Falling like a pack of cards…

The first of the 13 bombs, suspected to have been planted by Bangladesh-based HuJI members, went off at around 11.30 AM under the Ganeshguri flyover near the high-security capital complex housing the Assembly building, followed by explosions at Paltan Bazar and Fancy Bazar in Guwahati.

This time it’s the North Eastern trails. There is no further proof needed that India is firmly in the grips of the most vindictive terror fission experiement ever and any sort of governmental/bureaucratic condemnation is asinine, to say the very least. So, essentially, being the world’s largest democracy equates to rampant murderous sprees by anti-national elements working in cahoots with local politicos. The wildest form of anarchy must engulf our decaying political machinery to liberate us now.

Café Américano

Republicans. Sigh.

Madia, a son of East Indian immigrants and a marine veteran, is pictured in the spot with a darker face and long shadows cast upon it. The ad accuses him of wanted to raise taxes, but the superficial aspects are the ones that have jumped out to observers.

 

Did Tina Brown’s rambling bout Ariana Huffington allowing anyone and everyone as a contributor finally ring true?

 HuffPo political blogger Carol Anne Burger shot herself Friday, and police now believe she was responsible for the brutal murder of her former lover two days earlier. Burger was a scuba-diving instructor who brought an amateur’s zeal to her work, and in this sense embodied the best of HuffPo’s democratic approach, calling to mind fellow contributor Mayhill Fowler, who broke the “Bittergate” story. But the website will not be eager to associate itself with Burger’s energy in dispatching Jessica Kalish. Kalish was stabbed with a Phillips-head screwdriver 222 times, primarily around the back of her head and across her back, arms and face.

Pocket Dictators and The Trans Genome

Is Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, a pocket dictator? Is there no drop of liberalism in her veins, no concept of personal freedom, no fear of a repressive state? Or is she just another home secretary?

Simon Jenkins’ farewell column is fired by his usual gusto and makes me writhe about the non-possibility of writing something equally scathing in the Indian political paralance.

Linkage

Tranny Genes. (Sounds like a brand name that can sell enough denim in San Francisco?)

The more power we can take away from the argument that these difficult, alienating paths are willfully chosen, the more (one hopes) we can breed compassion and, eventually, understanding.

The accompanying picture of Tara Reid with soda-bottle glasses does actually confuse you if it’s representative of the trannies or the Oz scientists. Bewildering!

Evolution needs catalysts

But, once the decision to eliminate her was taken by her father-in-law Zamir Solangi, she was taken to a local midwife Mrs Badshaan alias Baashi for forced delivery of the child. Soon after the delivery, the baby was thrown into the nearby canal and later the mother was put to death.

Linkage

My earliest imagery of Pakistan women, as a post teen, was shaped by the slightly asymmetrical and exaggerated (as duly pointed out by a litcrit professor) accounts of gender based bias and discrimination in Tehemina Durrani’s “Blasphemy”. Though, today, I don’t quite think it’s as exaggerated as Dr D’Souza thought but as young and heady biblophile you feel the need to form opinions basis what your “esteemed” literature teachers tell you.
Honestly, I was quite scared of ever stepping foot anywhere beyond the LOC and it had nothing to do with the perennial under-currents of violence and hatred, assumed or otherwise, between the two neighbors. India and Pakistan share a murky history and a superior culinary culture. Plus a million other things but despite celebrity proclamations of how it’s the “same” country both sides of the border, I know for a fact that’s not entirely true. We are different entities and the umbilical cord was severed quite a few decades ago. Even then, apparently, you can relate to the urban Pakistani ecosystem a lot better if you come from the Northern part of India and I have been repeatedly informed by friends and mutants alike that much of Karachi will remind me of some of Delhi. I haven’t travelled the length and breadth of our Northern neighbor to notarize that statement so I’ll make room for reasonable doubts than take it at face value.
My interest lies elsewhere though; a comparison of parities in the lives of an average Indian woman vis-à-vis one in Pakistan. Differences galore and similarities too. In lieu of the cityscape, I do confess to very little information about rural Pakistani women.
I am grown up enough now to believe that not every Pakistani household has its own feudal lord – though a significant amount of them are at the mercy of some lameass patriarchal messiah of sorts – even though I am also firmly aware of the bitter truth that a very stringent sort of sexism prevalent in a large part of that country (as in mine) means a daily, almost ritualistic, persecution and defilement of women – emotionally, mentally, physically – as well as a thorough disregard for women’s rights. If they have indeed ever heard of that term.
So, you see, despite my usual preparedness for the abnormally grim, stories like these still manage to scare me insane and fuel unbridled rage within me. Wrath is what I can feel right now, rising from the absolute pit of my stomach. Unadulterated and unmitigated anger. And I want to use this anger in a way that pulverizes the very core of our enforced patriarchal inheritance. I want my anger to be raven and brutal and as devoid of mercy as these murdering charlatans are.
I need revenge. We need revenge.

