Mumbai Blasts: Lateral thinking

“Its time we stop being a secular nation!” my friend opined as we were sipping on some lemon sherbet. “There are far too many Islamist nations out there, so it’s not like they won’t find a home. Just drive these bastards out”

I was a bit shocked at his statement. Not knowing whether this was his attempt at black humour or if he actually believed in the segregation, I told him that a substantial portion of the civilians killed were in fact Muslims (You can check the entire list here), Indians.

My friend’s statement is one of the million opinions that the people of the nation have expressed after the Mumbai blasts which have, and it’s rather mildly put, devastated the nation.

“We must fight back” is the natural response to these attacks, but how? Will catching hold of these terrorists and then executing them on camera work? Probably this way tell the whole world that we will not take to terrorism lightly and can be brutal when the need arises. Or maybe this way give the terrorism the much needed media attention that they have been wanting and establish them as martyrs on the other side of our border.

Collaborating with Pakistan on combating terrorism is another line of thought. As this article points out:

If Pakistan truly wishes to turn back the tide of fundamentalism in its country, and stop exporting violence overseas, then it must have proper support and assistance from India.

Somehow it seems a little late for this. It’s been a while & they don’t really seem to be doing anything about it, as more and more cities are being attacked by the terrorist groups. These groups I am sure must have also appointed a creative lead for providing them with innovative names for their outfit (Deccan, seriously?).

I am also deeply worried by the level of infiltration that might exist in our organisations. It’s probably something that has not received enough media attention but I do believe that a lot of people on the inside are involved. Fake IDS, plans of buildings, secret information, access codes. I doubt if the terrorist intelligence are that good to do it all on their own. Mumbai Underground might have had a role to play too.

Other news items include the whole nation calling Raj Thackeray a eunuch who excretes from his mouth and that pretty much sums up his existence. The MNS has done nothing to help the situation in Mumbai and watched with their heads bowed as their city got molested in front of their eyes for three days. 

As a parting note: We should have been smarter. We should have picked up the hints right away. And where were the hints? In this article which no one bothered to take seriously.

Pakistan is as safe a country as India and we had even promised state level security for the Australians and other teams. This incident only shows the double standards of Australian cricket, 

-Shafqat Naghmi, chief operating officer of the PCB told fumed. 

Clearly unmistakable. :)

Archer's blogging blunder

Image via Wikipedia

I guess not much needs to be said about celebrity blogging. Everyday as I read my feeds, I find another name from popular culture entering the blogosphere. Recently I had heard somewhere that Jeffrey Archer had his own simple blog which he was updating quite regularly. It was quite well maintained. With running commentary about his recent visit to India and tryst with Indian cricketers amongst others, the blog got me pretty hooked. And this was only the beginning. It was really this post that got me sitting up straight.

971 emails were awaiting me when I arrived back in the UK- the vast majority of them from India, and I must say that having been teased about calling Mumbai, Bombay, could someone please explain to me why they've changed the name of that city? And indeed Madras to Chennai? But it seems that Calcutta is still to be Calcutta - which I am much looking forward to visiting next year when I shall be opening Landmark's new bookstore.

Clearly not many people seem to be reading his blog for only four kind souls decided to retort saying that Mumbai and Chennai were the original names. It was only once HRM invaded our land that the names were changed. I will not even come to the Calcutta bit, but then this is where I start thinking. Is it Mr Archer’s lack of awareness of global changes showcased here or the global trend? As in, does the world really care whether Bombay became Mumbai again? Besides that, I’m pretty sure a lot of Indians still consider the IT hub of India to be called Bangalore.

Jeffrey, always a gentleman, readily accepted his blunder and apologised in the comments section.

Life in Metro

I saw Life in a Metro Yesterday.

I had heard from friends who had seen the movie that it was worth watching. But I didn't want to watch it because I was afraid I already knew the plot. I mean come on how hard could it be to guess? The name of the movie is Metro. Obviously the movie had to thrive on sex and more sex. Sex in the elevator, sex in the car, sex on the rooftop and sex with multiple men. And obviously this isn't the exhaustive list.(Thats impossible!). There would have to be a lot of stress, because once you earn so much and don't sleep(sleeping for rest not pleasure, pun NOT intended) work-related mostly and well the stress would lead to huge differences between the couples(mostly married ones) and this would again lead to more stress and they'd find solace in ..well...sex. With another person obviously. Some how Indians never get into drugs. It's either women or Booze(or both). At least that's what they show on the golden screen. Drugs are mostly forbidden territory, a taboo not worth chasing. But drinking bottles of poison, consuming unfathomable number of tablets(they never mention what those are, they are either really small like homeothepic medicene or really large ones, like rat poison) and newly introduced into the list, courtesy of Life in a Metro: Phenyl.
And the movie would also have few item numbers thrown in between(ok so I was wrong about this one) and because the director wouldn't want gay activists butting in, ergo a dash of homosexuality would have to be thrown in albeit it would HAVE to be something like how it was projected in Page 3. You know, being caught in the act, betraying a beautiful innocent girl in the process.(Co-incidentally it happens to be Miss Sen here as well, are they hinting something here?)
As it turned out, the movie was somewhat on those line but the director or rather the script-writer made one thing very clear: YOU CANNOT BE HAPPY IN A CITY.
Well even if you are, its short-lived. Because someone will fall short of breath or semen(though not necessarily in that order). Every two minutes feelings keep developing. And I keep insisting that it's the music that does this is. Its been stereotyped. Make a girl laugh, say something while looking her in the eye(with some really sentimental music playing in the background) and eventually all the moments will flash in her head and she'll leave her current hubby/boyfriend/fuck-buddy and come after you, running(either on a railway platform, road, beach etc).
This is fine.
But then something happens. Its almost as though the script-writer is contradicting his earlier gospel and goes against the stereotype and makes one of the couple accept the truth. Family is important. You can't leave your hubby(even if hes been having the best sex of his life for the last two years and you have been getting NOTHING AT ALL). I guess that's to show that its a man's world and that women have to endure everything(which isn't necessarily true, though as it turns out in most cases they have to).
One of the greatest gifts given to women is their power to weep. Seriously you have to be a real bastard if you don't sympathise with a woman who is crying, and to add to that the background score, its a fool proof combo. For directors, this is a steal if they capitalise on it. So even if a girl knows that she is sleeping with the man who
1. Is married with a kid
2.Is her boss
3.Will give her perks in return
she feels that maybe someday after relentless hours of fucking she'll change his feelings towards her(whore) to something else(love of his life).

