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My first novel, My Friend Sancho, is now on the stands across India. It is a contemporary love story set in Mumbai, and was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. To learn more about the book, click here.
To buy it online from the US, click here.
I am currently on a book tour to promote the book. Please check out our schedule of city launches. India Uncut readers are invited to all of them, no pass required, so do drop in and say hello.
If you're interested, do join the Facebook group for My Friend Sancho
Click here for more about my publisher, Hachette India.
And ah, my posts on India Uncut about My Friend Sancho can be found here.
Ah, modern times. Check out these two amazing news headlines:
Community ostracises woman touched by outsider
Muslims on social networks are sinners
Such stories they contain. It’s bewildering to be a writer of fiction sometimes, when the real world is so very far out and strange.
Posted by Amit Varma on 05 February, 2010 in
Arts and entertainment |
India |
News |
WTF
Reader Ruchir Khare writes in to point me to this passage from the Johann Hari piece on Dubai that I linked to in my last post:
A Human Rights Watch study found there is a “cover-up of the true extent” of deaths from heat exhaustion, overwork and suicide, but the Indian consulate registered 971 deaths of their nationals in 2005 alone. After this figure was leaked, the consulates were told to stop counting.
Ruchir’s questions: What has the Indian government done about this? What has the media done about this? These figures, after all, are greater than those coming out of Australia.
*
Oh, and my buddy Madhu pointed me this morning to the WTF headline of the day: “Aussies celebrate R-Day by racially assaulting 2 Indians.”
This is not on some random blog somewhere, it’s from The Economic Times. Some editor actually approved this. Such it goes.
The WTF statement of the week comes from a Dubai cop:
The woman confessed that she had sexual intercourse with her fiancé and that she had alcohol. We cannot just ignore such an offence.
The woman is question is a British tourist who complained on New Year’s Day that she had been raped by a waiter the previous evening. The cops “arrested her after she revealed during questioning that she had drunk alcohol and had sex with her fiancé, with whom she was on holiday.”
As for the waiter, he’s presumably still on the loose, still waiting.
*
And while on Dubai, check out this superb article by Johann Hari: “The dark side of Dubai.” (Link via Sonia Gupta.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 26 January, 2010 in
Freedom |
News |
WTF
The WTF statement of the day comes from Pradeep Magazine in Hindustan Times:
In this wave of attacks from all sides, the IPL has unleashed one more this year. What the Mumbai terror attacks could not achieve—an Indo-Pak war—this fresh row could well do that.
I never thought that in a fracas between Lalit Modi and the rest of the world, the rest of the world will make a fool of itself. Such it goes.
*
My thoughts on the IPL auctions are here. I must admit, the thought of war never crossed my mind. But then, I am not a defence analyst.
Posted by Amit Varma on 23 January, 2010 in
Journalism |
Media |
Sport |
WTF
Reader Mani Shankar writes in to point me to a post by Vir Sanghvi in which he hits out at people “who blog and tweet”. I have three things to say about it:
1] Sanghvi criticises bloggers and blogging… in a blog post. Is there not a little bit of dissonance there? If he is blogging, he is a blogger. And yet, his criticism doesn’t seem directed at himself.
2] He attacks a straw man and generalises madly. He’s upset because some bloggers “complain that the media are only interested in circulation and viewership (or TRPs)”. (He doesn’t link to any of them.) He finds this criticism invalid, so he generalises about how bloggers “regard themselves as an elite.” Which bloggers? All bloggers? Me also? Him also?
This is as silly as my attacking the writing skills of Indian journalists because some journalists mix metaphors. It would be fallacious of me to generalise in that manner, and far more productive for me to link to a specific journalist whose writing falls in that category—as I did a few days ago with poor Bobilli. Should I have generalised about Indian journalism on the basis of Bobilli’s writing?
