Feni Sunsets

Does this make "Coronasense"?

2020-03-13T22:12:00.002+05:30

Does this make “Coronasense” ?

I guess by now anyone who watches the numerous news channels, social media messages and videos or reads the newspapers, spouting doomsday prophesies ad nauseum, knows about this pandemic, how it began, how it spreads, which celebrity has contracted it and what is being done to contain it.

Some even tell you to wash your hands and not to keep touching your face.

Others quip, make memes, cartoons, and jokes about it.

Still others (and these are the worst in my book) spread fake news, lies, make ridiculous claims for cures (one wag advocates drinking cow urine, another 190 proof alcohol), or are just in denial.

As far as I’m concerned this threat is real and I suggest every person needs to contribute their mite, time and energies to take stringent measures not just to protect oneself, but also to help others.

Rather than depend on the authorities to step in

(they are also humans groping in the dark, while at the same time trying to fix the economy, create jobs, alleviate poverty and crime, keep their bosses happy, or maintain their positions of power) let each person get proactive and ask ourselves, “What can I do to help?” and “What can I do to keep this virus at bay?”.

Me, I’m just the ordinary middle-class retiree, not a celebrity, doctor, health expert, bureaucrat, politician (heaven-help) in the age which will henceforth be known as the pandemic of Covid-19.

I’ve survived my share of the common flu, mumps, measles, chicken pox, and the school bully.

I’m almost up to my threescore and ten lifespan, and pretty sure that I’ll make it provided I don’t get coughed or sneezed upon by this bunch of zealous party workers, even now, going from door to door canvassing for the zilla parishad elections.

But since I consider myself pretty sensible and logical, I try to use common sense and

logic to figure out what I should do to keep myself safe, and I’m sharing this with you:

First things first ……

You’ve listened to the news and have a fair sense of what you are up against so stop listening, reading, viewing, keeping track of and discussing it like it’s the cricket score in the world cup series.

Instead…..Keep abreast of what the healthcare experts and scientists have to say (not celebs and politicians and shamans) and let logic and common sense decide your course of action.

Inform others about the danger and how they can keep themselves safe as well. This is especially true about the ill-informed, illiterate, uneducated and superstitious sections of our society, people you are in contact with, like your maid, driver, gardener, common labourers. Spread the word in language they understand. Convince them!!

It starts with you …..

Stop spitting in public, coughing or sneezing without covering your mouth and nose with your sleeve. Take your trash home. Educate others. Continuing to do so otherwise, is akin to carrying a loaded gun.

Sanitise your daily use items, your phone, desktop, door knobs, table tops and in general your surroundings routinely.

As soon as you get home from work or the outside wash your face, hands and feet.

Change into fresh clothes frequently.

Bathe before going to bed; don’t take the days dust and dirt with you to accumulate in your sheets and pillows.

Stop non-essential travel even in your own transport

Stay away from crowds. If you have to take a bus or train, get into one that is not crowded.

Use a face mask (get it from a reliable source) if needed, even a clean handkerchief will do, but wash it out after.

If you see someone is unwell help, or try to get them to get help or report it.

Go shopping only when necessary and for goodness sake don’t hoard – remember if someone who really needs stuff doesn’t get it, this could be the reason for the spread of the virus and not being able to contain it will suck big time.

Take your holiday at home rather than at the mall. Spend time playing board games, have a sing-along, do a home project, or just chill with a good book or TV movie.

If you are in a position of authority:

Give sanitation workers gloves and protection and knowledge to help them stay safe.

Disinfect public transport with religious fervor.

Stop all gatherings, meetings and functions.

Try to make office, shop or factory timings flexible so that streets and public transport are not crowded.

Allow those who can work from home do so.

Have minimum person to person interaction.

Above all do not panic or add to the hysteria surrounding this pandemic, which just makes it worse.

Go about your daily routine in a calm, efficient and unobtrusive manner.

Be aware of your surroundings and mindful of others.

Stay safe and healthy.

....and if you think this post has any merit, please share it.

Pedestrians unite! You have nothing to lose but your lives.

2014-06-28T20:19:00.000+05:30

A cabinet minister died on Delhi’s roads the other day. One would think that, at last, there would be more than a knee-jerk reaction by the transport ministry to set in motion programs to educate, prosecute and/or implement rules of the road for the safety of all eligible voters, if not all its citizenry. But, a month later, after all the hoopla and lip service paid to a "great leader" by all and sundry. The roads of this country remain chaotic and unruly, even the one they are proposing to name after him.

Having said that ……….

Here I am representing a vanishing race - The pedestrian.

Now while you cops have been directing traffic in all our big cities, I know more about it than the combined mess of you do. I’ve been dodging it! Why you even have those traffic podiums built up so you won’t get run over yourself, or you stand on either side of the road and wave a traffic wand instead.

That I am here tonight to celebrate my 62^nd birthday, no thanks to you, is owing to a keen eye and a nimble pair of legs. But I know from ongoing experience that one of these days they’ll get me. I’m not as young as I used to be and the close shaves are getting even closer. Why just yesterday I ran into a store and shut the door behind me just to keep a car and its driver from getting me. Another SUV chased me up the porch into a building, what saved me was my jumping into an elevator going up.

When I was younger I could stay on the sidewalk and dodge these fellows with agility. But seeing as sidewalks nowadays are either non-existent or have been encroached by parked cars, illegal gados, message boards, trades-persons, and used for open-air godowns and the like, what choice has the pedestrian but to become another streetwalker.

And now to make up some sort of a game all the roads are being marked up with white lines. If the driver of a car hits you while you are inside those white lines it doesn’t count. He has to come back and run over you again.

Earlier in 1983 when we had Kiran Bedi, there were not near as many people killed as there are now. But there were more people hurt, and these were mostly traffic offenders by Kiran Bedi’s wielding of her police baton, which proves that by having more traffic police only to stop and direct traffic, the driver can finish his victim, whereas in the old days he could only hurt him. And this is what the ministry of roads calls "progress". Maybe they are talking about population control.

Narcotics however have helped the pedestrian a little, as the drivers are afraid to run over just anybody. It might be a Nigerian drug dealer and their tyres could get cut up.

In Delhi they have red and green traffic lights. Green for “GO” and red for “CHECK THAT THERE ARE NO COPS AROUND BEFORE GOING”

Here at the O’ Coqueiro crossing in Porvorim there are also amber lights. I asked a cop what the amber light was for. He thought one of them had faded. I’m guessing the amber light is for old people who were standing there for a long time to start limbering up, then, if they are in good condition, maybe they can make it to the other side.

To better traffic conditions I suggest a few traffic rules for the future:

1) Allow pedestrians to carry shotguns to intimidate homicidal drivers in return every time they cross the road. For non-violent pedestrians introduce rent-a-cow schemes: This allows a pedestrian to walk a herd across the road for the price of a handful of cattle feed. Reward jaywalkers who cross unhurt.

2) Make all roads one-way. This ensures that anyone going from Mapusa to Panjim will think twice about driving if he has to return via Bangalore.

3) Make the price of petrol and diesel equivalent to that of “Fair and Lovely” skin cream in weight, and sell them in tubes over the counter at stores. This will free up tons of space used by petrol bunks across the country, and also make sure car owners buy only what they need.

4) To cut down on incessant honking, replace all vehicle horns buttons with paid cell phone apps which charge a fee every time the horn is used. Double, if it is used in the vicinity of a hospital or school.

5) For smooth traffic flow, have a team at every junction confiscate the licence of every driver and return it at the next one, only if he reaches AFTER a certain time limit. This in itself will reduce at least half of the two-wheelers and a third of four-wheelers on the roads.

6) On Sundays do not allow anyone other than learner drivers on the roads, and then all they can hit is each other. Sell season tickets and open betting booths for pedestrians and tourists to witness this spectacle.

7) Issue driving licences only to those who understand that road signs and markings are not coloured accessories for road beautification.

8) Have everybody go North on Mondays, South on Tuesdays and so on. That’s the only way you can make Indian roads safe for democracy.

If we continue with the present state of our roads and traffic in 3 years there will be no pedestrians left, and those homicidal drivers might start targeting traffic cops instead!

It’s a Holly Jolly Election

2014-05-16T00:51:00.001+05:30

And so, at last, the Indian Game of Thrones aka Election 2014 to defeat the Italian lineage of the House Gandhi, which began in roughly 1977, is over. We have finally come to the end of the bitter hateful partisan viciousness that has consumed us for far too long, and we can now look forward, as a nation, to beginning a new era of bitter hateful partisan viciousness. But first let's pause for a moment to express our support, as Indians, for the man we have elected as our next Prime Minister, even if we did not vote for him, or do not - in the case of Mamata Bannerji’s donkey, anyway - know who he is. For all she knows, we elected Arnab Goswami, or maybe Arnold Schwarzenneger.

My deadline to publish this article was the night of the day before, and as I write these words, all the networks are predicting a huge BJP win but refusing to make any predictions about who lost. They don't want to repeat the fiasco of the Delhi election night of 2013, when they appeared to be getting their voting-return data from a fortune telling parrot.

So this time around they are being extremely careful about how they word things:

BARKHA DUTT: Let's turn to our political expert, Nidhi Razdhan. Nidhi, what's your expert analysis of the losers at this point?

NIDHI: I can't say, Barkha.

BARKHA: You mean it's too early to predict?

NIDHI: I wouldn't go as far as to say that, Barkha.

BARKHA: So you can't tell us anything?

NIDHI: This connection sucks Barkha. Try again later.

On a brighter note, the voting seemed to go fairly smoothly here in Goa. This was a concern because of the way we screwed up the last election by casting thousands upon thousands of fake votes on which we apparently selected a mute for Prime Minister, or two people for Prime Minister, or a parrot for Prime Minister, etc.

But this time it went pretty well. Where I voted, in Alto Porvorim, there was a longish line, but it moved steadily, with the dead voters being dragged forward by helpful poll workers, and the drunks fed large pots of coffee.

Eventually I got into the voting booth and cast my vote on one of those new computerised EVM’s, which was kind of fun, especially the part at the end when you push the button and the little beeper screeches and all the street dogs start howling. (If this did not happen when you voted, your machine was defective, and you should file a complaint with the Election Commission to notify Rahul Gandhi to check it immediately.)

My biggest voting problem was in understanding the party symbols on the EVM. I had studied them ahead of time on a sample EVM; there were various patterns and designs, and without question the one with the hand symbol appeared to be clutching a wad of currency. Of course there was some confusion with one of the others was it a broom or was it a torch with emanating light rays or was it an alien stun wand. The English version of how to use the EVM’s was apparently written by reporters from the Panjim Edition of The Times of India. One instruction, which I am not making up, was worded as follows: You are not given any ballot thereafter, and are sent to the EV Machine placed behind a card board in a corner. The machine is placed in such a way that your polled vote will be a secret.” It made me think: well polling is a gamble anyway. But search as I might I failed to find the above-mentioned “card board” although there was a cleverly hidden EVM in a corner ….so brushing aside all thought of Aces, Kings and Queens, I played my trump and pressed a blue button which blushed bright red and let out a satisfied orgasmic shriek.

I voted for a better country, one that I as a citizen , would hopefully feel proud of, against that old one, because it's riddled with corruption and greed and turmoil and has no soul in it that I can detect. I would have voted for the death penalty for whoever wrote it, but as far as I know that was not an electoral requirement.

I voted in favour of the question about casinos, solely because the local version of a casino is “matka” or “jackpot”

I also, of course, voted for a Prime Minister. I believe I made the right choice, and I hope that when we finally determine the outcome of who actually lost this election - if we ever do - my candidate will still be declared victorious. Because I believe that now, more than ever before in this nation's history, we need a leader with vision, courage, experience, resiliency and - above all - a really big bullet proof vest to accommodate a 56 inch,…..oops sorry we follow the metric system 142.24 cms, chest.

Prime Minister “The Great Khali” Dalip Singh Rana.

Potty Training or The Love That Dare Not Speak Its’ Name.