I could have chosen to satirize in my usual blasé manner because I find in humor – especially dark humor – a rock-hard and unshakeable crutch. Without agency. But, this is not the time to seek crutches, it’s the time to encounter and demolish;uproot the chronic plague of our system that’s left it moribund.
I beseech those academically fortified women amongst us, who love to deliberate about ethnocentric feminism’s strides in the warm comfort of their Ikea infested living rooms, to stand up and address this. Now. Without politeness and political correctness corrupting their ire. Because when young girls are left for dogs to feed on, very little room is left for civility.

What kind of monsters would force a teen to prematurely birth her child (who was subsequently thrown into a canal since he/she was deemed illegitimate by a killer father-in-law) and then based on some asinine rodent’s “wisdom” would throw her to a pack of rabid canines?
While this epic torture drama ensued, hitmen were sent after Taslim’s absconding mother to snuff her life too. However, if all of this doesn’t inspire serious fear and fury in your breast then take heart in the knowledge that a government official – a top level assistant commissioner, no less – was at the helm of these vile proceedings. Yes, officially signed, sealed and delivered et al.
How much more do the women in the sub-continent have to bleed, scream, cut, hurt, dismember, sever, turn sore before their voices can reach the world outside?
For every Mukhtaran Mai, a million Taslims are silently buried and disappear without a trace. But not this time. Definitely not this time.
This time the water has reached our necks and it is lashing at its nape. It’s gurgling in our ears. It’s dirty and infected and it threatens to enter our insides and wash us away. It’s a hurricane of pain and disillusionment. In the Macrobiotic Age of Madonna and IJesus, young girls are being fed to dogs. Literally, figuratively, really – take it whichever way you want, whichever way you like. It all boils down to one thing: Women are a long way from being ranked or even considered as human beings amidst some of the largest populations on the planet.
Who will speak about it? Who needs to speak about it?
We. We need to speak. No, actually, we need to do more than just speak about it, we need to scream, yell, shout, screech, holler, and tear apart the Universe if the need arises. This is not injustice to one, it’s injustice to all. From the teeny boppers in fluorescent pink tees jamming in make shift studios (my sister) to the high profile, jet setting corporate supernovas (Me) to the activism heavy, politically informed, divorced single parents of rambunctious daughters (my mother) to the fashionably illiterate still twin cell phones wielding, can-pound-the-husband-for-incessant-drinkking, sharp as a Jalapeno, lower middle class working women (my housemaid).
It’s all of us in this primal soup. In the remotest corners of the sub-continent, hell, the world, I’d say, we are still 18 million some flights away from fairness and equality, without taking anything away from Sen. H. Clinton. We all get torn apart when militant fangs dig into a pleading Taslim’s skin, soul and heart.
We can’t reduce ourselves to willing and mute witnesses to this century’s crimes against ourselves. We can’t afford to watch it till it simply “dies down” or “dissipates”. We can’t afford to be so static and unaffected.
We must do something. We must seek justice. We should, ideally, seek an eye for an eye because it just doesn’t work any other way - due to respects to the Gandhian dogma and Bollywood movies inspired by it. For all that chest beating/bra burning in the name of the Sisterhood, it eventually boils down to this. This is the reality for brown women in our world. It’s a large and fairly violent world but someone has to change it. Evolution needs catalysts. Theorizing and rationalizing will only take us so far. The rest of the journey is on foot. Without crutches. Mine, included.

After thought – Basis this account, is it just me who is grimaced by the recurrent abuse of religion to debase women since ancient times till date? To swear upon Quran (as an atheist the significance of this is entirely wasted on me but as a longtime lover and worshipper of Angela Carter I couldn’t lie after swearing upon a copy of The Passion of New Eve either though I reckon it’s more a literary than zealotry thing) and follow it up with a crime so heinous, seriously, why can’t the larger Muslim population see through the act?
Do we need a better reason to untangle from the religious mess?
Don’t strain your neurons too much, the answer is fairly simple.

You don’t know me like dat!

This is officially Cruise’s best work till date. I don’t know if Scientology has led to such amazing creative energy or it is just DreamWorks but this is awesome stuff.
Beyonce can eat earthworms, THIS is a really jelly. Right here. Word.

20 years for Questions

I was musing about Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Salò (no thanks to Salon).
“Artists must create, critics defend, and democratic people support … works so extreme that they become unacceptable even to the broadest minds of the new state.”
Then I bundled up my baffling fixation with Italian avant garde, unclogged my nostrils, inhaled enough steam to qualify as an exotic dim sum that could be served at Royal China Garden and somewhere in between all of it, read this.

