommodate the million or so Indian VIPs.

Moral of the story: Don’t travel to the US if you have such a problem. Ask your friend not to shoot each and every one of his ‘Indian’ films there. And that goes for all the other people who have expressed anguished outrage over this act. I follow what I preach – I don’t visit the US unless I absolutely have to. As long as someone else can do the job, I am happy to let that person go. And when I do travel to the US, I go with the full knowledge that I will be ‘randomly selected’ for at least a closer look.

Enough with the fucking whining, already.

*

Another example of Indian hysterics. Some Chinese guy wrote about how it is in China’s interest to break up India into 20 or 30 states and all good Indians are up in arms! Patriotism is suddenly the flavour of the season, and what with 15^th August and all that, Mera Bharat Mahan seems to be the new catch-phrase.

It is amusing to see the palpable sense of indignation over that article. Indian machismo is suddenly all around us. On various sites and fora where this article is being discussed, many comments range from the wannabe-sublime to the truly-ridiculous, but all combine typical Indian hyperbole with characteristic desi bluster: from Watch out China, we shall break you up instead, to This is not 62 and we have nukes to Boycott all Chinese goods, to Our democracy is the best to Unity in Diversity shall prevail and other such lines that would seem more at home in a book written by a certain Danish gentleman called Mr. Andersen.

How dare the Chinese try and meddle in our affairs? To them, all I can say is: Don’t presume you can do to us what we seem to excel at doing to ourselves. We don’t need you. We can do all of that ourselves. And do a better job of it at that. So there. Pfftttt.

Just be around to pick up the pieces.

*

And finally, a few words about Indiameme. Chirag, one of the most helpful individuals in the blogosphere, has spent his hiatus designing a new site that seeks to bring to you the best news and stories concerning India. His site links to interesting and credible blogs and websites (Disclosure: Mine is among them) and wants to be a one-stop shop for all India related news in the online space.

Do show your support for his initiative by visiting Indiameme.

Did you know that parrots make good investment bankers? At least, that’s what an experiment in a stock investment programme in Seoul would have us believe. A parrot took part, along with 10 other human investors, and was ranked third in the final tally…with a positive rate of return. The human average was negative!

Many have always suspected that the allegedly predictive models bandied about in research reports and lectures on stock picks – as well as the claim that this is a highly specialised ‘science’ – actually serve as fanciful methods of camouflaging what is essentially a ‘pin-the-tail-to-the-donkey’ game. Stories like this only serve to strengthen those beliefs.

One could always argue that this is just what the world financial system was looking for. One sore point with most people has been the bonuses that investment bankers (to be fair, not all of them were analysts or equity sales persons) took home despite plunging the world into the worst recession in history. And since everyone’s now wondering how best to clean the system, may I offer a suggestion?

Let the Goldmans of the world revamp…..hire parrots across the board. That should take care of the bonus problems that everyone keeps complaining about. Even if the parrots keep getting larger and fancier cages every year, and demand progressively more organically produced seeds and fruit, it’ll still save billions that can be redeployed in other businesses. So we have statistically better performance at a significantly lower cost….what’s there to argue?

Sheer genius, even if I say so myself.

*

Can someone please design a similar experiment where parrots take part in the business of government?

What can you write about a movie that’s two hours too long and interminably boring? That it is verbose. That it tries too hard. And that it does have two or three moments. Finis.

One expected much more from Imtiaz Ali, even if it was pretty much par for the course for Saif. After Socha Na Tha and Jab We Met, the expectations were huge. Hell, after being terribly disappointed by both Ice Age 3 and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I actually thought LAK would end the movie drought. Wishful thinking, as it turned out. It’s a film that tries too hard to be smart, too hard to be trendy, too hard to live up to its own hype.

The biggest takeaway is that there’s too much friggin’ talk in the film. Yap Yap Yap. Yackety Yak. Blah Blah Blah. Yada Yada Yada. And then more of the same. The interval came and I asked myself, “So what’s happened so far?” The answer was: Jai and Meera had just broken up. That’s it. The rest was all talk.

There is some kind of plot. Just barely. Boy meets girl, they hit it off, they carry on for some time, they break up, they discover that they’re still very fond of each other, and even though they each enter into a different relationship that doesn’t quite make the grade, they continue to be friends along the lines of Sally Albright and Harry Burns, and after a couple of predictable twists, they figure out they’re fated to be together.

It just doesn’t have enough meat for a two hour film. While even Jab We Met was thin on plot, it was high on moments. It was high on laughs. And the actors never overshadowed the characters, and the setting never overshadowed the film. But in this one – all that could go wrong, did.

There’s absolutely no chemistry between the lead pair. Zero. As for the actors themselves, I have never thought too highly of Saif and he did nothing to change my opinion. Deepika looked good, but her dialogue delivery was stilted. Luckily for her, most of the film seemed to be a lengthy monologue by Saif and so she didn’t get too many chances to show off her poor acting skills. But I must say that one of the three good moments in the film – for me – was a Deepika moment. More on that later. Rishi Kapoor was good.

I am not sure how the film will do. The theatre was packed, so that means it’ll probably do well. The audience laughed at all the wrong places, and that could also make the film the surprise comedy hit of the year. The music’s quite decent, and it has been well received. But given that it’s Pritam’s music, I figure one will not have to wait too long before the ‘inspiration’ behind these tunes comes to light.

For me, there were three good moments in the film. The best, by far, was when Veer Singh goes to Calcutta to ‘meet’ Harleen (extremely well-cast). A beautifully done moment, with no dialogues (phew!) and a very nice song in the background. Conveyed everything one wanted to know about the characters and their relationship.

The second was when a drunken Jai escorts a sloshed Meera to her apartment. As has been the case with all of us who have been that drunk, one always has the urge, at that point of time, to show the world one is normal. So I identified with Jai when he nonchalantly asked the watchman “Aur bhai, sab theek-thakk hai?” – or something along those lines.

The third moment – the Deepika moment – was when Jai finally seeks out Meera, and, while she pretends to be normal, casual even, she does quietly give in to her emotions for a brief moment – but when Jai can’t see her.

But three moments do not a film make, and therein lies the rub with Love Aaj Kal. As Meera says to Jai early on in the film – when he tries too hard to be hot, he doesn’t succeed.

Imtiaz should have listened to that bit of advice from his own script.

Saudi Arabia took the debate about beauty and the commoditisation of women to a whole new level this Friday.

Sample this surreal piece of breaking news from Riyadh: “Saudi beauty queen Aya Ali al-Mulla trounced 274 rivals to win a crown, jewellery, cash and a trip to Malaysia, and all without showing her face.”

To win the title of Miss Moral Beauty, Miss Mulla had to go through three months of ‘tests’ to prove how much more dutiful than the other contestants she was towards her parents, and society.

While one of the organisers claims that “The real winner in this competition is the society”, what I found interesting was the fact that the only other pageants so far held in Saudi Arabia had as contestants “goats, sheep, camels and other animals, aimed at encouraging livestock breeding”. What a great list to be part of!

Well, after decades of struggle, Saudi women have finally been given their own pageant and now take their rightful place in that long and exalted list. Though I am very sure the aim – quite laudably – still continues to be socially sanctioned breeding.

Because that’s what women everywhere are for, isn’t it? That’s what moral beauty is all about – duty towards husband, parents and society. And fecundity. Let’s not forget the fecundity.