2014-05-11T15:25:00.002+05:30

Please! Please! Pretty please stop banging on the toilet door every time I’m in there on my daily sabbatical, just to ask where I left the cell phone charger, or have I paid the water bill since you’re passing there on your way to the store, or (and this cracks me up) whether I want my breakfast eggs fried or scrambled. And then, when I get teed-off at such rude intrusion, you go: Why? What’s wrong in asking you that! And then go: Why do you have to lock the door anyway. What’s going on in there?

Also, if you are in such a tearing hurry and need to use the loo as well, stop yelling at me to “hurry up”. Does it occur to you that we have another fully functional bathroom just down the corridor! And no other resident in the house!?

Yes that’s what I’m talking about … we men, and our toilet time!

We are men! In ancient times, in time of difficulty, we have always needed to retreat to our caves. It so happens that in this modern age our “caves” are fully plumbed. The toilet for us is the last bastion, the final refuge, the last few square metres of man-space left to us. Somewhere to sit, something to read, something to do and who gives a dam about the odour. Because THAT, for us, is happiness. Because we are men! We are different:

We have only one word for “soap”!

To us strawberry is a fruit, and kiwi is a bird, not colours!

We do not own candles! Let alone chocolate-scented ones!

We have never seen anything….of any value… in a craft shop!

We do not collect magazines, at least not those which have photographs of celebrities, with all their clothes on!

When we have conversations we actually take it in turns to talk!

We have not yet reached that level of earth-shattering boredom and inhuman despair where we go to have our hair-styled….. just for fun!!

We never get excited about really, REALLY boring things like ornaments, bath oils, the countryside, babies, spiders.

We don’t even know what…. what in the name of all that’s holy, is the purpose of potpourri!!!….looks like burnt cereal, smells like your octogenarian aunt! Why do we need that?

So please, in this strange and frightening world allow us one last place to call our own. This toilet, this blessed pot! This fortress of solitude!

And finally when you ladies go to the bathroom in groups of two or more, we do not pass comment, we do not make judgement – that is your choice.

So allow us men. We men…. to choose: - and we choose to always walk the toilet mile alone!

Elections-2014:

2014-04-12T17:44:00.001+05:30

Can Mr.Chacha Alimony possibly compete with Rhino Hernandez?

Now the eyeballs of the nation turn toward this vibrant, proud, ambitious city in North or possibly South Goa as the poll parties gather here to present their message of hope for Goa and, in the larger interest, India, namely that the Sri Ram Sena and SP are fascist, racist women-hating scum.

In the days leading up to the elections, the Russians have been enjoying their Dachas in Morjim, while the Israelites stake out Aswem, and the Nigerians continue their drug trade in Calangute, often called "The Pearl of the Non-Goa North" because of its many attractions.

The Dhirio Hall of Fame is located here, but that is only the beginning: There are also choked roads, ramshackle buildings, dead trees, several bars and restaurants, literally tonnes of garbage, and a modern bus fleet consisting of three buses left over from the days of the Portuguese occupation.

On top of all that, right now Lower Candolim boasts a huge sand sculpture of the Pope. It bears an uncanny resemblance to what the Pope would look like if he were made out of sand sculpted by somebody who had never actually seen him. The sculpture allegedly weighs more than 15 tonnes and cost ₹30 lakhs, which was paid by the drug dealers association of North Goa Beaches, as a way of sending the message: "We have a great deal of sand……and even more weed."

It is only fitting that this sculpture has been erected here. Its looming presence serves as a reminder that no matter how many politicians take the stage, this convention is really about just one person — a person whose name will be evoked countless times over the next few days; a person who, whether you love him or hate him, has come to dominate the political discussion in this state and possibly the nation as few others ever have.

I refer, of course, to Rhino“Humma Humma” Hernandez.

I have been observing political rallies since the Babri Masjid demolition and I have never seen an artiste, speaker or singer captivate the nation the way Rhino did that night in Dumbolim. It was mesmerizing to watch: Rhino would stare into the lights and launch into song, and as he sang, you could almost hear his brain shouting "Help! Help!" as it became increasingly clear that he had no earthly idea how that particular lyric was going to end. Plus, while conducting a pretend salsa with a guitar and microphone, he made TWO proprietary anatomically impossible bodily contortions.

It was, quite simply, the best election song ever performed, and I am including the Oscar winning “Jai Ho” in that statement. When I left Dumbolim and returned, between rallies, to the normal human world, Rhino’s song was pretty much the only thing anybody wanted to talk to me about. If the AAP want to really boost TV ratings for this election, they should have Rhino sing in Delhi too. Unfortunately, it appears that our best hope for entertainment is going to be Sunny Leone, who is scheduled to deliver her remarks during the coveted 1 a.m. slot on FTV.She will of course be wearing "Wendell Rodriques".

But the most anticipated speech was delivered last Thursday night by Prime Minister Maun Singh, who was making the case that the UPA deserves a third term in office, based on his solid record of taking on some of the most difficult problems this nation has ever faced and unflinchingly blaming all of them, including the disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines jet, on the opposition. The PM also spoke about his plan for reducing corruption, which continues to be a pesky problem despite the many hard-hitting speeches and interviews the Shehzada Ra Ga has made about it.

A big concern for the UPA is whether the PM can rekindle the passion and excitement he generated in 2009. Back then he was a superstar who exuded world-class celebrity glamour, the kind you saw with Sunil Gavaskar, Amitabh Bachchan or the Beatles; whereas today, after ten uneventful years in office, he is more in the Mohd.Azharuddin bracket.

So the PM is hoping against hope to get a win from this election. It definitely has the potential to be exciting. There are a lot more protesters here in Goa than there were in Delhi, reflecting either a sudden resurgence in social awareness on the part of India’s youth or nice weather.

Also there are more celebrities here. Minutes after I arrived, I saw Sherlyn Chopra, in person, sitting at table mere metres from the giant sand Pope. The Goan Observer is authoritatively reporting that Salman Khan, Sania Mirza, and Bappi Lahri will, or will not, be attending the swearing-in ceremonies. Poonam Pandey, on the other hand, is definitely here. So am I, and you can depend on me to keep you updated.

Electrify your Cat.

2013-07-29T13:24:00.003+05:30

It’s raining so hard, the electricity department can’t keep pace and the electricity keeps shutting off arbitrarily and weird things start to happen.

For instance I’ve noticed my neighbours’ cat has a fluorescent tail.

It’s weird really because when there’s no electricity (which happens most of the time here even during a light shower) this glow-in-the-dark-tail seem to float eerily through the bushes followed by a trail of fireflies much like a midget bishop’s sceptre leading a candlelight procession of the faithful.

Don’t you just hate it when there’s no electricity? I mean I’m having a hot shower, I drop the soap and voila! The lights go out. Or I’m watching Mallika Sherawat about to disrobe and step into a bubble bath and the TV just shuts down.

I mean what is it with the electricity department and bathing?? And where does all that electricity go after they turn off the tap?

Modern humans tend to take our hot baths, electric lights, fans, televisions, etc. for granted, but thousands of years ago, long before any knowledge of electricity existed, people were aware of shocks from electric fish, but had no electric appliances. This was just as well because there was no place to plug them in. Also the fish wouldn't keep still and kept flopping about.

Then along came Benjamin Franklin who proved, by flying a kite in a thunderstorm, that lightning was powered by the same force as the fish. This also damaged Franklin’s brain and he started speaking only in incomprehensible proverbs, such as, “Fish and visitors stink in three days.” Finally he was given a job running the post office.

So the question to ponder is: What in the world is electricity and how does it really work?

Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important lesson about electricity: On a cool dry day, rub your hands vigorously on a cat’s fur then reach over with the other hand a touch a girl’s metal piercing.

Did you notice how she twitched violently and then slapped your face really hard? This teaches one that electricity can be a very powerful force, but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an important lesson about self-preservation.

It also illustrates how an electrical circuit works. When you rubbed the cats fur, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small objects that cats manufacturer in their fur so that they will repel dirt. These electrons travel through the conductive cells in your skin and collect under your fingernails, where they form a spark that leaps to the girl’s metal piercing, then travel down to her palm and back onto your face, thus completing the circuit.

AMAZING ELECTRONIC FACT: If you rubbed the cat’s fur for a really long time without touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your fingernail would explode! But there's nothing to worry about unless you have a really patient cat.

After Franklin came a guy called Galvani (an Italian) who attached two different kinds of metal to a dead frog’s unattached leg, and it twitched! I know of another Italian, a lady who can seemingly make a dead political party appear as though it's running a country.

Galvani's experiments led to enormous discoveries in human biology. Today skilled surgeons can take a number of human body parts, embed pieces of metal into its muscles, and voila! Wolverine and Iron Man!

Then came Sir Thomas Edison... of course he was knighted for the simple fact that he concocted a simple electrical circuit :- the electricity department, which sends electricity through a wire to our homes, then immediately gets it back through another wire, then sends it right back to us again. Now, since very few of us have the time to examine our electricity, the electricity department can sell us the same batch of electricity over and over again and never get caught.

In fact I checked, the last time any new electricity was generated in India was in 1963 when the Bhakra-Nangal dams were completed.

So today we give thanks to Galvani’s frog and Edison and Franklin for our electricity which allows us to take instant hot baths and watch bleeped-out audio and endless anti-smoking messages on our mindless television programmes.

Gotta go now, have to try out this new electric toenail-cutter,… uh oh! There go the lights. Sob!!

Prepping for the Ballot

2013-06-17T15:25:00.001+05:30

Camp Goa -- I don’t know why anybody thought it was a good idea to hold the BJP Prime Ministerial nominating convention in Goa. This state has a terrible track record with politics. Does anybody remember 1990? That was the year when Goa had 3 Chief Ministers and President’s rule all in the same year; when the electorate were deeply confused about whether to tick or cross off their candidates’ symbol on the ballot paper. This is not surprising: Voters in India are also deeply confused about what lane they’re driving in, or what, specifically they’re supposed to do when the traffic light changes colour.

So this is the last place where anybody should attempt to nominate somebody for Prime minister. Nevertheless, Goa became the site of a massive convention gathering featuring hundreds of delegates, party leaders, media people, protesters, hookers, random lunatics and another guy with the initials PM of the “We- get- our- kicks- beating- up- girls- in- Mangalore-in- the- name- of- Indian- culture” party.

Until the weekend, the “PM-in- waiting-forever” Lau Purushji had also been planning to come; apparently he was unaware that this is the BJP convention. He changed his mind after a meeting with his top aides that may or may not have involved wearing adult diapers. So, tragically, LKA was not here.

But there was still a lot of excitement in the air, as well as wind gusts upwards of 50 km per hour, as the monsoon made its way up the west coast, posing a serious threat to the estimated 7 Drishti lifeguards standing on the beach in matching rain slickers warning everybody to stay the hell off the shoreline.

The monsoon rains had already affected the convention: On Friday night, instead of the planned schedule, the BJP thought to hold a very brief session, at which they would nominate NaMo and/or Sushmaji. Then they would declare the convention over, and everybody would go home so as not to miss watching their favourite "Saas, Biwi aur Gulaam" TV serial.

No, that would have been WAY too sane. Instead there were three more days of speeches by every major NDA figure and newscaster in the nation, living or dead, including the likes of Baba Ramdev. The goal was to demonstrate to a politically aware nationwide convention-viewing TV audience — an estimated 9 people — that NaMo is a regular non-holographic human just like you who feels pain the same way any normal person does when one of his bulletproof cars needs repair.

The BJP also tried to show that Manohar P. is a nice young man who does not, as the Congress and Mr Alimony have been suggesting, want to legalize betting in cricket and prostitution. This is especially important here in Goa, because this is a crucial state whose voters could decide the election, assuming they can figure out where their polling booths are, which, as I noted earlier, is not a certainty, and depends on how close the nearest bar is situated.

While all this was going on inside the convention, there was plenty of action outside Advani’s house in the streets of Delhi, where a handful of protesters attempted to exercise their constitutional right to annoy pretty much everybody who is not one of them.