Prosecutors alleged that Kambakhsh disrupted classes by asking questions about women’s rights under Islam. They also said he illegally distributed an article he printed off the internet that asks why Islam does not modernise to give women equal rights. He also allegedly scribbled his own comments on the paper.

Sacrilege! To add to the specs. Always undesirable by the Mullahs.

My incensed faculties aside, I couldn’t bear to ignore the juxtaposition of the two non-linear storylines. In 1970s Italy, a slightly deranged poet promoting provocateurs and cultist concepts (almost unwatchable at times) and in the new millennium Afghanistan, a “radical” 24 year old student who was about to die – will now serve a 20 year sentence – for asking too many questions about women’s rights and querying I-slam’s patriarchal heritage and it’s need to evolve with times that are a’changin. (Or are they?)
The concept of radicalism can differ so widely across geographies: cultural, physical or plainly psychological. It’s amazing and slightly nerve rattling to deconstruct the boundaries of communal fear when it comes to what is and what’s not kosher in one specific realm. Especially, religious.
I won’t toil hard; I can’t regurgitate for hours about the debilitating portrayal of women in Islam. Anybody who doesn’t have a problem with a 60 year old “prophet” marrying and consummating that marriage, to a 9 year old kid, is plain jane insane! In my books, at least.
Focussing on this entire episode is just so unbearable though. In a world that is laboring hard to throw away the noxious beast of patriarchy that’s had a serpentine grip on our psychosis and lives for an infinite number of years, this predicament is like walking backwards so many light years, into a deep, dark black hole, an abyss we crawled out of. I am not even going to commence detailing the brutal disregard for Human Rights because it will have me gripping steel railings, if I launch into that invective.
20 years for someone whose sole crime has been to seeka cogent something and (or) scrape for rationale in an ultra-patriarchal mess. To promote women’s rights and equality. Of course, this repugnant verdict will be challenged, rightly so, in the Afghan Supreme Court and one can hope for a slight sliver of Hope. As tiny as that may be.
I reckon something like this must be so intangible for people like You and I; we live in carefully cultivated voids and possibly are, at times, completely inert to the Other Half.  It’s The Half that is not even allowed to simply ask “why?”

Islam’s overpowering fundamentalist bend has taken a beating worldwide in the recent years for reasons that range from lunatic to bang on the money. As an atheist I have to admit that criticizing a particular kind of religious school of thought comes rather easily to me. I do condescend to calling myself a nihilist, no less. This state of being is guilt free and often – since I am writing in the shadows of partial anonymity – I am not in that environment (the culture of lawful amputation in the name of Allah!) to bear the brunt of my comments or actions. So, it creates a particularly malevolent reaction in me, when I encounter stories like these. I begin to despise my own personal freedom just a little bit. The fact that I can get away with being reactionary protester.
And I know that I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t ever detest the window granted to me for self expression and for seeking to change my little corner in manner that’s constructive and intelligent. Without someone throwing me into a prison for the rest of my life. I know of the struggles that have paved the way for enabling people like me – to publish our ideology without unnecessary terror setting home in our hearts and minds.
Of course, there are times we take this liberty for granted, we call it insufficient, worse still, impotent and ineffectual. Very often in a blanched out world, voices of the so called minorities ( black/beige/brown), their own fights of resistance and their overwhelming strife. Our overwhelming strife.
This is to remind us that we are never to dismiss our voices, no matter the unevenness of tone and the irregularity of its inflection.
Without meandering too much, what I really want to say is – I am (We are) deeply indebted to people like Parwez Kambakhsh. They remind me to not dismiss my freedom easily. Also, it forges a sense of grounding; there remain vast unchartered bastions in the Women’s Rights and Human Rights movements that can very easily become a blip on our radar unless we look really carefully.
It’s not easy to be a feminist in the Islamic world. It’s not easy to be a feminist in any world, actually. It’s not easy to be a feminist man. But, we persevere because of the unflinching optimism that Reason will triumph over zealotry.

Body of Lies..

..and plenty of other bodies line the circumference of this experience. The 90 minutes something extravaganza comes with enough “bodies” stretching across the Near Eastern chorography to make you think you were a post mortem specialist.