3] Finally, when people (bloggers or otherwise) criticise the media for chasing TRPs, they are effectively criticising them for catering to the lowest common denominator. Sanghvi attacks them for feeling this way, and calls them an elite. But hey, wait a second, what about when journalists criticize politicians for the exact same thing? As when Sanghvi himself writes:
If we are led by the lowest common denominator then that is where we will remain in the community of nations: at the lowest level, without any hope of catching up with the rest of the world.
The “elite bloggers” Sanghvi mocks presumably hold the same sentiment about our media. Can Sanghvi not take his own medicine?
*
There’s another response on Sanghvi’s post over at Retributions. I think this is by one of those “pseudonymous bloggers” Sanghvi is so upset about. Heh. Correction: The post is by Rohit Pradhan, who’s not been pseudonymous for a while now, I’m told.
*
Also read: An old piece by me, “In Defence of Blogging.”
Posted by Amit Varma on 22 January, 2010 in
Blogging |
Journalism |
Media |
WTF
Bob Herbert writes about Haiti in The New York Times:
Just when you think the ultimate has happened, the absolute worst, something even more dire, comes along.
And yet. No matter how overwhelming the tragedy, how bleak the outlook, no matter what malevolent forces the fates see fit to hurl at this tiny, beleaguered, mountainous, sun-splashed portion of the planet, there is no quit in the Haitian people.
They rose up against the French and defeated the forces of Napoleon to become the only nation to grow out of a slave revolt. They rose up against the despotic Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier and sent him packing. Despite ruthless exploitation by more powerful nations, including the United States, and many long years of crippling civil strife, corruption, terror and chronic poverty, the Haitian people have endured.
They will not be defeated by this earthquake.
The overwrought prose and dubious insight here is more suited to a schoolboy’s essay than an NYT column. No quit in the Haitian people? That sounds just like the patronising remarks about Mumbai’s ‘resilience’ after each terrorist attack that we go through. Mumbaikars went to work on 27/11 not because they were resilient or especially brave but because they had no choice. They continued commuting in trains after the train blasts of 2006 because of the same reason. From outside it might look brave, but here, we see it as just getting on with our lives. Is there an option?
The people of Haiti, I’d imagine, are like people everywhere else—they make do with what there is, and respond to circumstances as they arise. That is a human quality, not a Haitian one. There is no quit across the world.
*
And while on NYT columns, I’m increasingly surprised by the kind of writing Gail Collins gets away with. Writing about Scott Brown, the Republican candidate in the Massachusetts senate elections, she says:
When he was 22, he [Brown] won an “America’s Sexiest Man” contest, the prize for which was $1,000 and a chance to pose naked in a Cosmopolitan magazine centerfold. One of his daughters — this is perhaps the best-known factoid in the campaign — came in somewhere between 13th and 16th on “American Idol.”
“For our family, especially me being on ‘Idol’ but my dad being in politics, there are always so many people who have something negative to say,” Ayla Brown told The Boston Herald this week. Her talent was singing, not sentence construction.
Now, how crass is that last sentence? When she’s writing about politics in these polarised times, one can expect her to get snarky and personal about the candidate from the party she opposes. But his daughter? I can imagine a tabloid going there, but an NYT columnist should surely consider it out of bounds.
I wonder, if Herbert and Collins left the awesome platform of the NYT and started independent blogs, how many readers would they have? That would be the real test, and I’m sure they’d be resilient if it went wrong.
Posted by Amit Varma on 16 January, 2010 in
Journalism |
Media |
Politics |
Small thoughts |
WTF
The WTF statement of the day is the warning given by Chandra Shekhar, a politician in Bhopal, to local shopkeepers:
Your mannequins should wear sarees, not underwear. From now on, keep all undergarments inside. Show it to the customer when he or she asks for it. Five days from now if undergarments are still hanging outside, we will light a bonfire of the lingerie.
Yes, the culture police is protesting against the public display of lingerie now. In a country in which there are so many serious issues to tackle, this is getting surreal. But why, it must be asked, are they doing this? Is there actually a constituency that approves of this kind of behaviour?