On top of all that, there was the relentless approach of the monsoon, which could have major impact on the economy, because Goa is home to an estimated 60 percent of the nation’s strategic reserve of dance bars serving feni.

I am not suggesting for one second that Goa is some kind of cultural backwater. Goa is a major state boasting a wide array of things, as evidenced by this list of List of Five Fascinating Facts about Goa:

1. Goa boasts the world’s largest number of Casino boats that can fit in the smallest stretch of river.

2. Charles Sobhraj was arrested here in 1986.

3. 13 years later the Saga of the “River Princess” lumbers on.

Fixing a Scandal

2013-06-08T14:21:00.000+05:30

I’ll get to those boring Right to Education and National Food Security Bills in a moment. They sound much the same as the earlier political election slogans, “Roti, Kapda aur Makaan”. And it looks as though we’re regressing right back to an earlier era.

I mean just think about it ……Murthy is back heading up Infosys, Sanjay Dutt is back in jail, Madhuri is back in Bollywood, Nawaz Sharif is back as the Pakistan PM, the GDP is back to 5% and Dalmiya is back in the BCCI. OMG !! It’s the 90’s!!!

But first and foremost (in the interests of increasing the television TRP’s of all the Indian news channels) everyone and their mothers need to know about the IPL fixing and gambling scandal.
I found out about this while walking in Candolim one evening, when I passed a bungalow called “BannersBroker.” Through the window I could see men shouting passionately at a TV screen, which was showing a horse race. Right away I suspected that these men were bookies, because :-
(a) only bookies believe that race horses on television can hear them, and...
(b) most of them had large briefcases and sported the latest smart phones. One or two of them were missing key teeth (the men, I mean).

I decided, as a concerned citizen, that I needed to investigate. So I went inside "BannersBroker", and sure enough, it was a bookie operation, operating openly. Then I saw it: A sign that said “BET ON ANY IPL EVENT.”
I was stunned !! Indian Cricket is not supposed to be about money. Indian Cricket is supposed to be about sportsmanship, about national pride, about the untainted beauty of pure competition and love for the "Gentleman’s Game"!! So you can imagine how excited I was when I found out I could bet on it.

I put ₹100 on whether or not anyone would be slapped, hugged or called a “monkey” by Bhajji of the Mumbai Indians, who were in the semi-finals.

Then I scurried on back home to watch Maria Sharapova play her singles match in the French Open. The match live-streamed on the Internet.
They have the Internet streaming over here in Goa, although most times it goes in the opposite direction.
Maria Sharapova was playing the Chinese Su-Wei Hsieh, who – if you know anything about international competition at this level – were two women in short skirts, wearing matching underwear.

It was a tense match. Never before have I watched women’s single tennis with so much interest in the actual score. But in the end, Maria won, which meant that she moved on to the next round, and – more important for Indian Cricket – I won ₹200.

My point is, there is Cricket gambling going on here, and I for one am shocked. Rest assured that I will investigate further.

Speaking of scandals involving sport: It turns out that athletes pee in the Olympic swimming pool. Seriously. Swimmers Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte revealed this to the Wall Street Journal.
And in an interview with famous personality Sunny Leone, Ryan said, “I think there’s just something about getting into chlorinated water that makes you just automatically go.”
Then Sherlyn Chopra, Hugh Hefner’s play-mate revealed that she sometimes peed in the Playboy Mansion pool. Not to be outdone, another athlete Abhinav Bindra, revealed that he, too, peed in the Olympic pool in Beijing. This was especially disturbing, because Bindra is an air-rifle shooter and we all know what that means.
No, that last one was a joke, and I hope China does not take offense, because their swimmers are trained in martial arts as well and could crush Abhinav’s skull like a grape using only a thumb and forefinger.

But all kidding aside, there apparently is an epidemic of peeing going on in swimming pools, and it took Shilpa Shetty to raise the troubling question: Why, exactly, is Sunny Leone a famous personality? To which Sreesanth replied: That's because she does not need a towel, considering she has nothing to hide.

Dolly Nightingale & The Common Cold

2012-02-10T15:22:00.000+05:30

It’s the changing seasons I imagine, that’s what made me get the cold, it invaded my whole being, turning me into a quivering blob of snot and phlegm accompanied by 2000 kmph sneeze winds and a fever that turned my musculature to jelly.

There are three kinds of cold victims: the blowers, the snifflers and the nose-blowing-hawking-phlegm-spitters. I found myself among the snifflers, with extra sneeze velocity.

However for overall capacity to make you cringe and the ability to make you walk out of the movie theatre I’d have to give props to the phlegm spitters. And they are everywhere. Indians think nothing of spitting. They encourage it in their young. In kindergarten my gym coach once spent a whole day trying to teach us how to spit. He never had a girlfriend.

So I say we petition the Supreme Court to give the pharmaceutical companies another four months to cure the common cold, and if they don’t we turn the problem over to a more competent outfit, like Facebook.

What are these pharmaceutical companies doing anyway? They get bundles of cash for research, to buy furniture, and laboratories, and white coats and rubber gloves and other laboratory devices, and it seems all they want to do is invent obscure new medications for diseases nobody, you or I, know, or ever heard about.

MORENABAD- A team of research scientists from the Neva Neva Research Laboratories here has successfully implanted a sows ear in a fifteen year old elephant. “We really don’t know why we did it. We just had this sows ear and this fifteen year old elephant, so we figured why not see if we can develop a growth hormone. Next week we will place a lithium battery in a dead chicken and attempt to revive its brain function so that we can develop a vaccine for the clucking virus*.

[clucking virus n. an infection found commonly in henpecked husbands.]

In the meantime crores of people out there are contracting the common cold and generally making the world a messier place to live in. Isn’t it bad enough having to live with wall-to-wall garbage, packs of stray dogs on every corner and rampant corruption?

It seems to me that the only organizations trying to do anything about the common cold are those home remedy organizations that advertise on TV.

In a typical TV commercial:( the scene opens where the mother walks in and speaks to her child who is lying on the floor in his pyjamas.)

MOTHER: Beta, are you ready to go for Grandpas 105^th birthday party at the Old Age Home?

SON: I don’t think I can Ma. It’s this awful cold. My temperature is 150 degrees and my ingrown toenail is turning blue.

MOTHER: Here, drink this Balgam-Dur-Karo

SON: Balgam-Dur-Karo?

MOTHER: Balgam-Dur-Karo

(The scene shifts to a white room where an elderly actor wearing a white coat, steel-rimmed glasses and holding a test tube of fluorescent liquid is standing behind a desk. If the camera got closer you would see that the actor is not wearing pants.)

ACTOR: Our research has shown that Balgam-Dur-Karo, an infusion of ocean extracts and ancient organic herbs from the Mohenjo-daro civilization is an extremely effective cure for colds, cough, nervous disorders, stuttering, ED and gout. Take Balgam-Dur-Karo for health and vitality.

(Cut to Old Age Home)

SON: Wow, you know Grandpa, that Balgam-Dur-Karo, an infusion of ocean extracts and ancient organic herbs, is wonderful. I am fit and fine now and only have a slight memory loss!

MOTHER: I’m beginning to feel a sneeze coming on.

GRANDPA: Your Grandmother seems to think the way to avoid colds is to consume ten thousand milligrams a day of vitamin C, she's forever gulping down vitamin C pills the size of bricks. But she still catches a cold. Me, I drink large quantities of beer and it works like a charm. So far I haven’t had one cold that I can remember clearly.

SON: And how are you feeling today, Grandma? ….Grandma?.... Grandma?... Uhoh!

……

As for me, I have a guardian angel up above (actually living on the floor above me) and her name is Dolly. In my fevered state I saw an apparition; Dolly in her diaphanous salwar kameez, serenely floating down the staircase on a cloud, bringing with her a vial of healing mystic ayurvedic potion. And before you could say “Phlegm be gone!’ or “Vasakadyarishtam” it was over. I was free of the dreaded cold that incarcerated and wasted me for four days, and am now back to my insouciant ways.

2011 : Looking Back in Perplexity!

2012-01-14T20:29:00.041+05:30

JANUARY

7^th

In New Delhi the Department of Identity Cards unveils a new, improved, unique, identity DNA, blood and stool sample card called "Aadhar Plus".This is such a big hit that Nandan Nilekani, the expert who thought it up, is immediately put to work on developing a policy to deal with the Kashmir issue.

18^th

A barge loaded with garbage sets out from the Mandovi under the command of the NIO Director for Exploration, who is seeking to prove his theory that Goa could have been discovered by early mariners from Portugal in crude garbage barges, and maybe we can reverse the trend.

FEBRUARY

11th
Something happened in Egypt. I think a pyramid fell.

15^th

In the widening 2G scandal, the heads of three major telecom firms rob a department store.

MARCH

3^rd

At the Wagah border, tensions mount as a Pakistani ranger gets his butt kicked by a female BSF jawan for having insulted Salman Khan.

20^th

Census 2011 says that India has only 940 females for every 1000 males. So that leaves 60 men who have to take matters into their own hands.

APRIL

1^st

Baba Ramdev reveals that he can raise the dead. The manufacturers of Viagra immediately offer to buy him out. To which Swami Agnivesh responds, “Ha! Ha! The joke’s on you.”

Mamata to Sonia," If you call a bunch of chickens a "flock", fish a "school", and cows a "herd" do you know that a group of Baboons, the loudest,most dangerous, most obnoxious, most viciously aggressive and least intelligent of all primates is called a "congress?" To which Sonia responds," Ha! Ha! The jokes on you."

15^th

The central figure in the Anna Hazare Indian anti-corruption movement, "Lieutenant" Arvind Kejriwal, becomes an instant national folk hero, when, with eyes glistening and voice cracking with emotion, he courageously admits before world- wide television and thousands of Jan Lokpal supporters, that he is very patriotic.

MAY

2^nd

Osama Bin Ladens five wives, call up US Navy Seals from Pakistan to rescue them, as he refused to let them bathe and worse...did not allow them to go shopping.

15^th

Simi Grewal, angered over persistent media reports that she has had extensive plastic surgery, strikes Cyrus Broacha with one of her synthetic hair extensions.

JUNE

21^st

Crack detectives in the Finance Ministry in New Delhi begin to suspect that it might be bugged, when one of them sneezes in Pranabda’s office and two chairs and a table say, “Bless You.”

24^th

In response to the growing pressure from Lucky Farmhouse a.k.a Atal the drug dealers girlfriend, the Goa Government vows to track down its major drug dealers and, if necessary, remove them from the Cabinet.

JULY

10^th

A new policy requiring random drug testing for cricketers runs into problems when over half the spin bowlers are unable to hit the specimen bottle.

13^th

In an effort to establish that she is sophisticated and has good taste, Rakhee Sawant offers to woo and wed Baba Ramdev.

19^th

Tensions ease at Delhi airport, as a Kingfisher Flight is allowed to refuel and take off for Bangalore, freeing up space for Air India’s planes to be parked as they have a shortage of pilots.

31^st

Mickey and Babush file their tax returns.

AUGUST

10^th

The IT department sends back their (Mickey and Babush) tax returns, politely pointing out that they’re supposed to fill them out.

13^th

Shammi Kapoor ( the original founder of "Yahoo!") goes to the Big Movie Theatre in the Sky.

Ladies, ladies! It's NOT Kabab it's Kapoor!

17^th

In the ongoing war against poverty and global depression members of parliament gave themselves a hefty (24-crore) pay and perks raise which included the latest iPad tablet, leading Apple Co. to coin the new slogan, “iPads for unPads”

22^nd

Activist and writer Arundati Roy, in her continuing effort to avoid publicity, accuses Anna Hazare of being non-secular. To which Kiran Bedi replies, “We respect all denominations, including the 500 and 1000 rupee notes.

SEPTEMBER

6^th

True News Item: A train full of commuters travelling from Tirupati to Varanasi went 980 km in the wrong direction before passengers realized what was happening. Congress's Digvijay Singh remarks, “Maybe it saw a snake.”