Somewhere in this rather patchy flick, Russell Crowe’s potbellied, microphone-loving, soccer dad-cum-CIA head honcho mouths off a fairly glossy, yet compelling statement – “They don’t want to negotiate.”
That’s the crux of the story. It’s not-so well preserved nucleus.
They, of course, are the terrorist squads hell bent of razing to dust “Western infidels/Capitalist dogs”, headed by a nefarious Al Saleem person(based on the notorious Zarakawi from the highest echelons of the Al Qaeda). These terrorists of the Islamic kind must be stopped. Enter Gringo – Leo Di Caprio. The rest is mystery! Or maybe not.
There has been a spate of Hollywood magnum opuses about lone American rangers infiltrating ranks amongst Middle Eastern terrorists and government agencies(simultaneously) to further Uncle Sam’s cause of wiping terrorism off the face of the planet. At least the American planet.
In Ridley Scott’s flawed but earnest fusion of Syriana with Munich with The Bourne Trilogy, something goes terribly amiss through the second half and you feel as though the director is piling explosion upon explosion to possibly seek an exit through the debris. This, he never really manages to find.
Body of Lies is watchable, at least once. It is. It’s not a masterpiece and the mediocrity bullet manages to graze it a little bit but you will live. The problem with this film, as with most American slick flicks about Roarke styled protagonists, is it’s weak research. And the usual jingoistic parade that is often the culmination of a possibly serious effort to diagnose a rather insidious issue. The movie shifts trajectory frequently. Geography and psychology wise. Syria, Amsterdam, Turkey, Jordan and good ole Virgina. The seemingly selfish CIA boss and his burdened-by-a-lopsided-altruistic fervor reportee have their moments. The verbal rabblerousing engages in parts and the chemistry between DiCaprio and Crowe plays to a different beat as compared to the one DiCaprio’s and the sizzling Mark Strong share. The polarity is captivatingly obvious.
Hani Salim is tranquil as an ocean before the torrent is unleashed. He inhabits that minute, generates the precise feeling of trepidation within the watcher. His eyes are magnetic and his words, minimal. His potential to hurt is evident. His power unquestionable even if his methods are. He reigns. And he is hot too!
Much of the movie is slapdash. It’s riveting upon commencement and suddenly Scott starts to get uncomfortable with the direction in which he ideally should’ve steered his ship, so he does the next best thing – Gitmo styled torture, over the top cowboy patriotism and a hastily pieced together climax that equates love and hope with survival. Or something like that.
I didn’t like the romantic angle, it was laden with superfluous valor. That whole infectious need to distinguish men from heroes, or some such. The digits-deprived DiCaprio sifting through a souk searching for pastries and dates is hardly the end I would have wanted.
Boy wonder is in excellent form though he looks a little too eager to please in certain frames. From Whats eating Gilbert Grape to this particular movie; Leo has evolved in a manner that most actors don’t and possibly can’t. Though, for some inexplicable reason, it suddenly hit me midway through the whole shebang – he is really short!

The technical glitches are glaring and plentiful. Linguistic, primarily. Leo baby speaks fluent Persian and Arabic – hell! with a skull cap and some serious hirsute pride, he passes for a local too – except that he can’t pronounce “Iraq” or “Iran. It comes out sounding like “I-rack” and “I-ran”. Tragedy.
The highpoint of the entire cinematic experience wasn’t actually an element of the movie, in fact it was the presence of Mr Yash Chopra in the theatre with the usual suspects.
I’m wondering is there will be a gentle change of scenery from sarson ke khet(mustard fields) to the grimy suburbs of Jordan for the next King Khan caper?
I doubt it but there is always hope. Like in the movie. Even if it doesn’t survive.

Also, Everything matters to Everybody.
French provocateurs are tres rad!

This could’ve been a month of Saturdays

..but it’s not. Depraved and Insulting English makes this a lot lighter and eventful than it ideally should be.

Inner Dj’s spinning “Black Magic” on a loop (and I know that sufficient patience would help me unearth Urban Dictonary’s entry for this) and a lot of M.I.A right now.

Fractals.
Funk Carioca. Satori. Duende. Santeria. Bossa Nova(yes, yes, I know I repeat!). Darvesh. Gaia Hypothesis. Morphine(the band not the drug, though that wouldn’t be half bad either). Bombay’s Tadibya. I must be. Swollen Members(again, the band people!). Hip Hop. And another Hop. Mos Def. Darkest Light. Henri Cartier Bresson. The Decisive Moment. Purchase of a pair of designer strides. Yes. Decisive, indeed.

And a soft plunging into loud rants – “As long as You break hearts, it’s love enough for You.”
How 16 are they?
Plenty, apparently.

Hating this weekend: Exotica peddling, I-smoulder-therefore-I-devour “ethnocentric” poets(women mostly). And the fact that they(publishers mostly) are allowing such genetic discrepancies to get away with it.
If You are Mother Earth then I insist upon using every single polyethylene product available in the market to speed up your timely implosion.
No, really. I mean it.

