Time to arrest the clichéSaturday, December 11, 2010,02:18:40 PM
It is time city cops did better than they have been doing, and redeemed themselves....
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It’s darkest before dawnSaturday, December 04, 2010,03:27:27 PM
The Commonwealth Games in Delhi may have turned out decent, but without India’s medal rush (though I feel the CWG doesn’t say much about sporting excellence) it wouldn’t have been possible to salvage the public relations disaster CWG had turned into after the bridge collapse. It was more game than sports....
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All ‘bothers’ in armsSaturday, November 27, 2010,12:36:21 AM
First the Russians razed Afghanistan, and Ronald Reagan helped the Mujahideens fight back with such a huge cache of weapons, which the Taliban are still using it today, against the Americans....
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Spread the fuzzy word Friday, November 19, 2010,11:41:55 PM
It’s that time of the year again: a time to create words. If you have great vocabulary and worship the Wren & Martin, skip this. If you love to kick off your shoes and slip into pyjamas, read on. Now that Sarah Palin’s original coinage ‘refudiate’ (it combines the qualities of ‘refute’ and ‘repudiate’) has been accepted by the Oxford Dictionary as the word of the year, we need a few more new ones ....
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Beyond the truth and liesSaturday, November 13, 2010,09:12:05 PM
Friendship comes with moral dilemmas. One being this: is it okay to lie for a friend? Any guy will tell you that a friend who is fond of the truth more than you, isn’t a friend. This doesn’t mean you lie for a friend who raped somebody. But tiny lies cement a friendship better. The truth may set you free, but lies make ties. The problem with most of western morality is that it tends to see everything in ....
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Lateral thoughts on Diwali daySaturday, November 06, 2010,12:18:00 AM
Strangely enough I was reminded of the day when Section 377 of the IPC was read down, on Diwali day. The thought poured in along with the rain, and I could see it wasn’t entirely appropriate because homosexuality has nothing to do with lights (though straight and gay people do claim to see lights during intense orgasms). I saw a queer connection because I took Edward de ....
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Irony's favourite children Saturday, October 30, 2010,04:39:19 PM
Many of my heroes are no good bummers (as they are seen through the collective eye).You give me a Nobel Laureate,and Im liable to get bored.As the old saying goes,high brow needs a little shaving. But I have great respect for charming losers,those who have achieved something interesting,useful or not.I admire a Chinese stall daju (brother in Nepali) who has this uncanny ability to eat a plate of noodles by sucking in one noodle at a time in ....
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Caution, maniacs at work!Friday, October 22, 2010,11:42:24 PM
These are mad times. Especially if you’re seeing a shrink because you think the BlackBerry is a body part. People are suffering from rare mental conditions. For instance, Dr John Ferriar’s book-obsession disease or Bibliomania. Bibliomaniacs acquire books to the exclusion of everything else, including lovers. Stephen Blumberg is the most famous bibliomaniac and klepto. He stole ....
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Good China, better India?Friday, October 15, 2010,10:40:44 PM
When I was growing up in the Northeast in the early 80s, China was considered the slit-eyed paradise, Bruce Lee’s home, and, hence, everyone there was a black-belt angel. If you had a headache, you put “Chinabum” (that’s what locals called Tiger Balm, a red, fiery jelly) on your forehead. If your joints hurt, you put Chinabum again. If you had flu, you put Chinabum. In short, ....
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He can, we can’tFriday, October 08, 2010,09:31:03 PM
Obama can. Rajinikanth has already. I learnt that in my early, conscious life. By conscious, I mean the point when you begin to see life as a series of unfortunate events wherein your elders tell you what you can’t, and so you learn to squeeze out the succour of the world from fantasies. Yesterday morning, I was talking to an ex-neighbour and free-time friend about life. That’s what we do when ....
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It’s all about faithFriday, October 01, 2010,10:51:49 PM
Phew! The day before yesterday, the parking attendant gave me a grave look and said, “After 3 pm, I can’t say if your car will be safe. Ayodhya sir...” The fella was right. Who would want one’s car to be burnt by religious fanatics? I can understand thieves or pyromaniacs. There’s sense in it. But my car for the Lord is plain stupid. I pay for parking (20 bucks a day, which includes ....
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No answer is right answerSaturday, September 25, 2010,03:31:59 PM
Ask Jeeves Top-10 unanswerable questions must stay that way because they keep us busy....
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Thanks for the ExperienceSaturday, September 18, 2010,12:21:19 AM
Sometime earlier in the morning, on this day 40 years back, one of electric guitar’s greatest exponents, Jimi Hendrix, died choking on his own vomit, after a night of the usual excess and some Vesparax sleeping pills. The only woman Jimi is said to have loved, Kathy Etchingham, blames his Swedish girlfriend Monika Danneman for not telling him how strong Vesparax was. I don’t know if you can call it poetic justice....
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The sky could crush usSaturday, September 11, 2010,12:26:08 AM
If you are reading this, it is because the two asteroids, which passed by humanity a little too close for comfort, did not ram into the Earth. Even a zero-point-something error in calculation of the orbit of an asteroid is enough for doomsday to become a reality. I know some of you are smirking at my rant and labelling me a paranoid android (especially, Radiohead fans), but I’m doing what I do best as a professional cynic: imagining ....
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A pissky toast for allSaturday, September 04, 2010,12:53:42 AM
One of the funniest bits of news this week, according to my shallow brain, was the James Gilpin Family Whisky. It’s made of human urine and has been appropriately christened ‘pissky’. It is even being exported, though it will take a while before it arrives at a store near you. Gilpin’s pancreas had given up a few years back and he has been using insulin to keep his diabetes under control. Being a man of great curiosity, he wondered what happened to all the ....
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High time for claritySaturday, August 28, 2010,12:04:21 AM
The World Drug Report (WDR) 2010 released this year prompted me to take a realistic look at one of the world’s most nagging issues. A prominent magazine talked about the new urban junkie, who is a yuppie looking to touch the sky careerwise, and getting high to keep the pressures of that desire at bay. Obviously, many lose the battle because drugs, if abused, are unforgiving. The singer Layne Staley, who died of a heroin overdose, had sung “you ....
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One who ‘played’ dumbFriday, August 20, 2010,10:20:31 PM
I was reminded of an old Chinese proverb last morning: ‘May you live in interesting times’. With Suresh Kalmadi around, that’s not tough. The Chinese know the chinks in the human armour well, which is why their proverbs are killers. Confucius was a gem-a-second kind of guy. The moment somebody says, ‘Confucius says...’ you know you got a verbal kung fu chop coming. ....
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Dude, you’ve gone far!Friday, August 13, 2010,09:08:56 PM
If somebody addresses me as ‘dude’, it sets off a chemical reaction in my brain that makes my indisposition sarcastic. I’m from the ‘man/ guy’ generation. So, I’m the anti-dude, the linguistic antidote. During the 90s grunge years, when I wore abused jeans, us young blokes in the Fergusson hostel used the word ‘dude’ to mean a wise guy who was a ‘brain dud’. “He’s an unusual guy. ....
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Whenever I see sci-fi movies, one thing strikes me the most about imagined post-petroleum societies: the large-headed ugly being (alien or human). It is an indication of our belief that the brain evolves faster (simply because we use it 24X7) and will eventually become most of the body.
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