8^th

In WikiLeaks action, Mayavati makes a minister do sit-ups and sends an empty plane to Mumbai to pick up her favourite brand of footwear, but says that Julian Assange should be sent to the Agra mental asylum.

21^st

Chidambaram announces that he cannot remember whether he approved the sale of the 2G spectrum in connivance with A.Raja since he was busy granting mining licences to AP and Goa.

23^rd

Times Now reporters examine their diaries and discover, to their shock, that Jan 2008 they approved the sale of the 2G spectrum. They are immediately arrested.

OCTOBER

17^th

In a press conference the PM when asked by reporters about L.K.Advani’s persistent allegations the he is “out of touch,” responded vigorously: “Yes, I enjoy chicken butter masala.”

21^st

In Africa, Libya learns that Muammar Gadaffi is finally dead. After a celebratory dinner the dozen remaining freedom fighters are summarily shot by the military.

26^th

In Mumbai Shahrukh Khan releases Ra One, – it flops, and SRK threatens to produce a sequel.

29^th

Maruti Motors in Manesar is forced to recall 3000 cars after the strike was called off, after learning that Trade Union Leader Sonu Gujjar, apparently acting on his own used the plants computers to place orders for 50 tonnes of ganja to be concealed in the cars cushions.

30^th

The Formula1 Grand Prix in Delhi is won by Mrs.Svetlana Rostok, 85, of Morjim, Bardez driving an 1965 Ambassador with the left indicator on.

NOVEMBER

9^th

The SAARC meeting concludes on a triumphant note as External Affairs Ministers Krishna agreed that his Pakistani counterpart Hira Rabbani was “hot”.

11^th

L.K.Advani announces on his Rath Yatra that he doesn’t want to be Prime Minister and immediately becomes the BJP front-runner.

12^th

Mamata Bannerji announces that SHE doesn’t want to be Prime Minister either.

13^th

In a cost-cutting move, financially troubled Kingfisher Airlines announces that its flights will operate without engines. “Most of them never take off anyway,” explains a spokesman.

16^th

Aishwarya Bachchan has a baby, L’oreal immediately launches a new line of toddler products.

17^th

Sushil Kumar, a commoner from Bihar wins 5 crores in Kaun Banega Crorepati by answering the jackpot question, “When will Sachin score his 100^th century?”

20^th

In the most dramatic Radia-2G testimony known as Barkhagate, Barkha Dutt, played by Preity Zinta, testifies that, as CBI investigators closed in, she and Nira Radia stayed late in their Mumbai studio editing the “Lakshya” film for television.

29^th

The public responds with massive displays to reports that a number of totally unsuspecting Congress politicians were cruelly tricked by the US ambassador into believing that retail in FDI was good for the Indian economy.”It was a mistake that anyone could have made,” said a retail middleman, “provided that he had the IQ of a slug.”

DECEMBER

4^th

Dev Anand goes to the Big Movie Production House in the Sky, and signs up Shammi Kapoor and Liz Taylor as the male and female leads for his version of "Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara".

6^th

In a pre-parliamentary winter session public relations gambit, designed to show that he is a normal human, Kapil Sibal is interviewed by Arnab of Times Now, who clearly nervous, addresses the Minister as “Sybil.”

11^th

Mario Miranda gracefully checked out of Goa and travels on to the great ‘toon factory in the hereafter.

17^th

At the ongoing 50th year “Goan-Liberation Ritual”, Sonia Gandhi pledges to consider “Special Status” for the state “with total objectivity” adding, “You have that on my honor not only as Congress President, but also as a former Italian Princess.”

23^rd

DGP Aditya Arya gets shunted out of Goa to huge sighs of relief from the underworld. It’s back to business for the rest of the tourist season and the Sunburn festival begins to take on a rosy hue.

24^th

The election Commission announces dates for polling in 5 states. Santa Claus is happy that a lot of Christmas goodies will now come out of political coffers.

….and in other news….

with elections in the offing, villagers in UP are wary of poll visits from Rahul Gandhi.”The last time he came he ate our food and slept on our charpoy. It being winter, this time he will also take our blankets and maybe the shirts off our backs”, says a farmer in Aligarh.

31^st

Everyone wishes for Peace on Earth and Goodwill towards Men. From where I’m standing and as sure as I have faith in the human spirit, nothing’s going to change.

The Goodly English I is Speaking.

2011-10-04T11:14:00.008+05:30

All this controversy about Goan Government’s decision to give grants only to English medium primary schools, and the ongoing fallout has my head spinning.

I could never in a zillion years imagine MY parents supporting me, leave alone joining me, in boycotting classes and demonstrating outside my school, no matter what language I protested for. What a thrashing I would have got had I even broached the subject. Leaves me wondering what namby-pamby parents kids are inheriting nowadays.

But I agree it is important to learn English and maybe Bollywood aspirants from the Tiatr companies need to brush up on their Hindi as well, because, let’s face it, on the World Stage of Opportunity neither Konkani nor Marathi is going to bring home the lolly.

Foreigners who visit Goa for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the past 50 years since Liberation, many local citizens still converse in pidgin Portuguese. However Russian tourists who arrive in Goa are thrilled that their cab driver and guides are extremely fluent in Russian, and know exactly how many rubles buy a shot of vodka.

Oh, sure quite a few Goans speak a modicum of Hindi but usually just barely enough to land a job as head-waiter at a beach shack. And there are some who know the English alphabet, which just about allows them to read the labels on alcohol bottles.

This leads to problems for the rest of India and the world, firstly when the domestic tourist needs to obtain important information from them, such as, “Nangae logon ka beach kahaan hain?” (Where is the beach with the naked people) or the international traveler who asks, “Say dude, where can I score some primo weed?”

To their credit some countries such as the USA have made a sincere effort to adopt English as their native language. But even there you have problems.

Travelling around California which is possibly the most linguistically deformed area in the US (maybe because the Latin-Americans there consider marijuana their staple diet) I found that Americans seem to have misplaced the letter “O” and lost their “T’s” altogether.

I mean listen to them when they tell you they like their “cahfee hahd and sweed” and their “bahdled wahder cold” and you’ll know what I mean. When I pointed this out they sounded very apologetic and “sahree” when they told me that quite a few “G’s” too had “gahn missin’.”

So if any of my ardent readers have extra alphabets that you no longer need, and need to free up some closet space, please send them to: Alphabets R Us, Secretary of State for Linguistics, USA.

But the point that I and the Goan government is trying to make here is that the rest of the world seems to be taking its own sweet time to learn English, except for China. So in the interest of combating terrorism and improving customer relations with Pakistan, it’s up to Goans to put the bull to the grindstone and seize the horns of the day and show India how to learn English. If virtual monkeys can do it then why can’t we?

As a nation we are not strong in this area: A recent poll showed that although India has 29 languages and 1600 dialects, 92% of Indians living in India and abroad speak no foreign language at all. The same census showed that 95% also cannot speak English and 59% cannot speak Hindi, 80% cannot name the village they live in, and 76% believe that the Himalayas are covered in vanilla ice cream.

So you can see that education in India is going to be an uphill task here in the sense that Indians, are forever going to be linguistically challenged. C’mon, let’s face it, this is why the Chinese are capable of hosting the Olympic games, whereas we view just getting Mr. Kalmadi into prison a major achievement.

So,let’s stop blaming the education system for the fact that we score lower on IQ tests than the Chinese, the Koreans or the Japanese, and maybe a few other vertebrate life forms on the planet! This is nothing to be ashamed of, Indians! Say it out loud! “We are like this only!” See? Doesn’t that feel good?

And… let’s stop whining, feeling sorry for ourselves and crying in anguish over the fact that the Central Minister in charge of human resources, has a multiple personality disorder with a matching surname that sounds like “Sybil”.

Remember: We still have nuclear weapons. Hee hee!

But to get back to the point of discussion, we should all learn to speak English, and maybe understand the local language of the state where we plan to live and work.

HOW TO LEARN ANOTHER LANGUAGE:

The key to understanding how most people communicate is to know what is meant by an “idiomatic expression” of which some examples are:

ENGLISH: “Watch it buster!” (“Sumbuddy is gonna get hurt!”)

HINDI: “Teri maa ki!” (“Sumbuddy and their mother is gonna get hurt!”) Although some Australian cricketers think this refers to their simian ancestry.

KONKANI: “Aae! Jeeb Sambhaal!” (“Look! Let’s discuss this! And maybe no one will get hurt.”) One of those namby pamby parents maybe?

TAMLISH:

Also when speaking Hindi, always remember, that for some strange reason everyday actions and groceries are “masculine” or “feminine” depending on who is referring to whom. Dogs for example are usually masculine, even if they are not, and wild animals like the elephant are masculine. (This does not mean, by the way, that a dog will not try to hump an elephant’s leg, it probably will.)

If you land up speaking Hindi in Kashmir, at certain points during each sentence you should give the impression that you are about to hawk up a major gob of phlegm.

Ok? Practice speaking English, in front of a mirror or with someone who speaks it fluently until you feel comfortable, then go to a country whose lingua franca is English and try to achieve world peace and international understanding, the way Zail Singh did during his Presidential visit to Britain, when; while the Queen was feeding the Royal swans, he said that he was, “extremely pleased to be admiring her bathaks.”

Battling the Weather Blues.

2011-09-17T12:46:00.020+05:30

Blame it on the weather. Four plus months of almost perennial downpour and I swear I think my ears are growing vestigial gills, mould lining my leathers, slippery moss on the sidewalks, and what really irks me is the kid with that really, really bad cold. He’s sniffling and snotting and is one of those brats who will not blow his fool nose. He chooses instead to use his palm to wipe off the extra mucous bits and then wipes it on his shirt and sniffs and snorts and makes that liquidy, annoying sound that makes you want to take a cricket bat and make of his head a snot "dahi-handi". Maybe blowing his nose and emptying his nostrils into a tissue is deemed uncouth in his remote part of the planet Melmac. Whatever the reason, he has one humongous head full of snot.

But I digress. Despite the weather or because of it, there is always something to do. Something that must be done. And then when you're done with that, there is more. And then even more. And then you sit for a minute to rest. GET UP! Get that lazy butt of yours back in gear!
And right there is another problem: forcing yourself to enjoy it. It sounds like a date with Simi Garewal.

And no matter how long you keep your washing on the makeshift line that traverses the bedrooms, living room and the kitchen, the ceiling fans just tend to swirl the dampness around, and after four days the damp odours begins to fester.

I should have learned my lesson from the previous monsoon in the first place and gone and gotten that dryer when it only costed an arm.

Take my advice folks, when you find those patches of fungus forming in your pits, when birds are drowning in midair, and priests are cursing openly in the streets then go down to the store and buy a dryer. Or if you already have a dryer, you can try to get someone to fix it.

Thus far I went with the same pitiful mindset. For instance, I just bought this relaxation CD. A 15-minute deep muscle relaxation audio that supposedly will help me lower my blood cholesterol. So I tried listening to it. And instead of deep muscle relaxation, I got deeply teed-off at myself for not being able to relax, for not effectively using the 15 minutes of relaxation, and letting into my consciousness my grocery shopping list, my stock portfolio teetering on the brink of disaster, and then age old questions like: "Why is there hunger and why can't I get rid of this belly fat?"

Where was that feeling of calm? Where were the dreaming big dreams of snow clad mountains, babbling brooks, and deep sea fishing excursions to the Andaman Islands and being covered in chocolate by Nigella Lawson? Or, er, maybe those were just MY dreams.Where was I? Aah yes the mindset, which begs the question,” Why do we in India with our plentiful sunshine need to buy a dryer of all things?” The answer staring me in the face, as glaring as Obaba Bin Ramdev’s beard has only just registered. As of the last monsoons I did not have one, and was feeling that emotional strain that comes with a water-soaked peeling wrinkly epidermis (epidermii?)