My Dad’s Gift

Musiqua.
Earl Hines. Or Bossa Nova.
A slice of music.
Charms wrapped in cellophane. Or a blue rhythm dancing on a mahogany table.
The notes spill over from a Celtic goblet – dipped in liquer, perhaps stoli.
Drunk music.
A cut through a song. And a cultic cure for the ailing spirit.
The fierce rapture of Nada Brahma, divine damage and the retraced path to reconstruction.
The rebuilt stature from earth’s magma to the opulence of nature.
Couplets piercing a stone’s heart, left singing in the Rock Valley. Dent in Order and a mark on Time’s inner thigh.
A Hymn of heavens – supine combustion sings of a slow churning of desire in Her devout chest.
Crests and troughs.The oblivion embowering calm. And vice versa.
Distortion along the edges of a metallic razor. Stings and sings and repeats it all.
The interregnum.
Pages of Ages. Written on the gaunt faces of redolent paper. Slam Poetry and the harmony to accompany the main course of verbal rapidity.
Sound- open to interpretation.
Silence- open to relocation.
Either in lieu or in abundance of the familiar auditory metaphors and despite a kinesthetic demeanor. Music lifts me up.
Completely.

With this ring I thee bed

I am of the “marriageable” age and yet my gamophobia shows no signs of receding. Perturbed as I am with the larger population’s need to set me up with eligible bachelors on a bi-weely basis, hiding is no more an option.
Yes, with woe in my heart I admit; I need someone to hold my head while I throw up after a particularly fun night painting the town scarlet. Companionship is much required during those moments.
On the side though, I have been meaning to invent an eloquent diatribe for a while but I’m all spent this week no thanks to dumping two boys successively, getting inked in a particularly painful place and generally developing a huge crush on this supersmart girl who doesn’t even live in my city. So, forgive my less than regular irrationaility.

As it’s widely acknowledged, my general lack of finesse(knowledge is more like it) while outlining marital fine points is notorious. I dare not speaketh of the M-word; the bi-syllabic utterance makes me run faster than OJ being chased by LAPD. But like all good Indian girl type persons, I too am looking forward to the day when am decorated a la Christmas tree in Trenton and subsequently proceed to make some lucky sod desperately miserable for the rest of his life.
Loverly stuff.

Given the dire circumstances that I am choosing to blabber on this precarious subject, it’s al dente, at best.
There has been much noise recently – in the media and generally everywhere – about live-in unions getting legal blessings in India. A particularly worried reporter from TOI chronicled the perils of this drastic step – It will encourage promiscuity. Shudder! I almost fainted. As a morally ambiguous type Indian person, I am very afraid of the possibility that every time two random strangers (not for each other but for me, of course) decide to test the waters for a long term relationship by sharing an apartment and legal rights, I will get relatively “promiscuous”.
Who knows, it may even make me want to start nude farms and streak at IPL matches. I’m just saying.
I reckon, and this reckoning is in no way an exhaustive summary of all that will go South in this country with this twisted new law, I am slightly upset with the constant moral collapse of the society I am forced to live in. No, really. I am foaming at the mouth, quite literally. Probably coz my sister substituted toothpaste with hand wash but that’s not the point. Like they say in Spain, We need to puncture this bull’s spine right away and live-in legalization is the next topical problem for this country. Other than The Gays, of course.
To let people wet their palate with some heady swigging of “marital bliss” without actually buying the bottle. Sacrilege. Why! I have never heard of a thing so absurd!

Who does it anyway?
Demented people, thats who!
People who actually think that they can hang on to their freedom and still establish a loving partnership without appeasing the Higher Dick-tats of Societal PoohBahs. And those who want equal rights. Insipid mutts!
Well, such people can stuff a sock in the socket coz it ain’t never going to happen.
In order for long term interpersonal romantic sort of relationships to flourish, we need a firm nod by the society and large familial receipts and lavish money burning ceremonies(aka weddings). In short, We need marriages.
We MUST not allow for our moral fabric to be unwoven and despoiled like this. We are good Indian people and must restrict all our copulatory and cohabitory activities to the confines of the matrimonial prison. I don’t care how badly it turns out for you. You should never live in sin. Committing it occasionally is acceptable though. Even if you are stuck in a marriage born straight out of Satan’s womb and it’s eroded your self-respect or any sense of liberty or individuality completely, please keep holding your “I Heart Matrimony” placard high above your head. Don’t forget to smile innocently for a good phot-op while you are doing this. Also, stick to exchanging saliva and other assorted bodily fluids only after you’ve exchanged rings.
Jessica Simpson did it, so how hard can it be?
Marriage is the only way that two people should be able to bicker bout property rights and monetary compensation. If you must go to court and fight extended battles for alimony, there is some purpose to your life.
Enlightenment occurs. Marriage is not just any damned form of incarceration. It is The Prison. Alcatraz of all the convoluted societal institutions we are conditioned to acknowledge and love, with much gusto. Additionally, it also adds to your street cred like nothing else. Walk into a bar, there is an army veteran, a former special agent and a married person. Who do you think has suffered the most? Hah! See, it helps elevate your social status a good 50 notches. Word!

