Cease And Desist, You Old Fart

This is superb. If only it was for real…

(Via email from Udhay.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 17 October, 2008 in Politics

Paying Dues

"The celebrated German poet Friedrich Schiller,” reports BBC, “dead for more than 200 years, has been sent reminders that he should pay his TV and radio licence fee… With the annual fee of about 200 euros (£157) unpaid since 1805 Schiller would owe more than 40,000 euros.”

“Three days after their suicides were discovered,” reports DNA, “recovery agents are still chasing the Nair siblings. Unaware that Suchitra, 46, and Sudhir, 42, committed suicide after killing their parents at their Raheja Estate apartment in Borivli, recovery agents and bank officials have been constantly calling up with repayment reminders.”

One funny story, one sad story. Such it goes.

Posted by Amit Varma on 16 October, 2008 in News

The World’s Greatest Democracy…

... has simply got to have polls like this one:

Vote! Which celeb has the worst smile?

Knowing our country’s celebs, most of them would want to win this thing. Anything for the limelight. 

Posted by Amit Varma on 16 October, 2008 in India | Journalism | Media | WTF

Readable And Page-Turning?

Alison Flood writes in The Guardian that this years Booker Prize judges have described the books on the shortlist as “intensely readable” and “page-turning”, but junta doesn’t think so.

This year the lifetime [sales] figures for the six shortlisted titles are 32,342 - less than this year’s edition of the Guinness World Records achieved in a week.

[...]

[Linda] Grant’s “The Clothes on their Backs”, about a young woman’s fascination with the black sheep of her family, has sold 3,074 copies in the four weeks since the shortlist announcement, according to book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan - considerably more than second placed Aravind Adiga, whose “The White Tiger” has racked up 2,588 sales since the announcement on September 9.

These are stunningly low figures, and I’m quite taken aback. Clearly the prize doesn’t cast quite the aura it once used to. It will be awarded sometime today, and I hope whoever wins is rewarded by a massive rise in sales. Otherwise what’s the point?

Posted by Amit Varma on 14 October, 2008 in Arts and entertainment

The Two Kinds Of Genius

"Genius,” writes Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker, “in the popular conception, is inextricably tied up with precocity—doing something truly creative, we’re inclined to think, requires the freshness and exuberance and energy of youth.” But there is another kind of genius that has more to do with searching than finding, that is realised through painstaking trial and error, that can take decades to reach fruition. Gladwell illustrates this by using Paul Cézanne and Ben Fountain as examples, showing how luck and love are indispensable for this second kind of genius.

So even if you weren’t quite the prodigy, keep at it. Ok?

(Link via email from Rahul.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 14 October, 2008 in Arts and entertainment

Husbands On Rent

I wonder if men should consider this a problem or an opportunity.

(Link via email from Arun John.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 14 October, 2008 in Miscellaneous

Membership Open

Kind Friend writes in to point me to an annual fertility festival in Japan, with some spectacular phalluses on display. Check them out.

I’m wondering whether I should contribute an international entry. India Uncut? 

Posted by Amit Varma on 14 October, 2008 in Miscellaneous

The Methi Murders

This is quite the headline of the day:

Why did the hacked body have methi in its mouth?

What a great beginning that would make for a mystery novel. I can just imagine an Indian Maigret being puzzled by such a case, going home, and being fed methi for lunch by his wife. And then more murders. Why methi?

Posted by Amit Varma on 14 October, 2008 in News | Small thoughts

Witchcraft In India

The Times of India has a story today on a tribal woman in a village in Madhya Pradesh who was accused of witchcraft by her fellow villagers.

A group of villagers ... took the woman to a deserted location and forced her to pick a silver coin from a vessel containing boiling oil. The woman suffered severe burns on both her hands and she fell unconscious. However, this did not deter the villagers and they thrashed her badly with hot iron rods due to which she received head injuries. [...]

The villagers then dumped her outside her house. Her family members, including her husband, did not allow her inside…

Why was she suspected of being a witch? Well, two members of a family had died in the space of a month, and the villagers, presumably driven by other enmities, blamed those deaths on this poor woman. Once accused, she had no chance of proving herself innocent. A villager explained to ToI:

Women, whosoever, labelled as a ‘witch’ by the villagers has to pick a silver coin from a tank filled with boiling oil, with both her hands. If her hands are burnt, her witchhood is confirmed, otherwise she is declared innocent.

So if you’re a woman is such a village, especially low down in the social hierarchy, you’d better make sure you don’t piss anyone off. Unless you’re really a witch and have burn-proof arms.

Posted by Amit Varma on 11 October, 2008 in India | News | WTF

Amitava Kumar Brings Rave Out To Life

Those of you who read this blog through their feed readers may not notice when other sections of this site are updated, so I thought I’d make a note that Rave Out has sprung back to life. Amitava Kumar has just done a superb Rave Out on Joseph O’Neill’s celebrated novel “Netherland”, and I shall upload a Rave Out on Anne Tyler’s beautiful novel, “Back When We Were Grownups”, sometime in the middle of next week. From then on, I’ll aim for a couple of Rave Outs a week. So watch that space.

As for the other sections, well, blame it on laziness. I have many Workoutable questions that just await uploading, and I also have over 100 old crosswords I’d made for Mint that haven’t yet been uploaded on Extrowords. But they’re on the hard drive of my earlier laptop, whose motherboard had given way, and I have yet to retrieve the data. My lassitude is so immense, it feels eternal.

Posted by Amit Varma on 11 October, 2008 in Arts and entertainment | Personal