So I went to the store and joined the crowd of people thrusting their credit cards at the saleslady who was being extra surly and slow. Who could blame her? For eight months in sunny weather she stood alone behind the dryer counter while we all sauntered past her with nary a glance. And now we were clustered round her in supplication like candidates hoping to obtain a political party ticket.
ME : Please PLEASE can I buy a dryer?
SALESLADY: Will you also take the extended sales warranty?
ME: Yes of course I’ll take two extended warranties.
SALESLADY:Hmm, I don’t know....
ME: And the dryer with the largest capacity... along with two plugs and this
voltage stabilizer… plus this toothbrush. PLEASE!

So wise consumer that I am, I bought the dryer with the maximum “load capacity” which is the binary value of how heavy a dryer is. I was in luck, to carry it into the house the company “installers” arrived a week later and they moved it into place, thus saving me and my manhood the stress of trying to move it on my own and avoiding the subsequent ignominy of requiring to wear a long term helpful crotch-device.

This dryer comes with a 4-yeat warranty which means that if the device does not work as originally intended anytime during this period, you may return it for a full refund ( ha ha just kidding).

It merely means that you are required to keep the original bills and the packaging they came in along with the sealing tape and provide proof of identity along with proof of address of ownership, together with an affidavit on 20 rupee stamp paper witnessed by at least two upright citizens who know you, that the appliance has been used in accordance with the rules and regulations (which the company has the right to revise from time to time) the company without prejudice to itself and depending on the gravity of the problem will have someone call you during the latter half of 2012 to let you know exactly which month the service person will be able to inspect the appliance.

This particular dryer is one of those new “energy saving” appliances , which means that rather than draw power from the mains , which costs money, it sucks the power out of all the other appliances in the house when it is working. When it boots up you can actually see the fridge shrink and writhe, and hear the pitiful cries of the mixie, which we have used for many years and does not understand what is going on. My niece is concerned that maybe I am overloading the system, but I reassure her using the term “volt- amperage” which I think maybe is a screw broken off from the fuses and short-circuiting the wiring.

If you cannot install a dryer I suggest you iron all your damp clothes before you wear them, or else you will smell like a dead rodent, which will make you use more deodorant; this will then force your body's natural smell-ejectors to reroute the odours to the mouth, where it forms bad breath, which is the Universe’s way of telling you that you should maybe get a dryer.

So, ergo-ipso facto-colombo-oreo, life is too stupidly busy. I end up longing for time to learn the samba or just do some carpentry so that I don't feel quite so much like a stoned hamster careening around in its running wheel.

You ask what would I do if I had nothing I had to do? Well on sunny days I'd lie in my hammock and read books, lots and lots of books, but in the rains I write blog posts with slightly hidden homicidal references.

HOPE I wasn't just dreaming !

2011-08-28T15:30:00.013+05:30

I’m declaring this year the Global Year of Hope.

Yes so far it is a year of Hope -- at first in the sense of ``I feel hopeful!'' that Anna Hazare and his anti-corruption tribe would succeed in his battle….. and now with the knowledge that he is probably on his way to winning the war, in the sense of ``I hope this year never ends!''

It’s also a year of Change, especially in Egypt and Libya, where the tired old "dicktaters" of yesteryear finally lost out and the reins of power are now held by a group of fresh, young, idealistic, new-idea outsiders such as 76 year old Mohamed Hussein Tantawi and 59 year old Mahmoud Jabril.

As a result Rakhee Sawant, rejecting``business as usual,'' finally stopped trying to solve her frustrations by getting engaged on television reality shows, and instead started trying to solve them through yoga by offering to wed Baba Ramdev.

To be sure, it is a year that sees plenty of bad news. But in almost every instance, there is offsetting good news:

BAD NEWS: The economy remains critically weak, with rising unemployment, a severely depressed real-estate market, more and more farmer suicides, the total collapse of Indian Test Cricket and the steep increases in food prices.

GOOD NEWS: More people are buying Blackberries than i Phones.

BAD NEWS: The downward spiral of the Sensex continues, resulting in severe depression amongst hundreds of experienced stockbrokers and an apparently permanent deterioration in the quality of their sex lives since they switched to IDEA 3g cellular services.

GOOD NEWS: A lot more people are tweeting.

BAD NEWS: Maureen Chao the American Vice-Consul views Tamilians as dirty and dark.

GOOD NEWS: Commercials advertising fairness creams and underarm deodorants are flooding the television screen.

BAD NEWS: Ominous problems loom abroad as -- among other difficulties -- the move to repatriate black money stashed in Swiss banks went sour, and there doesn’t seem any hope for 1500 Indian students who were admitted to the fake Tri-Valley University, in Pleasanton, California.

GOOD NEWS: They finally brought Israeli drug dealer Yaniv Benain, alias Atala back to Goa and charged him with cheating politicos and cops out of their drug commissions….and Ajmal Kasab is still alive and eating biryani dinners.

In short, it is a year that we will be happy to reminisce about. But before we do, let's swallow our anti-corruption medication and ask ourselves this question.”Should A.R.Rehman compose the Anna Hazare-Ram Lila Maidan-Victory Anthem, or should we call in Lady Gaga?"

From Jantar Mantar, we bring you,the amazing.......

2011-04-13T20:23:00.016+05:30

….and on the 5th day of April there was a conflict in New Delhi. And it came to pass that all the Champagne was consumed in the euphoria of winning the Cricket World Cup. And the Congress Mom said unto her Yes Prime Minister, “They have no more grievances.”

But Anna Hazare said unto the multitude,”Hey! I have an oldie, but goodie! What about corruption? And I say unto you, if I fast unto death I will lead you out of the darkness and into the light”

And Anna said unto the gathering,” Build me a stage with a backdrop of the image of the Mahatma imprinted upon it.

And they did so.

And when Anna did lie down on the stage and begin his fast thence did Government sit up and take notice.

And as the crowds gathered, the Government knew not from whence they came. But the Aam Aadmi did. And they applauded loudly in the streets.And the Government became afraid. And they said unto Anna,” How the hell did you do that?” and enquired of him,” Do you do children’s parties?” And Anna said, “No.”

But the Aam Aadmi did press him saying, “Go on! Give us another one!” And he brought forth a carrot and said,”Behold this! For it is the democratic carrot.” And all about him knew that it was so. For it was orange, with a green top.

And he did place a silk handkerchief over the carrot and then removed it, and lo! He held in his hand a white dove.

And all were amazed and said, “This guy is really good. He should turn professional.”

And they brought to him on a stretcher a nation that was dying of corruption. And they cried unto him, “Maestro! This nation is dying of corruption.” And Anna said,” If I had to spend my whole life trying to make a fast buck, I’d probably be dying of corruption too.”

And they were filled with joy, and cried out, “Thy one-liners are as good as thy tricks. Thou art indeed an all-round family entertainer.”

And there came unto him a woman called Kiran Bedi, and others who had seen the Gandhian and believed. And Anna said unto them,”Put on a topi and fast unto death alongside me.”

And three of the satyagrahis fainted and had to be given medication. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. And Anna said, “Oh! Ye! Of little faith!”

And he continued his fast for another day and lo! The Government did relent.

Then the crowds went absolutely bananas. And Anna, Kiran Bedi, Arvind Kejriwal and others took a big bow.

And Anna said unto them,” From now on you shall be known as the First Citizens of the Uncorrupted Kind or F.C.U.K. for that is a good name for a bunch of assistants.”

And the people said, “We’ve never seen anything like this. THIS is great! You must be the Mahatma!”

But the Gandhian said, “No. I am He who comes after.”

And they were so amazed and said,” Then Master how shall we know a true leader?”

And Anna said, “By his name shall you know him. And he may be called Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar may he also be called.”

“Narendra Modi?” they cried. And Anna said, “Yes, or something like that.” …….Inquilab Zindabaad !.

.....AND NOW FOR SOME COMIC RELIEF.

2011-03-19T14:33:00.020+05:30

Big-time national politics is all about its Weirdness Quotient. High-level political races should be between identical slim men and women in identical slim suits and saris. Rational, cool men and women, who know the voting market, who never say the wrong thing, who look good on TV…and above all are incorruptible. Candidates who don't fit this mould -- the blatant hacks, the geeks, the loons, the scamsters, the criminals, the people with bad teeth – should be filtered out at the Panchayat level.

The whole point of Indian politicians speaking is watching them makes asses of themselves. They are all weird. Just like the ones who, on the national level, have picked up the torch dropped, with a typical clumsiness, by Morarji Desai and V.P.(weepy) Singh? The fat candidates. The ugly candidates.The stupid candidates.The candidates who go to formal dinners and pass out in the Mutton Vindaloo. Who set fire to themselves with beedis. The candidates, who, the only time they speak the truth is when they call another politician a liar.

If we are to keep the tradition of participatory democracy going in this country, if we are to revive voter interest, we need less of these weird people running for high office, and more of the rational variety and we need them right now.

And so I say: Heaven help Goa, whose very license plates should read, "GOA: WAKA WAKA LOCA." Because in a state like this, a state whose naturally humid climate has permitted a tremendous diversity of human and canine life to flourish and mutate, we should not be surprised to find that this year, we are being treated to an electoral race between politicians who are clearly not Standard Issue. I've spent some time watching all of them, and I can honestly state that regardless of which one is elected, we will all, as voters, have reason to be vastly amused. For example : Here's a full report on the Panaji CCP elections.

***

We are in Manu.P’s rental campaign SUV, which is stout and bouncy, not unlike Manu himself, and we are going to someplace called "Taleigao." Rumor has it that there is agriculture in Taleigao. Manu is going there to show his concern for it.

In the SUV with Manu P. is the press, including a couple of political reporters from Big Bazaar; out-of- state newspapers that are very interested in this race because

(a) it is considered crucial to the opposition’s hopes of coming to power at the centre and

(b) it is nice and warm in Goa.

The press is not crazy about landing in Taleigao. The press frankly does not care about agriculture except insofar as it is a constituent of feni and results in lunch. The press would rather hear Manu P. talk about his opponent, incumbent Anas M.,( no, the part of the anatomy you refer to is spelt with an “u”, although you might not be too far wrong in your presumptions) and his hot new campaign issue,i.e. BLOCKING ALL THE WATER THAT "FLEW" UNDER THE MANDOVI BRIDGES.

This is an issue that materialized out of the air, literally, in the form of an electoral advertisement suggesting that Manu P. is willing to let the waters overrun and drown Panaji and the state. Manu P. who has long portrayed himself as a friend of nature, the Bondla Reserve, bunny rabbits,Tito’s etc., fought back with a counter-advertisement -- featuring a photograph of Anas M. that makes him look like he lost the Room Freshener Pageant because the police thought he was too vacuous -- in which prominent doctors and ecology nuts say that they favor the drowning and they like Manu P. and think Anas’ ad is basically doggy doo.

But in a way, Manu P. has lost the round, because he had to spend money to make additional ads responding to an issue Anas M. raised in HIS advertisement.

The whole thing sort of reminds you of Coke vs. Pepsi, only with less substance.

Carnival Catastrophies and Other Venalities

2011-03-12T11:40:00.010+05:30

Tuesday Night’s Red and Black hobgoblins from the Clube Nacional Revelry are doing the devil’s dance inside my head……my eyes blur open, my tongue is stuck to the carpet, and I can’t feel my toes. Oh! Ok those aren’t my toes! God is punishing me for having fun.

Since the dawn of Som Ras , first the Gods and then man has been plagued by hangovers. Having pondered the problem of my alcoholic stupor for the last four hours I have finally discovered the solution.

The best and most obvious way to avoid a hangover is not to drink at all, but I think we can all agree that that is not an option so let’s move on.

It’s Ash Wednesday and the Lenten Season is upon us and in order to cure your hangover and repent you must therefore attend church services as quickly as possible. So tear your tongue off the floor, and weave your way to your pew. During the service, pray for hydration. When the collection plate is passed, remove ten rupees and use it to buy aspirin.

On the way stop at a vegetable vendor and buy a bunch of lettuce leaves. Do not eat the lettuce, as they contain dangerous quantities of butt-blasting fibre. Instead arrange the leaves on your head. Laughter, they say, is the best medicine. Try to laugh at yourself. Look at you in your salad hat in the mirror. You look hilarious.