My answer: Yes, there is. We are a country that contains around half-a-billion sexually repressed men. Many of these dudes, who don’t get the kind of action they desire, resent anything that reminds them of this. Like lingerie on mannequins. Like advertisements for coffee-flavoured condoms (another target of these thugs). Like the ubiquitous bogeyman of ‘Western Culture.’
And where there is widespread resentment, there will be a political party tapping into it. Such it goes.
Posted by Amit Varma on 14 January, 2010 in
India |
News |
Politics |
Small thoughts |
WTF
In a significant ruling, a three-judge bench of the Bombay high court has held that in India criticism of any religion is permissible under the fundamental right of freedom of speech, be it Islam, Hinduism, Christianity or any other religion, and a book cannot be banned for that reason alone. But the criticism must be bona fide or academic, said the court as it upheld a ban issued in 2007 by the Maharashtra government on a book titled Islam—A Concept of Political World Invasion by Muslims.
Aah, that first line sounds so nice, gives so much hope. And then the second one makes it meaningless. Why should only “bona fide or academic” criticism be allowed? Who decides if a particular critique is “bona fide or academic”? The judges there paid lip service to free speech—and in the very next sentence, added caveats that took the ‘free’ out of it.
It could be argued, of course, that the bench merely followed a precedent already set by the framers of our constitution. They too, in Article 19 (1) (a), paid lip service to free speech. And in article 19 (2), allowed restraints on it on grounds such as “public order” and “decency and morality” that are open to interpretation, and make it easy for those in power to stifle free expression. Such it goes.
Also read: Don’t Insult Pasta.
Posted by Amit Varma on 07 January, 2010 in
Freedom |
India |
News |
WTF
... pork?
The Bombay High Court has stayed the disbursal of Rs 1,000 crore of the taxpayers’ money — in the form of subsidy by the Maharashtra government — to distilleries that make alcohol using foodgrains.
The subsidy is applicable to 21 distilleries, many of which are controlled by politicians.
Questioning the state’s policy, the court on Wednesday asked: “What is essential commodity — foodgrains or wine?”
[...]
The beneficiaries include former chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s son Amit and Nationalist Congress Party leader Govindrao Aadik.
That last line I quoted is the killer, isn’t it? What’s the point of power, a politician might argue rationally, if you can’t enjoy its spoils?
(Link via email from Deepak Shenoy. For more posts on how our taxes are misused, click here.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 07 January, 2010 in
India |
News |
Old memes |
Taxes |
Politics |
WTF
This is very funny.
Except that it’s not. WTF?
*
And really, just see these observations:
If you’re observing her from afar and you notice her looking at other couples, she could be longing for the days when she was once also attached.
If she is not single, then chances are she won’t be twirling her hair and touching other men ever so casually.
Generally women who are not single tend to be less friendly with other men.
Who wants to bet that the guy who wrote this studied in a boy’s school, has never dated a girl and spends much of his time on Orkut? Who? You? Get in line.
Posted by Amit Varma on 23 December, 2009 in
Journalism |
Media |
WTF
Wilbur Sargunaraj is a genius. Check out his masterful music video, “Blog Song”:
He should totally follow this up with “Twitter Anthem”. And Tom Vadakan should should do a rap in the middle of that which goes, ”Tweet is a lonely man, yo, Tweet is a lonely man. But I won’t feel bitter, cuz I’m not a quitter, I’ll put on my glitter, and get my ass on Twitter, yo, cuz Tweet is a lonely man, yo, Tweet is a lonely man.”
No?
(Link via email from Anand Krishnamoorthi.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 22 December, 2009 in
Arts and entertainment |
WTF
The WTF statement of the day comes from Sheila Dikshit with regard to the Commonwealth Games:
I only keep praying that we won’t let the country down.
Pray?
Posted by Amit Varma on 20 December, 2009 in
India |
News |
Politics |
WTF
I’m assuming this is a publicity stunt. But even then, there is the question, who think of such stunts?
