A few moments ago I caught Akshay Kumar talking about Singh is Kinng on NDTV 24x7:
Mujhe achha mauka mila hai to play a sardar and show what sardars are made of.
He later said, “This is my tribute to our seekhs.” I think he should play a kabab in his next film.
He also referred to a “Snoop Dog Saab” who sings for the film. But his best quote came when the reporter asked him how he felt like shooting in Egypt, “the land of the mummies”:
Egypt ki mammi ho ya India ki mammi ho, mammi tho mammi hai.
Wittiest kabab ever.
Posted by Amit Varma on 09 August, 2008 in
Arts and entertainment
Raymond Chandler writes:
A long time ago, when I was writing for the pulps I put into a story a line like ‘he got out of the car and walked across the sun-drenched sidewalk until the shadow of the awning over the entrance fell across his face like the touch of cool water’. They took it out when they published the story. Their readers didn’t appreciate this sort of thing: just held up the action. And I set out to prove them wrong. My theory was that they just thought they cared nothing about anything but the action; that really, although they didn’t know it, they cared very little about the action. The things they really cared about, and that I cared about, were the creation of emotion through dialogue and description; the things they remembered, that haunted them, were not for example that a man got killed, but that in the moment of his death he was trying to pick a paper clip up off the polished surface of a desk, and it kept slipping away from him, so that there was a look of strain on his face and his mouth was half opened in a kind of tormented grin, and the last thing in the world he thought about was death. He didn’t even hear death knock on the door. That damn paper clip kept slipping away from his fingers and he just wouldn’t push it to the edge of the desk and catch it as it fell.
This excerpt is from “The Raymond Chandler Papers”, a marvellous collection of Chandler’s letters and some nonfiction, edited by Tom Hiney and Frank MacShane. It is full of such gems.
Chandler’s insight hurts me when I think of popular English fiction in India. There’s isn’t one writer in that space who can write about that paper clip. I think our readers deserve better.
Posted by Amit Varma on 08 August, 2008 in
Arts and entertainment |
Excerpts |
Personal
What do you do when you want to find out whether you’re male or female? You click here. My results:
Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 3%
Likelihood of you being MALE is 97%
The program in question does its analysis based on one’s browsing history. You do the test and see what you are.
As for me, I will now delete my cache and try to be female for an hour. Then I’ll do this test again. L’that only.
(Link via Andrew Sullivan via MR.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 08 August, 2008 in
Miscellaneous |
Personal
Aadisht Khanna has a piece in The New Indian Express today that praises The Hindu as a great Chinese institution:
Every other media outlet outside China supports the cause of the Dalai Lama, but only The Hindu has the journalistic integrity to expose him as a puppet of so-called Western democracy, and the wealthy beneficiary of a superstitious and feudal system.
So pronounced is The Hindu’s courage and integrity that it maintained its criticism of the vicious and savage Tibetans when they went on a violent rampage earlier this year.
It did this despite criticism from readers (those imbeciles!), its own readers editor, and a number of reactionary, pro-imperialist “human rights” organisations determined to malign China’s peaceful rise. India should be proud that it has a newspaper which is able to stand up for the viewpoint of a great and powerful nation.
I wonder if the management of the The Hindu will even realise that this is satire. Hmmm…
Posted by Amit Varma on 08 August, 2008 in
India |
Journalism |
Media |
Politics
Elsewhere in the world, this is a funny story.
In India, it’s the view from a local train in Mumbai.
(Link via email from Arun Simha.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 08 August, 2008 in
India |
Miscellaneous
... has been announced. The finalists are:
Swaminathan Aiyar
Tyler Cowen
A Barton Hinkle
Fraser Nelson
Ashutosh Tiwari
Daniel Weintraub
This is a formidable line-up, and I’m even more convinced now that I was an unworthy winner last year. Swami and Tyler, especially, are writers I admire immensely, and I can’t wait to read the nominated articles of all six dudes. My congratulations to all of them.
Posted by Amit Varma on 07 August, 2008 in
Journalism |
Media |
Personal
All you philistines bored by the study of history, read this and reconsider:
Bernier relates one of the adventures of this princess, as “they are not amours like ours, but attended with events dreadful and tragical.” It appears that she received one of her lovers into her apartments, and that, as Shah Jahan was about to enter, she had nowhere to conceal him except in one of the large hot-water caldrons made to bathe in. The emperor feigned to see nothing, but after a long visit sternly commanded a fire to be built beneath the bath, and did not leave till the man was dead.
Now you know why I’m a huge fan of emperors. This excerpt is from Edward S Holden’s “The Mogul Emperors of Hindustan”. My thanks to Devangshu for pointing me to the passage in question.
Posted by Amit Varma on 06 August, 2008 in
Arts and entertainment |
Excerpts
All my vegetarian readers are hereby advised to click on this.
*
PS. Sorry. It’s Nilanjana’s fault. She showed me this picture after dinner at her and DD’s place—I’m passing through Delhi on the way to Chandigarh—and as I was unable to eat it, I thought I’d blog it.
Posted by Amit Varma on 06 August, 2008 in
Miscellaneous |
Personal
I missed some of the Galle Test between Sri Lanka and India, and reading my friend Sambit Bal’s narrative, I regret it. Especially this bit:
And just when Kumar Sangakkara and Malinda Warnapura were stroking Sri Lanka towards a potentially match-winning position…
Now you know why I love Test cricket. Twenty20 is just wham bam thank you maam.
Posted by Amit Varma on 05 August, 2008 in
Sport
I love the first line of this book review by Janet Maslin:
There are many indications that David Ebershoff conducted prodigious research to write his novel about polygamy, “The 19th Wife.”
Sadly, Maslin elaborates—and we find that she did not mean what she seemed to be implying. Such a letdown.
Posted by Amit Varma on 05 August, 2008 in
Arts and entertainment