Now make yourself a cocktail. Contrary to popular belief drinking alcohol is not counter productive. That’s why you’re there nursing a headache while I sit poised on the brink of discovering the great hangover cure. A Feni Colada is your best option, as cashew nuts contain healing fats and high levels of salts that will replenish your electrolytes. Electrolytes are essential for good health and are not unlike clean underwear in that you can never have too many.

Time now to exercise. Exercise, particularly jogging, generates powerful endorphins, diminishes nausea and weakness and replaces them with higher-qualities of weakness and nausea. While you are jogging think about all the reasons you got so tanked last night. Your life’s pretty sad, isn’t it? Yes. Run faster now.

Now that you’ve worked out you will have developed the emotional clarity to quit your job, divorce your spouse, adopt a pet python and have meaningless sex with a midget. This set of tasks sounds daunting, but keep in mind that it’s difficult to stay hungover when you’re busy applying for a job as a janitor and training a python to uncoil from around your windpipe.

Finally, it’s time for another drink. This should relieve you of your hangover forever, and leave you with a calming sense of dipsomania and melancholia. If you wake up in the morning with another hangover, don’t sweat it. I’ve discovered a cure and will be happy to reveal it to you in due course. Until then take two aspirin you bought with the money you stole from church, and call your physician in the morning. Cheers.

Meanderings

2011-03-05T12:31:00.011+05:30

I feel like writing something. I'm not sure what yet. I assumed that as soon as I began to type, it would come to me, but it hasn't yet and now I am just browsing through facebook and stalling for time.

While I am waiting for my mind to catch up with my fingers, I'll tell you about the difference between roads in Mumbai and Goa.

The roads in Mumbai are much the same as most others in the Metros. Especially in the city. Curbs. Asphalt.Polluted.Noisy.Traffic signals with wall-to wall beggars, hawkers or hijras. Sometimes a random street that is poured concrete or one that is all paving blocks. Pedestrian sidewalks where pet animals have left their steaming piles in the early morning smog. Most ordinary.

The special roads in Mumbai are the ones that lead out of town. The ones that lead back into Goa. They are both fun to speed on and oh! the drive.......

In the winter you roll your windows down. If you have one; you can pop the sun roof. If you are Rahul Gandhi, you take the top off your Gypsy.If you are Salman Khan you take off your shirt and flex your man-boobs. And if you are Jaideep Deoshtale you ride your motorcycle.

Take the NH4 to Pune, turn onto Nipani, Amboli and then take a road with a tilted road sign or no road sign at all. It will more than likely immediately start to go up or go down. There is likely to be a field and then a thick wooded area. Watch for the arrows that tell you to prepare for a turn. Most of them are bent in half.

The smell of foliage permeates the car. You cannot help but stick your arm out the window and hold the door with the flat of your palm. The ones with no regrets stand up through the sun roof and make like Leo and Kate in that “Titanic” scene.

Passing Amboli at sunset-if you time it just right, you'll pass a field full of fireflies as they begin to flicker. When your car drops down into where the road goes down into a small valley, you can feel the temperature drop. And the cold is chased away as the road climbs back up again where the heat of the road fights off the chill.

Once you pass Sawantwadi, there is curve after curve that will take you on to bridges that they say can only take one car at a time. Sometimes the signs that tell you to slow down are mere suggestions. Other times those sign have been run over by people who don't take suggestions well. Just be careful. Of course, there is nothing like the feeling of making it though a curve that you thought for a split second you weren't.

When you see another car, honk – it’s considered good manners.

You've probably had your music system on. Turn it off. Take in the sound of the wind. Of the trees passing you by as you pass by them. The hills and twists are short lived as you can't drive too far without bumping back into the NH17 and thence to Goa.

Go ahead and take a lap through Mapusa. And another through the billboard fields of Guirim. Drive past where The Royal Circus tents were pitched during Christmas and New Year. Loop back around and head out to Porvorim and O’Coqueiro –the restaurant where the infamous Charles Sobhraj sat; and once sitting was nabbed. And then cut right onto CHOGM road and drive past Nelsons’ Picnic Restaurant and down into Green Valley and finally home.

Summer is almost here and the Cashew trees are flowering, and those pesky crows up high in their nest are crapping all over the gate.

Aah! Peaceful night, broken only by the chorus of stray dogs yapping and howling at the moon… a Goan Nocturnal Rhapsody.

Sugar Runs My Life

2011-01-21T20:41:00.011+05:30

It’s the beginning of a new decade. With all the festivals and weddings that cropped up since I last posted here I have lost count of how many times I've lost the battle with sugar.It's too humiliating.

Poor poor widdle Kenny, he’s having a rough time walking the hills and dales of Porvorim without falling down and shredding his face on the shards of Ice Cream and Chocolate, not to mention wedding cake (the downfall of millions of bachelors worldwide). Sugar is not tobacco, weed, booze, drugs, women, etc. etc. It's me against sweets. What a complete sucker I am.

As you may have gathered, I'm a bit nauseated at my own inability to just do what's healthy for my body. But no! It's tiatr. Save me! I'm on the edge of a cliff, about to jump to my hyperglycaemic death into Creamy Chocolate Fondue Falls.Temptation! The Devil's own work! Argh!
One of my most asinine sugar-high low points of the past few weeks: Death by Chocolate. Me and DC. Never heard of it? It's next to the Fruit Salad on the menu at Dandey’s Grill. Made of chocolate, cream, honey and chocolate flakes, blended together to make this smooth, creamy, sinister, decadent, spreadable, spoonable best treat in the universe. I had two servings. A serving has about 8 teaspoons. I ate each serving in 60 seconds flat. I ordered another. I ate half of it. I saw the error of my ways in the disgusted looks of the others at the table. I knew I couldn't just abandon the other half-portion to the wastebasket or the trash bin outside because I would toss my pride to the monsoon winds and crawl in like a bandicoot and get it out and start up again. So I had it packed and took it home and stored it in the fridge only to slink back at 3 in the morning and lick the bowl clean. What I should have done was poured some hot chilli sauce over it like I had to slay it. Like it was one of those alien snake-creatures; you cut one head off and it just grows another.

There are people in the world with serious problems. My sister-in-laws mother died 2 weeks ago and she asked for a prayer to be said for her at church. A childhood friend has been declared terminal with cancer and one does not know what to say when going to visit. A tourist from Bhopal was beaten up by locals at Baga when he tried to do the usual. yes you guessed it ....molest a Russian woman.Yeah. Imagine that.

So there is no reason at all to whine and whimper and freak out over the fact that I need to stop eating sugary, poison, things that are going to make me sick. And there is no reason to make a big deal of it. Right?

But here's the thing. Take my comforting little habit away from me and there's nothing left between me and, well…. me. If I can't flip my jaw open like a corrupt CWG officials’ wallet and ram a half kilo of sweet stuff down my anxious throat, I will end up in a straitjacket so I have to keep on doing what I’m doing, live the decadent life I’m living, and just deal with it. By the way, if I get any more clichéd in the next 30 seconds, please, someone push the big eject button that will jettison me into the Milky Way. Oh man!. Milky Way !

OK, forget that. I'll sum it up. Ready?

I'm tired of struggling. Fighting the same boring, frustrating, mind numbingly repetitive repetitive repetitive sugar battle, all the time. Give me something new and interesting to fight. Not life-threatening. But maybe a fear of face-booking. Or an obsession with biting my cuticles. Or make me long to trek to the Himalayas in only my underwear.

Give me something. But first let me taste that chocolate strawberry croissant next to the lemon-meringue pie.

Up The Commonwealth !

2010-09-16T13:42:00.021+05:30

Delhi — In ancient times, a Westerner had to journey for months, even years, to reach India. Today, thanks to modern air travel, it takes much longer.

Talk about getting a visitors visa ! And after you fly all the way across the Atlantic I estimate that the plane you are on will fly in circles over Delhi airspace about 3 days before you actually land, since the airfield will first need to be cleared of construction debris, dengue carrying mosquitoes, and the rain-ravaged potholes filled.

But after you have showered, you will be excited to be here for these historic Commonwealth Games, the first ever hosted by this proud and ancient culture, which has given the world so many important inventions, including hockey, algebra, the zero, kabbadi, paan stains, delhi belly, the Taj Mahal, call centres, Mayavati, Bollywood and Deepak Chopra.

But despite its colourful historic past, India is not a bazaar: It is a modern economic superpower that replicates every product ever manufactured in China including pirated DVD’s. India is the world's second most populous nation, with a population of more than 1.2 billion, making it home to one out of every four people on earth. Think about what that means. It means that if you belong to a family of four, one of you lives here. (To find out if it's you, check your ration card.)

The Commonwealth Games are a HUGE deal, be it only for the Indian politician, bureaucrats and A.R.Rehman (motto:Waving My Oscar in Their Faces). There’s corruption money to be milked from every aspect of it, whether it's for buying a 4000 rupee roll of toilet paper, hiring a treadmill for 9.75 lakhs for 45 days instead of buying one from Harrods in London for 7 lakhs (VAT included) or composing a lame theme song (Yaaro India Bula Liya) for 5 crores .

Everywhere you look in this swarming capital city of Delhi, you see vague shapes in the distance that might be large impressive Games structures if you could actually get a good look at them, which you can't because the air is thick with toxic dust particles the size of satiated dog’s ticks. The Delhi government has been trying to reduce air pollution by keeping stray cattle off the roads - thereby threatening the world's strategic supply of “asli ghee” - and ordering Delhi residents to cease swarming during the Games. But dirt and grime are still a big issue, as evidenced by the controversial decision by the Games Committee to allow vuvuzelas into all games venues to drown out complaints.

Nevertheless, there will be no problems whatsoever during these Games, which will without question be the greatest Games ever held. Why do I say this? I say it because Indian government authorities are closely monitoring journalists and controlling our use of the Internet and Blackberries. They can cause trouble for anyone who writes something they don't like, or mention a topic they want to avoid, such as......

ERROR ERROR ERROR THIS WEB PAGE IS NOT AVAILABLE IF YOU CONTINUE ON THIS SUBJECT YOU MAY DAMAGE YOUR COMPUTER ERROR ERROR ERROR

So the Indian government is a little scary. There are police and plainclothes detectives dressed as beggars stationed roughly every 3 metres throughout Delhi; I'm pretty sure you will find one in your hotel closet.

On the other hand, the regular Delhiite is a wonderful host, unfailingly friendly and helpful. You will need a lot of help though, since most people here speak Hindustani, which is basically a giant secret code that sounds like Hindi designed to prevent non-delhiites from having any idea what the hell is going on. For example, that snack you have just bought from the roadside “dhaba”; do you really know what it is?? Because the only words on the label that you recognize are “International” and "Made in India." I suspect that Indian authorities are watching you on a hidden camera and going, "He's eating it! Ha ha! Tomorrow we will give him battery acid to drink."

Likewise, when you get into a taxi and show the driver a slip of paper helpfully written in Hindi by a hotel employee. You think this writing says, "Please take me to the Red Fort." But it could just as easily say, "I wish to pet a King Cobra."

Fortunately your hotel has English-language TV. Check out the public-service commercial on television that ends with this appeal: "Please, use only Musli Power Xtra, You get more than you can imagine, Official Health Licensee of Commonwealth Games." I pass this along in case you were considering getting lucky.

Your hotel will have Western-style loos. This is a luxury in India, which, while it was busy inventing algebra, defining the Kama Sutra in stone, etc., apparently did not have time to get around to plumbing. You have to carry your own toilet paper, because many public loos here don't have it. Ideally, you would also carry your own toilet, because many loos don't really have that, either. What they have is basically a miniature bathtub in the floor. If I say anything more on this subject I will be spoiling your experience of discovery. A word of wisdom though….do not lean against compound walls or corners of buildings and alleyways.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Overall the Delhiites have done an amazing job of preparing for the Commonwealth Games, and they've gone out of their way to make their visitors feel welcome. I’m sure you will look forward to attending the Games, and even more to getting to know this fascinating country. So run along now and take a taxi to go see the Red Fort. Or, pet a King Cobra. Whatever that piece of paper says.