Never mind that anthropology regularly has proven, and there is a sufficiently large body of proof, that human beings are essentially polygamous by nature, ergo marriage may not exactly be the natural progression for a male-female equation. It’s usually thrust upon us.
No, we must not listen to science because it teaches us bad things. Like evolution and the fact that God’s wrath doesn’t cause AIDS.
So there.
Dammit! Can we please just stick to moralizing everything till it bleeds to oblivion and dissipates anyway?
That’s the best defense against scientific or intellectual arguments since it requires the least amount of brain-jogging. And for Beezy’s sake, our intellectual faculties don’t need the additional stress after watching and dissecting the last elimination episode of Big Boss while plotting graphs of Shah Rukh’s career and Imran Khan’s HQ*.
Seriously, we don’t need any more thinking for ourselves, so save us Fraud!

I demand that we reverse this live-in law. Primarily because I can’t stand it. Also because We are being swept away by a bunch of bred-in-the-West liberals who are hell-bent on devouring the “sacro-sanct” entity of marriage. Think of all the bastard kids that could result from such evil unions.
Can you imagine the onslaught?

Such children will have deep psychological scars rendering them very vulnerable to the possibility of turning into criminals with a multiplicity factor of 9 – 10.

Worse still, some of them may even end up authoring imperious and jarring blogs, such as the one you are reading right now.

Don’t say I didn’t tell you so!

*Hotness Quotient

On choosing a certain kind of necessary deprivation

“I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.”

If you don’t know him, get off my blog!

Circles

 

Well I stand at the crossroads
Of highroads and lowroads
And I got a feeling it’s right

 

……………………………………………….

The inherent soppiness can’t be done away with till I physically take a break. Condescending to posting pop song lyrics is indicative of serious intellectual depletion and emotional confusion.

I take a break. Now.

Megan Fox doesn’t have a dong

..but she is as good as the boys. And she said so herself.
The world’s sexiest woman is actually a man with a vagina

Who knew that it would eventually boil down to B grade starlets to take forth the Trans Revolution?
But someone in the know informs me that, that wasn’t what she meant.
She was just trying to endear herself to the GQ readers of near and far. After all, decent PR is tres more significant than, say, women’s rights movement that took 20 steps backwards after this glorious declaration.
Partiarchy has been strong and rigid for a couple of hundred years now, so why not sit in it’s baronial shadows and shoot some asinine verbal darts to garner that much needed publicity. Let the uglies deal with the feminist agenda. Ain’t that right honeypot?
Permanently naked Hollywood nymphets and their dexterous foot-in-mouth actions deserve a special place in the Ukranian circus.

“That’s the upside of dating a woman that’s almost a man. She likes the same things that you like, but she has a vagina.”

Oh dearie! Where do we commence the correction surgery on this one?
I guess the easiest way to do this is through an open letter.
And I am really going on a limb with the assumption that this one is actually a literate person.

Dear Megan Fox(or whatever canine suffix you prefer)

You are NOT Angelina. I just wanted to get that out of my system.
You will never be, even if you claimed to be a poly-bi chola girl from the roughest part of LA who doubles up as  John Claude Van Damme’s personal dominatrix.
As far as this whole man-I-feel-like-a-man-with-a-vagina situation, really now, why must you even go there?
Playing games and watching sports and drinking beer are no more bastions of unbridled maleness. Those in possession of the female genitalia are fully capable of differentiating between Atari and Nintendo. And a kick off and a throw in. We sometimes go so far as to, shudder, playing “sports” and very frequently we kick the butts of those who are in possession of the male genitalia. Penis, as you might refer to it your land.
Also, let me break it ever so gently to you – Real Women with Real Vaginas drink beer too. And no, we don’t feel like exerting unnecessary pressure on the gender binary or tom-tomming our inherent “masculine” side because we just so happen to do these “male things”.
My lovely vulpine inanity, here is a pathbreaking suggestion – Why don’t you concentrate of forming something that resembles an original personality rather than bask in Angelina “She was so cool coz she kissed women and kicked man butt and wore blood viles and visited SnM dens and then adopted kids from every forsaken country and somewhere in the middle snagged Brad Pitt” Jolie’s leftover glory. Just don’t take after your sunken idol in her “real nerves on display” skeletal figure department.
Go load up on some Wienerschnitzels and cream puffs before an unfortunate and/or confused newby from a Mexican medical school comes after you with a scalpel (no)thanks to your current shape or his broken glasses. Or maybe both.
And really, like totally, just SHUT UP.

