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

Sarah Palin, Post-Turtle

Ben Macintyre introduces us to the term ‘post-turtle’:

A 75-year-old Texas rancher recently explained this term to a country doctor. The conversation turned to the US election, and Sarah Palin’s vice-presidential candidacy, and the old rancher observed: “Well, ya know, Palin is a post-turtle.” The bemused doctor asked what a post-turtle was, and the old man replied: “When you’re driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that’s a post-turtle.” The rancher continued: “You know she didn’t get up there by herself, she doesn’t belong up there, she doesn’t know what to do while she is up there, and you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put her up there to begin with.”

I love the term, and I really shouldn’t quibble, but it falls short in one sense—this turtle wanted to be on that fence post. Indeed, when it was asked to get up there, it did not blink—and now it wants to live up on the tallest fence post of all, in case Putin rears his head and all. No real turtle would have such self-delusion.

And really, turtles are sweet little things, and protecting them from such cruel analogies is yet another good reason to not vote for Sarah Palin.

(Link via email from Vikram Chandrashekar. More Palin: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.)

Update (October 11): Sanjeev emails to say that the analogy has been used earlier while talking about Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton.

Maybe it applies to all politicians. After all, as Don Boudreaux once asked, who’s qualified to run a country?

Posted by Amit Varma on 10 October, 2008 in Politics

Sowing And Mowing

The news item of the day comes from The Hindu:

Air Customs seized 59 handguns from the baggage of two passengers who landed at the International Airport at Karipur. [...] The two claimed the guns were meant for “agricultural purposes”.

Maybe they were going to plant the guns, water them for a year and get an arms factory out of it. Jai jawan, jai kisan.

(Link via email from Gautam.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 10 October, 2008 in India | News | WTF