An I Day Celebration

2010-08-22T11:19:00.009+05:30

A few years ago, we had an old-fashioned Independence Day Picnic? At least I think it was Independence Day since that seems to be the only day in the year when everyone was home.

Food poisoning was one of our concerns. After a few hours in the sun, ordinary potato salad can develop bacteria the size of squirrels. But we did not let the threat of agonizingly painful death prevent us from celebrating the birth of our nation, just as Indians have been doing ever since that historic first August 15th when our Founding Fathers – Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Swami Vivekananda, Kishore Kumar, Mohd. Rafi and Mowgli – learned to spell “Satyagraha”

Step one in planning the picnic was to decide on a menu. Sanjay Kapoor of Khana Khazana had loads of innovative suggestions for unique, imaginative and tasty monsoon meals. So we ignored him. ``If Sanjeev Kapoor comes anywhere near our picnic, he's risking a tandoor seekh to his jabulanis'' was our patriotic motto.

Since we were having a traditional Independence Day picnic, that meant a menu of kababs charred into clumps of carbon, and tandoori chicken so undercooked that when people tried to eat them, they jumped off the plate and ran around the lawn like squirrels.

Bunty was in charge of the cooking, because only Bunty, being a software engineer of the masculine gender, had the ``expertise'' to operate a piece of technology as complex as a tandoori grill.

Remember to be truly traditional, the grill should be constructed of the following materials:

-- 5 percent ``rust-resistant'' steel rods;

-- 50 percent rusted oil drum;

-- 30 percent hardened black grill grunge from food cooked as far back as 1947 (the grunge should never be scraped off, because it is what is actually holding the grill together);

-- 15 percent spiders and lizards living in the grill from when you last used it.

All tandoors use charcoal as fuel, Bunty always starts lighting the fire early (no later than August 1) because charcoal, in accordance with safety regulations, is a mineral that does not burn. The lizards get a huge kick out of watching Bunty attempt to ignite it; the spiders emit hearty laughs and slap themselves on all eight knees. This is why many cooks prefer the modern gas grill, which ignites at the press of a button and burns with a steady, even flame until you put food on it, at which time it runs out of gas.

While Bunty mouthed traditional bad words in chaste Punjabi to the grill, Pinky organized the kids for a fun activity: making old-fashioned boondi ladoos by hand, the way our Dadaji’s generation did.

She used a hand-operated boondi maker, which you can pick up at any store. All you do is put in the ingredients, and start squeezing! It makes no difference what specific ingredients you put in, because -- I speak from bitter experience here -- no matter how long you squeeze them, they will drip through the holes in the bottom and never, ever turn into boondis.

Ladoo makers laugh at the very concept. ``Boondi is not formed by squeezing,'' they point out. ``Boondi is formed by buying from the mitthai shop.'' Our grandparents' generation wasted millions of man-hours trying to produce boondi by hand; this is what caused the Sepoy Mutiny.

When the kids got tired of trying to make boondi ladoos (in approximately 2 minutes), it became time to play some traditional Independence Day games.

One of the most popular was the ``three-legged race.'' All you need is pieces of rope, which you can obtain from the hardware store. Or you can get designer cords from Fabindia boutique. We called the kids outside, had them line up in pairs on the lawn and tied the left ankle of one to the right ankle of another; then shouted ``GO!'' and watched the hilarious antics begin as, one by one, the kids snuck back indoors and resumed trying to locate pornography on the Internet.

Come nightfall, though, everybody was be drawn to the sound of loud, traditional Independence Day music being played on the television with reruns of the movies Lagaan and Mother India.

Then Bunty and his friends, after consuming a number of traditionally fermented beverages, gave up on conventional charcoal-lighting products and escalated to petrol and plastic explosive.

As a spectacular pyrotechnic show lit up the night sky, one began to truly appreciate the patriotic meaning of the words to Saare Jahaan Se Achha, written by Cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma to commemorate the fledgling nation's first tandoori platter:

Saare Jahan Se Achcha;

Yeh Tandoori Murgh Hamaara;

This year we went out for Chinese food.

GOAL Goa !

2010-08-14T21:16:00.015+05:30

Party on! ..... A Win-Win situation everytime

I will now attempt, using my extensive vocabulary and professional writing skills, to describe what football was like in the land of Feni:

Talk about a party. I've watched the IPL cricket, the Olympics, and the Pink Chaddi Campaign. Compared to the World Cup, these events in Goa were equivalent to a meeting of the Society for the Prohibition of Feni.

The World Cup caused entire villages to go insane. They also serenaded crowds on the roads with World-Cup-themed songs, including one, called Waka Waka Kaka, declaring that referee Stephane Lannoy was ... OK, I can't tell you this is because of censorship rules, but it was nasty.

And that was support for just one country. There were supporters for the 31 other teams, and their fans were just as enthusiastic, by which I mean crazy. For a month they watched matches being held all over South Africa, and every match ended in a huge party regardless of who won.

Huge television screens projected these matches practically all over Goa, except in the Secretariat where members were busy looking for a replacement Tourism Minister.

We watched the final on the beach in Morjim, where giant TV screens had been set up courtesy of the foreign drug -dealers. There were scores of screaming, singing, dancing face-painted football fans, and I can honestly say it was one of the most exciting sporting events I have ever seen, because some of those drug-dealers girlfriends were topless. You'd go to the bar counter, and you'd turn around, and YOWZA there would be a drug-dealer girlfriend standing right behind you, acting as though she was not basically naked, which she was. I recall going to the bar counter numerous times.

I spent that night on the Morjim beach, swept along by a boisterous river of several million wild happily stoned football fans.

Question: How happy were they?Answer: They were so happy, foreigners were actually hugging Indians.

"Enjoy this!" I shouted to my friend, as we were being hugged. "Tomorrow they'll despise us again!"

My point is that for excitement and atmosphere and a general United Nations of craziness, there is no sporting event that approaches the World Cup

Scoring a goal in football is not as easy as say, hitting a sixer in cricket. It's really very very difficult, one might say almost impossible since everything favours the defence. So the offensive players usually have to do something magical just to get off a half-decent kick. That is why, when a goal is scored, they tend to be brilliant. Especially World Cup goals are so priceless, the tension preceding them is often nail-biting and adrenalin-pumpingly unbearable, leading to a cataclysmic moment — GOOOOOOALLL!!!!

The final this year was between the Netherlands and Paul the Octopus— much to the surprise of the Mimi the parrot. The Netherlands was heavily favored, but Paul won, and the whole of Spain went berserk.

And no one seemed interested in the Santosh Trophy... I wonder why ?

India can win a World Cup? and Octopuses can fly !!!!

2010-08-08T22:09:00.012+05:30

The World Cup tournament was due to start, and all over India sports fans were asking the question: "The World Cup? Is Sania Mirza playing?"

No, you clowns, it's football or soccer, and it happens to be the most popular sport in the world as determined by both the humongous numbers of sports fans as well as rioting in the stadiums. Some countries shut down entirely during the World Cup. Granted, our country shuts down for pretty much any excuse, including a full moon. But the World Cup really is a major international event — except, of course, in America, where it generates about the same amount of public enthusiasm and interest as reruns of Manoj Kumar movies.

I truly believe that, even though many Indians say they hate football, if they gave it a fair chance — if they took the time to actually watch a World Cup match or two — they would still hate football. I don't know why this is so, but apparently it's not going to change. I've given up arguing with guys who tell me how boring football is, but will happily spend five days watching a cricket test match in which 95 percent of the action consists of bowlers rubbing their groin with the ball and suggestive jargon such as “two fine legs, between a slip and a gully” from the commentators.

"So what," I hear many cricket fans scoffing. "Football still sucks. Nobody ever scores and the players are a bunch of weiners with ‘60’s hairstyles and names like 'Kaka' and wimps who fall down writhing in fake agony every time they come into contact with an opposing player or stray pollen."

Yes, they do dive. Not to single out any one player, but I hear that Oscar Director for “Slumdog” has offered a role in his next film to Keita for his award winning performance on the field.

I personally find the diving to be one of the more entertaining aspects of football, which is a wonderfully theatrical sport. But don't be fooled by the theatrics: Footballers are amazing athletes, this sport requires extraordinary toughness and stamina — and, at the international level, unbelievable skill.

I first played football in school, where we had 30 players per side and could kick the ball for an entire year without scoring a goal. This was in the '60s and our football matches consisted of guys standing around the field in our house colours having philosophical discussions about topics such as girls. Every now and then the ball might roll past; if it got close enough, you might try to kick it to one of the guys wearing a similar house colour, but you would never consider actually running after it. The goal-keeps did nothing at all; they just stood there picking their noses.

After school, football and I parted ways for several decades. Then, in 2006, with Indian television covering the world cup live, my friends and I, bought 40 cases of beer and partied right through to the finals. The world cup matches were also quite good. I believe the winner was either Italy or France. It’s still hazy.

This year I watched about half the games (those which aired during my waking hours), and stayed up agonizingly for the semis and the final, and it became abundantly clear that India needs to address the following if we ever hope to be competitive in world football.

1. Find, import, build, buy, grow or steal some footballers. It is blatantly obvious that our front line cannot compete with the world-class talent of European and South American teams. We don't have anybody who is fast or strong…… Baichung Bhutia is our only striker. When your midfielder is a guy named Climax Lawrence you need to rethink your strategy, and whatever happened to I.M.Vijayan?

2. Somebody go down to Spain and get a Spanish coach, then get our kids into football jerseys with a big Indian tri-colour plastered to the front of it. At the same time maybe it's time to shut the Pakistan border as we have plenty of cricket players…I think.

Playing football is immensely popular amongst kids so it's not like they aren't being exposed to it. In this country, football is still seen mainly as a game played by kids and unemployed youth who eventually outgrow it and take up traditional Indian sports such as minority bashing and eve teasing.

We all know that football will never be anything more than the fourth sport in this country and people will point to this as to why we cannot qualify for a World Cup let alone win one. This is total B.S.; fourth or fifth place still means you can get lakhs of viewers, especially with the right kinds of cheerleaders and Bollywood celebs in attendance.

Of course it will never be as popular as cricket or politics, but just consider the 1.2 billion plus Indian population as opposed to some of the countries who are in the World Cup with less than 10 % of that population, Uruguay’s population is less than 1%.

The way I see it even if only one-in-ten thousand kids are interested, India would have more talent than any other country to select from.

Indian football should be investing in youth programs. With the internet, satellite TV etc it's about time we start getting some good football in this country on TV because our kids know how to watch TV and play video games which is the first step to getting interested and eventually good.

I'm convinced that if the World Cup was every year India would be more competitive because this country does get into it for big events. It's just hard to follow Indian football which is so amateurish it’s like watching the equivalent of a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. I would like to watch good football it's just hard to find an Indian team to root for.

But most importantly we need a coach who can teach our players to act because it's very obvious that if you can't grab your leg in abject pain and agony when a guy slides 3 metres away from you, you'll never compete on the big stage.

My FIFA World Cup 2010 Rant.

2010-07-29T21:26:00.012+05:30

I can’t say I’m the first person to rant about this and I’m sure as hell not going to be the last but is there anything more asinine in this world than the fact that in 2010 there still are sports which refuse to embrace technology?? I am so sick and tired of watching a perfectly well-played game get decided because some half-blind referee made a bone-head call.

It is completely ridiculous that in the World Cup, watched closely by more people in the world than any other sporting event, including the Beijing Olympics, some referees are the only ones apparently not watching the game and THEY are the ones who decide the outcome!!

Last month Kaka was denied a perfect game because some fat referee was scratching his haemorrhoids at the time of Keita’s faking a nose bleed.

The so-called “human element” is one of the dumbest concepts in the history of the game. Maybe a century ago before television this was an excuse, but in 2010 when every person in the stadium has a smart phone able to stream an instant replay in seconds, it’s ridiculous that the referee can’t possibly ask for the same thing.