And while on PR, remember the khakras?
(Link via Mudra Mehta.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 20 December, 2009 in
Arts and entertainment |
India |
Media |
News |
WTF
This is surely the sentence of the year:
My friends waved at me from the buffet counter not knowing what the human sperms did to me during those fifteen minutes.
This is Sherlyn Chopra writing about… well, I really can’t summarize on a family blog such as this what she is writing about. Read it for yourself.
Her post also contains the magnificent line, ‘A tall white hunk dressed in a black suit walked up to me.’ But just when you think this is like some nice, romantic Yashraj film, there’s a touch of Bunuel. Masterful.
*
That said, I have more respect for Sherlyn Chopra’s writing skills than Bobilli Vijay Kumar’s. This is the man who once wrote, as my friend Prem Panicker pointed out, that Raj Singh Dungarpur is the ‘uncrowned grandfather of Indian cricket’. Week after week, he writes columns that mangle metaphors, torture idioms, and in general try too hard to show his mastery of the language. But just when you thought you’d seen it all, he comes up with this gem:
Tiger Woods is finally realising that life is not always a bed of roses. He has slept in so many, anyway, that he would have known that a prickly one was just a birdie away.
However, even in his wildest dreams (and as we know now he does have wild dreams, even if you don’t count kinky sex or foursomes), he wouldn’t have expected that he would end paying such a heavy price. Will he really need to put away his club to save the marriage?
Tiger is, of course, not the first person to fish in muddied waters; nor will he be the last high-profile athlete to play the field so well. The only reason he has become the butt of all jokes is because, ironically, he is Tiger Woods.
Mind you, this is the sports editor of the Times of India writing. When his reporters write like this, he probably pats them on the back proudly instead of making them stand in a murga pose outside the ToI office for six hours, which is the only apt punishment.
*
And I must say here that I’ve known both Bobilli and Shriniwas during my years in cricket journalism, and they’re both nice guys. But they really need to stop messing with the language like this.
I must also say that I don’t know Sherlyn personally. But FSM bless her, because I read her post after reading Bobilli’s, and the laughter lessened the pain.
Posted by Amit Varma on 14 December, 2009 in
Arts and entertainment |
India |
Journalism |
Media |
Sport |
WTF
Dear P Chidambaram
A newspaper report today states that you are willing “to drop all cases against Telangana activists booked since November 29.” Many of these ‘activists’ were booked for rioting and damaging public and private property. Now, for political purposes, you wish to drop charges.
I don’t get it. For the rule of law to mean anything, surely the law must take its course. Even you, as the home minister, cannot be above the constitution. How then can you justify this move?
I’m not even getting into the bad precedent set by your succumbing to blackmail and gundagardi. Already the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha has announced “an indefinite hunger strike.” Who knows where this will end?
Regards
Amit Varma
*
More open letters here. Also read: “Mobs are Above the Law.”
Posted by Amit Varma on 11 December, 2009 in
India |
Letters |
News |
Politics |
WTF
On paying the salaries of 22,800 fake employees of the Delhi municipality.
That’s right: it’s been discovered that 22,800 of the 127,094 employees on the rolls of the municipal corporation of Delhi do not exist. These non-existent employees get a salary of Rs 17 crore per month. Guess who pays their salary.
There’s an ecosystem of ghosts out there that you and I are funding. At night, while the city sleeps, they get to work. They deliver mail that was never sent, sweep streets that were never paved, file applications that will never be read. When morning comes they’re gone, giving way to a government that is not much better.
(For more on how our government loots us, click here.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 26 November, 2009 in
India |
News |
Old memes |
Taxes |
WTF
Via @saba_imtiaz, here’s a speech that’s surely going to become a YouTube classic: Bilawal Bhutto Zardari giving a speech to (presumably) his party workers in accented Urdu:
At the end of his speech, he’s like Rohit Verma and Vindu Dara Singh from Bigg Boss combined: Rohit’s hysteria, Vindu’s raw aggro. My advice to young Bilawal: try decaf. He sounds like he had 17 risterttos before breakfast, no?