Love,
A woman who is a woman with a vagina.

Kaisan ba meets Arrigato. Yo!

It’s now a bloody Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

At this point in time any long-tailed posts about terrorism would be an exercise in futility.

But there is always something to make us feel a little happier for being an Indian.

Sankaralingam Jagannathan and his wife Krishnammal are among the five winners of the Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the “alternative Nobel prize”.
The two run an organisation called Land for the Tillers’ Freedom.

Also, Japan’s Madhubani homage.
This is a good sign ahead of my Japanese excursion. So long as they like merchandise from Bihar, I shall have a good stay.

The ignorant will, of course, ask pointless questions like what exactly is Madhubani art?
There.

The more important question is elsewhere.
Does this mean that Raj of the Thackrey fame is going to dispatch some particularly efficient rioters to good ole Nippon territory. He must at least contemplate it.
In the name of Maratha power, we can’t let them get away with this.

God is Dead

.. McDonald’s has replaced him. Or something. Nietzsche didn’t eat a Maharaja Mac in his life or else his quote would have ended differently.
Anyway.

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Hanlon’s razor is not a disposable one.
I don’t know where that came from but it’s been circumnavigating the corridors of my mind for a while asking to be spit out eloquently in one of the posts.
I’ve noticed the rather sprightly ascent of communalism in recent times. Now if only the global economic markets could borrow a few leads from the communal front, we’d all be gay, err, happy. I was privy to an excellent photographic selection of gory imagery with just the right dosage of “those militant Hindus” underlining it to inspire helluva “liberal” and “minority” wrath. Due obescience paid at the altars of Blame Them deities. It’s the new fad to gnaw at each other’s sentient arm every given opportunity and chew it off, piece by piece. Feral tendencies are “in” this winter.

I am sure I don’t count in the vote bank politics so my actual opinions on this subject are neither courted nor considered relevant by the politburos. I am a godless, born-to-the-majority-religion-converted-to-godlessness-ideology in a country where political forces alternate between snuffing out the “minorities” or placing them on hallowed pedestals. All the while, very carefully, disallowing any attempts at dissolving that whole “majority-minority” issue altogether.

In troubled times that much maligned species of progressive liberals – Class Liberalia, Genus Libre – is possibly more at risk of extinction than any majority or minority community in this country. That term “Liberal” needs to be declared into a witness protection program for having witnessed some serious crimes against it’s own self and continues to watch the perpetrators still at large. People are flinging it loosely, arm-twisting, brutalizing, vandalizing, assaulting and generally abusing it as much as they possibly can. In some social circles my first name evokes disgust while in others my second. Combined together they probably make most zealots want to either kill me or commit suicide. Or do both simultaneously. I’m an atheist and I have fine tuned my personal beliefs to – “God is not the root cause of evil, Evil is the root cause of God.”

After channeling Diagoras of Melos and Barbara Ehrenreich for a while I devised an utterly austere solution.
If you want to avoid church burning, bomb blasts and temple stampedes, just institutionalize atheism. This movement towards the ubermensch must be signalled by turning everybody into godless wretches. Kryptonite for the current communal snafu. Do this and you will never have to deal with another charred train or angry mobs. Also, this is relatively easier than any social awareness run the very able central government may choose to run. The government doesn’t need to do much except run a quick PSA in an Ekta Kapoor daily –

“We currently have no more Gods in this country. Amitabh Bachchan included. Right this moment we commence our term as an atheist democracy. You can thank us later by donating to Rahul Gandhi’s matrimonial fund. Much Love. Sonia Gandhi Dr Manmohan Singh”

This message can be recorded and relayed from some European or American shindig where Dr Singh would feel more at home given the amount of time he spends in these areas, ralliying support for nuclear deals and designer pugs.

So there you have it, right there, thats how you solve a crisis as deep as this. Righteous indignation is all very pretty and awe-inspiring but seriously, you want to risk those frown lines ? In the words of Chris Tucker, Hell No!
Atheism for healthy wrinkle free skin. No Gods. No Botox. Just good, smooth, shiny epidermal bliss.

Now, allow me to continue with my delightful sales pitch in favor of nationalizing Atheism.