Frankly football has so many completely convoluted rules you could write a book. Football is so ass-backwards that they don’t even have the clock tick down like any normal sport, they have it ticking up. As for the extra-time; no one knows how much time it will be because the clock is kept on the field. This is like boxing where the 2 boxers fight it out with no idea how far into the round they are. Then there is the lame–brain off-side rule, and don’t get me started on the equally retarded penalty-corner that is more in favour of the defending team. And what are those Adidas’ Jabulani balls made of? Flubber?!!

This World Cup, which has been great, will be remembered primarily for those stupid vulvazelas,(yes, I call them that because they do send out genital noises). I bet South Africa would not have been selected to host the world cup had the selection committee but known about them, and even though their team was not favored to win, the South African fans blew away all other nations in the competition for the title of “Most Irritating Sound Made In Any Tournament”. You knew this because they would constantly entertain the public with mass ear-bleeding.

Second place of course would go to the total amount of blown calls by the refs. FIFA in its stupidity keeps throwing the “human element” at us which is an argument you only make when you have no argument to make.

Why can’t they review a goal? How many major matches have to be decided by “human error”?

Whether it’s the “Hand of God”, the “Hand of Congress(I)” or just the good old “Hand Job” someone has to blow (pun intended)some sense into FIFA. How many times do you need your biggest games decided by the worst calls? Crucial goals were taken off the board because of calls that were so blatantly bad they could have been correctly called by Kaka’s 70 year old grandmother Vera.

If FIFA should have learnt anything, it is that on their biggest stage their refereeing system is the laughing stock of the world. No matter how many years you have played without replay it is time to join the 21^st century, any moron that still claims that the human element adds something to the game must be living in the stone-age when balls were still cubes.

Another Public Service Announcement

2010-07-07T19:59:00.018+05:30

How to save money on petrol/diesel

It makes no sense boo-hooing over the governments deregulation and subsequent increase in petroleum products. It’s only going to get more expensive in the days to come, given that:

A) The oil leak by BP (Barefaced Polluters) in the Gulf of Mexico does not seem to be nearing a solution.

B) America which has a reputation for guzzling gas, especially during the summer months increases its demand and processing prices alone go up by about 3 to 4 rupees a litre.

C) The government is never,never,never,never,never, EVER going to reduce excise and taxes on petroleum products, in fact they are probably already thinking of an additional petroleum “luxury” tax. Yes, it will soon BE a luxury to drive your car or bike on Indian roads, pot-holed as they may be.

On the plus side however, by declaring a ‘Bharat Bandh” the opposition has actually benefited Indian fuel consumerism in the same way the recession brought gas prices down globally.

But whether you're planning a road trip or just trying to avoid spending your paycheck on your daily commute, there's a lot you can do to save money on fuel. The best strategy is to simply drive less often, maybe carpooling or cycling instead, but even if that's not possible here is a list of things you CAN do to save both time and money.

1) Steady as you go.
Mileage lessens in most vehicles at high speeds. For cars once you're going faster than about 70 - 80 kmph; for every 10 kmph you drive over 80 kmph, you're essentially paying an extra 3 rupees per litre of petrol.

Try to maintain a constant speed on the highway. It can also help to use your car's overdrive gears, which save fuel and engine-wear.

2) Drive Smart in traffic
Aggressive driving — speeding, swerving, sudden acceleration and braking — is not only dangerous, it can lower your mileage 33 percent on highways and 5 percent on city streets. Revving your engine when in neutral is even more wasteful.

Anticipate when you need to reduce your speed or stop, slow down and change into the appropriate gear instead of slamming on the brakes. By coasting to a stop you save precious fuel and lessen wear on your tyres as well.

3) Don’t completely chill out
Air conditioning can be a big drain on fuel, so make sure you don't just leave it on absentmindedly, and especially don't have it going with your windows down, even if they just cracked open. You can improve your fuel efficiency in stop-and-go traffic by turning off the A/C and rolling down the windows instead, but in summer and given the dust and air pollution outside your car on Indian roads that's not really a very good idea.

When driving above 70 kmph, especially for long periods on highways, the opposite is true — open windows make the car less aerodynamic by letting in air, which increases air resistance and decreases fuel efficiency. On long road trips, using air conditioning could actually improve your mileage by up to 20 percent.

4) Don't just squat there
On top of pointlessly pumping out greenhouse gases without actually getting you anywhere, idling vehicles also contribute to ground-level ozone, airborne particulate matter and other near-surface air pollution. These emissions can aggravate asthma and even hinder breathing in otherwise healthy people, especially children and the elderly.

If you're just idling to warm up your vehicle in cold weather, it still only needs to run less than a minute. Anything beyond that is just wasting fuel.

5) Tune up
Repairing a vehicle that needs a tune-up or has failed an the pollution control test can improve its fuel efficiency by an average of 4 percent. More serious problems, like a faulty oxygen sensor, can reduce mileage by up to 40 percent.

And don't forget to get an oil change roughly every 5,000 kilometres or three months whichever comes first. (or you could look into importing and installing an Electro-Lube Oil Refiner, which reportedly eliminates the need for oil changes while boosting efficiency 3 to 4 percent).

6) Pump it up
Keeping your tyres properly inflated can improve fuel efficiency by about 3.3 percent. It's also safer and lengthens the lifespan of your tyres, since under-inflated tyres lose their tread quickly in addition to wasting fuel. Regular checkups for your tyres' alignment and balance aren't a bad idea, either.

7) Take a load off
While it mainly affects smaller cars, carrying extra weight means burning extra fuel, no matter how big your vehicle is. On average, you may be cutting your fuel efficiency by up to 2 percent for every 50 kilos extra you carry.

8) Be slick
Using the manufacturer's recommended grade of motor oil can boost mileage by 1 to 2 percent. Try to also use the regular unleaded fuel that's appropriate for your car, since high-octane grades cost several rupees more per litre.

Fill up at a trusted fuel bunk to be sure, but as long as your engine doesn't start knocking, you're probably OK. Switching from premium to regular fuel would save thousands of rupees every year.

9) Put a lid on it
Fuel can evaporate from a vehicle's tank if it's able to find an opening, which is bad for your wallet and your lungs. Make sure your gas tank's cap is tightened securely after you fill up, and if the cap's thread is worn or it fits too loosely, you might want to buy a new one. Also don’t fill your tank right to the brim, not only is it hazardous, there is also the possibility of spillage with fuel sloshing around when the vehicle is in motion.

10) Join the aam aadmi
Carpool or, even better, don't take a car at all — walk, ride a cycle, or take mass transit. It saves you money, improves your personal health, and helps the planet by keeping greenhouse gases out of its atmosphere. Try to work from home as much as possible…. if you have that option.

Happy motoring… and remember be courteous on the road, the guy who cuts you off or keeps blowing his horn from behind, may be carrying a lot of emotional garbage.

Missing in Action

2010-06-29T12:22:00.020+05:30

I think I might know where the missing ex- tourism minister is. I’m referring here to the recent hit-and-run who goes by the pseudonym of Mickey (the rat) Placebo that our police force (Motto: “We Do Have A Motto, But We Don’t Know Where It Is”) has apparently misplaced.

Given the excitement of the ongoing census, you might have missed all the news stories of this Ratol Runaway, which is getting a whole lot of media attention (as difficult as this is to believe) it has nothing to do with Ajmal Kasab.

The background is; Mickey was sweet on a girl, whom we shall call Dania Dorado. One day Dania “by accident” ate a whole tube of Ratol while brushing her teeth. She over-brushed to the point that she was overcome with the resultant euphoria, slipped on the wet floor, ricocheted off the door jamb, (causing multiple contusions to her body), and went comatose.

Mickey meanwhile was busy playing the Casino tables. His sleight-of-hand had just won him a bundle of cash, and he called Dania to give her the good news. But hearing the bad news instead he rushed to her side. Being the Boy Scout that he is, he decided to do his good deed for the day and spend some of his ill-gotten gain trying to revive the lady, so that she would be eternally grateful, fall into his manly arms and have meaningless sex. He flew her here, he flew her there, he flew her everywhere; but alack and alas she succumbed to the charms of the grim reaper instead.

However this interfered with the census taking, after all having people die AFTER having put in all their details defeats the very purpose of a census. It also means a lot of tedious paperwork. So the government ordered an investigation to set out to prove that said Dania was still alive.

This seemed like a good idea, since the Goa government- which is the fourth-largest financial entity in India after the Ambani Brothers, Mayavati and your local paanwala- had not conducted a reliable census with live people since the first Vasco Da Gama landing.

As you can imagine, the census is a huge job. The enumerators spent thousands and thousands of hours, going from door to door, and producing reams of paper to be kept in a government record room in a 150 metre long bread box containing billions of other pieces of paper and what are believed to be Dr. Jack de Sequeira original spectacles along with the original recipe for Chicken Xacuti.

The reason the government did not get around to ordering a census any sooner is that it has been extremely busy with it’s primary functions, which are (1)spending money; (2)publishing souvenirs on it’s fantasy accomplishments in the last 49 years (3) increasing prices.

When the enumerators finally finished, they released the census report which also contains these alarming findings:

- It turns out that both “Mickey” and “Francisco” is actually the same person, and he used to be a tailor.

- Although according to the Indian Constitution there are supposed to be thirty sitting judges along with the Chief Justice in the Supreme Court, an exhaustive search of the premises, including under all the desks, turned up only a dozen.

- In the last 6 months, the Task Force on Unique Identification Document, headed by Nilesh Nilekani, spent 200 crores, without any authorization or supporting documentation to rescue a monitor lizard and buy Congress party flags. In contrast the Goa government spent only 2 crores to get a feasibility study on the Vasco–Dona Paula sea link.

- Morjim in North Goa is missing. “We think Russia took it,” stated the enumerators, “but every time we called up St.Petersburg to ask about it, they just laughed and hung up.”

Now I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I made up the above census findings. The bad news is the real census findings are worse. I do not refer to the findings that the administration has no idea what happened to 24 kilos of “weed” missing from the police locker. That is totally understandable. Why else would so many foreign tourists stroll around garbage ridden streets, stay in overpriced hotel rooms, eat unpalatable restaurant food served by surly waiters, and hire rip-off taxis with negligent, ill-mannered drivers to drive on dangerous, narrow, ill-maintained roads, if not for the lure of good ganja.

Nor I am referring to the fact that the Chief Minister is off busily inaugurating public toilets and breaking coconuts on road-rollers, such that it leaves little time to attend to routine matters of law and order.

I’m sure if the police took some time out from their highway activities of ripping off unsuspecting tourists on the southern ends of the Mandovi and Zuari bridges, they’d quickly find Mickey and a lot of this so-called “lost” weed.

FIRST POLICEMAN: Ok I’ll just check behind the cushions of this politicos lounge sofa and…. Hey, here’s some! Looks like a total of, let me see, two, three, four….Wow! That’s six whole kilos of weed!

SECOND POLICEMAN: So THAT’S what happened to it! Hey! Is that a Supreme Court justice ?

So I’m confident that both Mickey and the weed are around somewhere. What has me concerned is the government might wake up one day and find fighter aircraft, battle tanks and naval ships missing, and what if we have a defense emergency and we need these missing items? Are our fighter pilots going to sit on the runway and make fighter plane noises with their mouths? After all if the government doesn’t know where it’s own tourism minister is, what ELSE doesn’t it know? For example I heard a tourist guide in Panaji pointing out a huge building to his group calling it “The Secretariat”, and after a while I saw another tourist guide point out a boob-shaped structure in Porvorim informing them that this was “The Secretariat”. This has to be a mistake. Why do we need TWO Secretariats when we have only the one useless government! Unless we’ve lost THAT, too.

So methinx that the Goan government should stop whatever it’s doing and concentrate on finding all the stuff it’s missing. I think a good place would be to start looking in the River Princess.

There’s a lot of stuff in there; it would not surprise me one bit if there was a fighter jet in there somewhere. So I say to the government: Go and get it! And while you’re there please remove Mickey Placebo, because he’s starting to smell.