Blogospheric Manners

The quote of the day comes from Andrew Sullivan to Jeffrey Goldberg:

Calling you an asshole is just the blogosphere’s way of saying hello.

So what I thought was either envy or cussedness on the part of a few people was clearly just conviviality. Well, it’s not too late. Hi there! Assholes!

(Link via email from Arun Simha.)

Method Acting From Shahid Kapoor?

Indiatimes reports:

While actors are at their experimental best these days, Shahid Kapoor will not be left behind. After his stellar performance in Jab We Met, the actor is super-charged and willing to go any distance to get into the skin of the character.

Shahid, we hear, will be opting for a new long-haired look for his upcoming project, a musical, to be directed by Ken Ghosh.

So now you know what commitment means in Bollywood. “Willing to go any distance”, it seems.

And just see that headline!

Obama Denounces Wright

Yawn. Here we go again.

I wonder what Barack Obama found out about Jeremiah Wright over the last three days that he didn’t know after two decades in Wright’s church. This certainly takes a bit of the shine off his words in his famous race speech, “I can no more disown him [Wright] than I can disown the black community.” Well, he can now, since it’s become politically necessary to do so.

As Jonah Goldberg and George Will point out, Wright’s a gift to John McCain. But will this help Hillary Clinton steal the nomination from Obama? I sure hope not.

Also read: Bob Herbert on why Wright is out “not to praise Barack Obama, but to bury him,” and David Brooks on how there are two Democratic Parties, not one.

On Hindi Swear Words

Genesia Alves writes in to point me to a compendium of Hindi swear words. Such an effort was long overdue, but I wish it had been done better. The translation aims to capture the sense of the abuse rather than the literal meaning, and I’m not sure, in this case, that that’s a good idea.

For example, ‘sala kuttaa’ is translated as ‘stupid bastard’. This is inaccurate. ‘Sala kutta’ (as I would spell it; the extra ‘a’ is redundant) should be translated to ‘brother-in-law dog’. This translation is not merely literally accurate, but possesses immense charm.

You might argue, of course, that if a literal translation adds charm to an abuse, then it loses its sense. But ‘stupid bastard’ captures the sense of almost any abuse, and thus doesn’t do justice to any of them. Indeed, the term ‘bastard’ is used on that page as a translation for ‘chutiya’, ‘haraam zaada’ [sic] and ‘haraami’. It does an injustice to the nuances of all those terms.

Also, ‘chutiya’ is translated twice, as ‘bastard’ and ‘fucker’, and ‘chutiya choo-tia’ is translated as ‘fucker’. Eh?

And in case you think I’m being anal about this, well, my gaandugiri is surely no surpise to those who know me well.

Rahat’s Harmonium

The letter of the day comes from Kuldeep Singh (posted with permission):

I read your interview with Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. It was extremely interesting to get to know some inside stuff of Rahat and his great Ustad Nusrat and his father, Farrukh.

I myself am learning how to play the harmonium but there is one favour I ask from you – can you find out which harmonium is used by Rahat.

This may sound very odd but I am in the process of looking for a harmonium to buy so I thought why not buy the same one used by the professionals.

Unfortunately, I have no way of answering Kuldeep’s question. If any of you know, please tell me and I’ll pass your answer on to Kuldeep.

Only Mailer

The lit put-down of the week comes from Leon Wieseltier, who says of Martin Amis:

Pity the writer who wants to be Bellow but is only Mailer.

If only Norman Mailer could storm back from the dead and land up at Wieseltier’s house with a penknife…