Currently, the debate between right wing extremists from all forts is that their God is the only god. Or gods. Their God is prettier and mightier than theother god. Or gods. They are faster, better and more kinetic than other god. Or gods. In short, each thinks that his/her God is the Energizer bunny of all Gods. You mess with my God and he’ll send a thunderbolt down your ass. We all know that given the state of healthcare reform, hip surgeries are not an option.. so, if you made all Gods redundant wouldn’t it automatically sieve out any prospects of athletic competition between the Gods of all forts as well as eliminate all possibilities of lightning striking your butt?
It totally would.

Ignoring the usual pejorative(yeah, atheism and this word is like OJ’s hand in glove. Or not.) undertones and the whole “Oh! You are going to HELL for not believing in it, you godless sodomite!” argument(it’s intelligence never to be doubted of course, coz if anything can make someone change their mind about evolution, birth control and abortion, it has to be the prospect of frying in a large vat of oil, especially now that it’s cheaper by the barrel) that may color this idea otherwise, I also would like to present other concrete ideas as to why atheism is desirable.

To start with ..

I’ve always believed that if you can be an atheist and still care for people, you’re a hundred times more selfless and genuine than anybody tickled in the back of the throat by the suggestion of divine disfavor, however subtle.

Technically not my idea but that of a well educated person I was talking to a while ago. Then again, this blog isn’t read by well educated people so why must we stoop to their level and make logical analytics the order of the day. That kind of intellectual excogitation bounces off my head like light on a shiny, bald surface, so I shall dig for more reasonable reasons.
Like this one.

Atheists, in my experience, look far dishier and have better fashion sense than the religious banshees.

This is what an an Atheist looks like

This what an Un-Atheist looks like

See the difference?
If not entirely convinced by this case study, mail me and I shall revert with my picture and thou shall be done!

The other good thing about Atheism is a significant decrease in the gargantuan traffic jams on religious days – and India is a hotbed of these type of days – when you want to pull out your car’s rearview mirror with your teeth, break it into shards and then scrape your face with the pieces. And then fling those pieces at other commuters.

It will also reduce the 375 government holidays in year that currently dot every government institution’s calendar. This is from a purely selfish standpoint. It will help fulfill my life long dream of owning a landline phone connection, a dream I have cherished for as long as I could spell Alexander Graham Bell. A dream that has been cruelly deferred because recurring festivities have ensured that the request is forever postponed. My application is pushed further and still further till they are done with Aastmi, Navami, Eleventnami, Bhai Dooj, Vat puja, Peepal Puja, Chhoti Id, Badi Id, mid-sized Id etcetra.
What else?

This, perhaps.

“All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God.” – Baron d’Holbach

If that’s the case and say invoking Atheism ultimately turns us into children -at least mentally – then we, the middle of the class, can settle our scores by more evolved methods as opposed to battling it out with the judicial system as we currently do. Like mud eating contests and pro wrestling death grip matches. The bad kids could be made to sit on garbage cans and chased around the yard with iron knuckles. Courts could be abolished and lawyers made redundant. I know, they already are, to a large extent but this is the final solution.
This kind of legal remedying will be speedy and suspect to little or no misappropriation. The genius of it, I tell ya!

Also, absence of religion can prevent large contingents of growing up kids in the Indian sub-continent from listening to the nerve-grating “Bhagwanji/God/Whoever gave you to me as a gift so mustn’t do naughty things” refrains. Just tell them that playing doctor-doctor with the neighbor’s daughter is no way to ascertain a medical future instead of this pungent mollycoddling.

I had more illuminating points to make but in this sweltering heat I am at the risk of losing my second brain cell to the irradiation caused by constant cell phone usage (I don’t have a landline connection. YET). I am being called by people who inform me that I need to pay INR 500 for a Durga Pujo celebration where I will be forced to ingest huge amounts of Bengali sweets that I may or may not like, all of it made in desi ghee. And after that I need to shell out another 1000 odd to buy an Iftar gift for a friend who will then force feed me at least 6 kilograms of homemade biryani in return. Followed by creamy custard pudding.

Yes, religion is not ideal for the folds on the wallet and the waist. Plus the clashes.
Off with it!

May the Force be with You.

Bans and Kissing Girls

T and I were huddled like two enormously ugly masai ostriches in the Nambian bushes when Katy Perry and her much analyzed anthem about kissing girls exploded on the TV screen.
T, the erudite observationist, made an erudite observation.

“..She kissed a girl. So did my mother. And a good 30 years before her silver knickers were born.
Is this supposed to be hip?”

Ahem.

Also, What is this talk about banning of RSS?
Something about extreme right wing activities.
That’s powerful.
Do we mete an equally cruel death to Atom too?
How the hell will people subscribe to insipid blogs like these?

Or is it some other kind of RSS.
I’m pretty sure I’m not following this.