It is a subject that would make most governments blush, but officials in the Spanish region of Extremadura have launched a major programme to encourage what could be described as a more hands-on approach to sexuality.
The region’s socialist government has launched a €14,000 (£12,600) campaign aimed at teaching young people how best to set about “sexual self-exploration and the discovery of self-pleasure” – or to put it less delicately: masturbation.
“Pleasure is in your own hands” is the slogan of a campaign that has sparked political controversy and challenges traditional Roman Catholic views on people having sex, even on their own, for non-reproductive reasons.
The logical next step, of course, is to give licenses for masturbation to those who trained by the government in it, and arrest anyone found masturbating without that license. Indeed, there could be masturbation inspectors authorised to peek into bathrooms and suchlike to catch offenders, with the aid of government-installed cameras. For those of a certain orientation, the act of watching potential offenders could itself lead to the offence being committed.
But leave aside the satire. We can all express outrage at taxpayers’ money being spent like this, and go WTF at the thought of the government getting involved in such a private act—but consider for a moment the principle behind our going WTF: that the government has no business bothering about what we do with ourselves. Our own government might not attempt to teach us how to masturbate—but it interferes in our private lives in hazaar different ways that we accept and take for granted. It punishes various victimless crimes, and even treats attempted suicide as a crime, which is silly if you accept the right to self-ownership. It treats us as subjects, not as citizens—and in countless different ways, is no less outrageous than the regional government in Spain that teaches wanking.
So why is that WTF and not this?
*
Okay, so if the Indian government was actually to start a Ministry of Masturbation, who would be the first masturbation minister?
Why, Mahinder Watsa, of course!
(Link via email from Manish Vij.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 14 November, 2009 in
Freedom |
News |
WTF
I am not a fan of Ayn Rand’s work: Her prose is mediocre and her novels are cheesy. Even though I agree with many of her beliefs, that is neither here nor there, as they weren’t original to her, and the brand of classical liberalism (or minarchist libertarianism) I believe in took off at least a century earlier than her. So I am never quick to defend Rand when she is being criticized. I’ll make an exception, though, for a recent piece on her in The New York Times by Adam Kirsch.
In his piece, a review of a biography by Anne C Heller, Kirsch relates how Bennett Cerf, the head of Random House, wanted to edit out Galt’s speech from Atlas Shrugged. Rand refused. Then:
Cerf offered Rand an alternative: if she gave up 7 cents per copy in royalties, she could have the extra paper needed to print Galt’s oration. That she agreed is a sign of the great contradiction that haunts her writing and especially her life. Politically, Rand was committed to the idea that capitalism is the best form of social organization invented or conceivable. [...]
Yet while Rand took to wearing a dollar-sign pin to advertise her love of capitalism, Heller makes clear that the author had no real affection for dollars themselves. Giving up her royalties to preserve her vision is something that no genuine capitalist, and few popular novelists, would have done. It is the act of an intellectual, of someone who believes that ideas matter more than lucre.
This is a strange comment, and I have two points to make:
One: Rand might well have agreed to the chop on commercial considerations alone. She might have calculated that the book would sell more copies if it included the speech, and that the extra royalties from those extra sales might offset the 7 cents per copy that she gave up.
Two: “Genuine capitalists” would look to serving their self interest as much as possible. But they need not view this in purely monetary terms. Rand might have placed a higher value on spreading her ideas in the world than on merely making money. It would then be entirely rational for her to accept a notional monetary loss for the sake of keeping a speech that many of her supporters today regard very highly. This is entirely consistent with being a capitalist.
The deal between Rand and Cerf was one between two private parties that involved no coercion. Both of them got what they wanted. It might even have ended in a double ‘thank you’ moment. How on earth could it non-capitalistic?