The worst part is that she is successful in doing so, but by that time someone else has come into her life because you can only love someone who takes care of you when you being the douche bag that you are drinks a bottle of phenyl because your boss who was initially humping you just to let out his stress won't love you.
So well conscience comes into play and as usual messes everything up.

Also, the director very clearly wanted to show one simple fact. Old people can't have sex. They can sleep in the same bad and even have a live-in relationship but can't fornicate. Nay! That is unthinkable. But that's discrimination don't you think? Everyone around them is getting some and they have to kill the poor old lady(played beautifully by Nafisa Ali) before she gets any with her boyfriend(Dharmender, oh yes it was quite a treat watching him as well. Everytime he's day "I love you" in his "Main tera khoon peejaonga" tone, I just couldnt help sniggering).

Eventually they had to end the movie, so they showed that everyone is happy the way they are, as in the respective people they were with(or without) and that the hulla gulla should stop. It was almost like a stay-order had been passed and no more fooling around was allowed.Otherwise, if the story was to continue, we'd end up having 7 factorial relationships(read elementary permutation and combination on how).

The music was good, really good. They got these bangladeshi and kashmiri dudes to sing. They blended it into the movie by actually casting them as full time singers in the movie. At any given high or low, they'd appear with their band baja(and guitar/banjo) and start singing. Kudos to them!

When Orkut results in Death

We hear about it so often, yet unless it happens to us, we dont tend to take it seriously. Be it having unprotected sex, drinking water which isnt clean or meeting people after getting to know them from chatrooms/social networking sites.
Its hard to figure out a person's intentions when he is online because he can seem to appear anyone he wants to be.
You can state that your passions are Hiking, Bungee Jumping and Rocket Science and that you've got the perfect figure(despite any of that being true). But the power of an avatar or lack of face to face conversations can also help 'psycho's' hide their identity quite effectively.
Recently a girl and guy got to know each other through Orkut, became really close pals, wrote each other sweet testimonials and the works. The guy was already married. They fell in love and met...

Find out what happened next...

Its quite easy to blame all this on fate and take the easy way out, but come on! Be sensible.
This is the guys profile:
(You can still see the girls testimonial I think)
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=348385650417627297

And this is the girl's:
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=11725203022944506305

A Tout le monde
Be careful on any social networking site or any of the chatrooms. I know it sounds like I am sermonising here, but its been happening to so many people and its so easy to fall in the trap.

My days in Bangalore have been quite relaxing and I think I have exceeded my sleep quota(if ever there was one) by a massive margin. Finally the D-day has almost arrived and its tomorrow. Sonam, a close pal from BITS has also come to head bang(though I dont kinow how much of that can be done with Steven Tyler singing) with us fellow rockers and spent the entire day with us. A substantial part of it went watching the movie "Shootout at Lokhandwala" and well...what can I say I was impressed.

The movie is from the White Feather production house, which was co-founded by Sanjay Dutt. The movie says that it was based on true rumours and that it was. Closely connected to the Mumbai Blasts and Dawood Ibrahim and other superstar tags, the movie was rather entertaining. Just one thing, there seemed to be no twist in the tale. Its like, fine , agreed, its cool and all, killing dozens of people and wasting excessive amounts of bullets but there is no twist. But my oh my was I excited.

I realised its probably because of the background music.

Damn, they hype it up so much. Everytime, Vivek Oberoi starts smoking a cigerette or pops a cap in someone's head(thats nigger for shooting someone down), this really cool music starts playing in the background, without which the act would seem..quite bland. And then there is this choir that starts giving backing vocals and its like, oh my god, killing people is like so cool, even though you know what they are doing actually happened and its outright illegal and wrong.
The movie quite clearly tells you the repercussions of being an outlaw and more importantly, messing around with higher powers(such as larger dons living in dubai) can really screw matters and end up with you getting killed. You're much better off being a sycophant.
The incidents are apparently mostly real( I verified that by wiki-ing and googleing for over 2-3 hours). The career graph of Maya Dolas, the notorious gangster played by Vivek Oberoi can be plotted and is something like this

Co-incidentally this is also the Stress vs Strain Graph of a untypically brittle material as shown on Wikipedia.
The movie has a nice tempo and there is not a single moment when you feel bored, just that the director has a wonderful way of pissing the audience by sneaking in two item numbers without any meaning and which are totally irrelevant to the plot thus giving the movie its aesthetic value. Also, Tushar Kapoor must be the funniest hit-man ever. The director has really tried to make him look like a macho-man, but has miserably failed much to my amusement.

However, after wiki-ing about the Lokhandwala shootout, I stumbled upon ULHASNAGAR. Its apparently a major gangster town and its sarcastically said(though has known to be true) that there are killings in this town on every tuesday. Surprisingly the literacy rate of this town is 80%(according to the 2001 census), when the national average was only 60%.