*
On a personal note, I regard myself as a capitalist as well. And pretty much all the important decisions I’ve made in the last few years have reduced my income vastly. First, I opted to give up a senior job in journalism to become a freelancer; and then, I opted to give up freelancing to focus on writing novels. In the short run, this has decimated my bank balance. And yet, I have no regrets over these decisions—and they are not noble in any way. They arise out of sheer self-interest. I’m a greedy capitalist pig.
But Heller and Kirsch would probably think otherwise.
Posted by Amit Varma on 01 November, 2009 in
Economics |
Freedom |
Small thoughts |
WTF
It seems that Elesh Parujanwala, the ‘winner’ of Rakhi Ka Swayamwar, is “deeply hurt and angered” by the things his supposed fiance, Rakhi Sawant, has been saying about him. Among other things, he feels her comments about him not being rich enough were “stupid and unnecessary”. Quite.
In other news, we are told that nine female inmates of the Bhopal Central Jail have applied to take part in Rahul Dulhania Le Jaayega. Amazingly, 16746 other women are also keen to marry Rahul Mahajan. WTF indeed.
To all these ladies, I’d like to offer the advice Elesh should have gotten before he embarked on his adventure: Don’t. Crib. Later.
Posted by Amit Varma on 29 October, 2009 in
Arts and entertainment |
India |
News |
WTF
This is hilarious.
Posted by Amit Varma on 27 October, 2009 in
India |
News |
Politics |
WTF
The WTF sentence of the day is a classic case of trying too damn hard. Mumbai Mirror, while reporting how Sanjay Leela Kempinski lost his temper of the sets of a film he’s shooting, tells us:
On seeing Bhansali’s fit of rage, the entire unit trembled with fright.
The entire unit trembled with fright? That must have been quite a sight. Really, now, is it asking too much to actually sit back and read one’s copy after it has been written?
And don’t get me started on that headline.
Posted by Amit Varma on 22 October, 2009 in
Arts and entertainment |
India |
Journalism |
Media |
News |
WTF
Three men holding key positions in one of India’s biggest private sector companies were on their way to a party at their boss’s swanky Cuffe Parade home, when driver Goverdhan Vaidya, who is in his mid fifties, suffered a cardiac arrest.
The men asked him to stop the car, which was at Cooperage, helped him out and sat him down on the pavement.
Then, they got back in the car and drove off to the party, leaving a breathless Vaidya holding his chest in excruciating pain.
Luckily, a passerby took Vaidya to hospital and he was saved. But here’s my question: nowhere in Mid Day’s article are the names of the three men in the car mentioned, or of the company they work for. Why?
Posted by Amit Varma on 18 October, 2009 in
India |
Journalism |
Media |
News |
WTF
Social networking takes a whole new dimension. HT reports:
This Halloween, Twitter users will get the chance to communicate with departed film stars in the world’s first online séance, according to a report on The Sun.
Tweeters can choose which of their deceased idols they want to talk to, pick a question — then follow the “Tweance” in real time using the social networking site.
Twe-fuckin’-ance? Unbelievable. I think it’s about time Pratibha Patil gets on Twitter. She’s already good at speaking to spirits, after all.
And while we’re at it, why not extend the participation of the dead and have a Bigg Boss season just for dead people? Instead of an eviction every week, you could have an exorcism. And ya, as a wild card, we could still have Kamal R Khan in there. If the spirits are as snobbish as some of the current BB participants, they’ll probably just look straight through him.
Remember my recent post about how cops in Delhi argued over jurisdiction while a woman was being gang-raped? How do you satirize something like that? Here’s one way: You have a man walk into a police station and confess to murdering his wife—only to be turned away by the police, and directed to go to another police station, because the scene of the crime does not come under their jurisdiction.
Wait—is that too unbelievable?
You know what I’m getting at. It really happened.
Posted by Amit Varma on 11 October, 2009 in
India |
News |
WTF
Reuters has a story on how a zoo in Gaza painted black stripes on a couple of white donkeys and passed them off as zebras. The kids who came to the zoo were reportedly delighted. The other donkeys no doubt went WTF.
And the thought that struck me as I read this news: What a delightful metaphor for media hype.
No?
(Picture courtesy Reuters.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 09 October, 2009 in
Journalism |
Media |
News |
Small thoughts |
WTF
HT reports that the I&B ministry has just given the go-ahead to the producers of a film called The Indian Summer to shoot in India. However, after going through the script, it wants four scenes deleted from the film—these show “a kiss between Nehru and Edwina; a dancing scene; one where Nehru says ‘I Love You’; and a scene showing them in bed.”
Normally, when two people have an affair, there is kissing, there are confessions of love (or lust), and there is carnal action. I don’t see the point of pussyfooting around all this—an affair without these would not be an affair, so why should a film about an affair have to avoid these?
The government also insists that the film carry a disclaimer that it is a work of fiction. Why not keep those scenes then?
The ministry says it is doing this because it doesn’t want anyone to “show Nehru in a poor light.” That is bizarre: I don’t think his alleged affair with Edwina shows him in a poor light—the guy was human, after all. (Most Indian men would probably think more highly of him because he scored with a white chick, but leave that aside.)
And even if it did show Nehru in a poor light, so what?
Anyway, as revenge on the Indian government for this preemptive censorship, I suggest that the producers get Salman Khan to play Nehru, and have him sing a Himesh song as Edwina runs around a tree. That will show them.
*
And for what I think of the I&B ministry, see point 3 of this old wishlist of mine.
Posted by Amit Varma on 02 October, 2009 in
Arts and entertainment |
Freedom |
India |
News |
Politics |
WTF
Oh boy, this Supreme Court judgment, excerpted on his blog by Imam Wapsoro, is masterful. Presenting Phul Singh vs State of Haryana, AIR 1980 SC 249:
A philanderer of 22, appellant Phul Singh, overpowered by sex stress in excess, hoisted himself into his cousin’s house next door, and in broad day-light, overpowered the temptingly lonely prosecutrix of twenty four, Pushpa, raped her in hurried heat and made an urgent exit having fulfilled his erotic sortie.
[...]
A hyper-sexed homo sapiens cannot be habilitated by humiliating or harsh treatment, but that is precisely the perversion of unreformed Jail Justice which some criminologists have described as the crime of punishment.
It may be marginally extenuatory to mention that modern Indian conditions are drifting into societal permissiveness on the carnal front promoting proneness to pornos in life, what with libidinous ‘brahmacharis’, womanising public men, lascivious dating and mating by unwed students, sex explosion in celluloid and book stalls and corrupt morals reaching a new ‘high’ in high places. The unconvicted deviants in society are demoralisingly large and the State has, as yet, no convincing national policy on female flesh and sex sanity. We hope, at this belated hour, the Central Government will defend Indian Womanhood by stamping out voluptuous meat markets by merciless criminal action.
The gentleman who wrote this is Justice Krishna Iyer. One can only assume that he proposed to his wife in some other language. Or maybe he spoke like this, and she went, Enough, enough, I’ll marry you, but please don’t go on and on in English. You libidinous brahmachari, you!
*
The larger issue here is why Justice Iyer waxed so purplacious. I blame colonialism. Even after the Brits left, English remained a marker of class in India. The better your English, the more highly you were regarded (even by yourself). This led to a tendency of showing off how fluent you were in the language, and from there, to this kind of overkill. For Justice Iyer, the language he used was as much a signal as a tool: It signalled his sophistication and his class. Or so the poor fellow thought.
I believe this is also partly responsible for why style overwhelms content in so much Indian writing in English. As kids, we’re too used to parents and teachers and peers telling us, Wow, this is so well-written, your English is so good. (As opposed to Wow, your narrative was compelling, I lost myself in the story, I couldn’t put it down.) So they end up giving more importance to the language they use rather than the narrative they’re building, while the former should really be slave to the latter. Pity.
And we also see this a lot in our local trains. Two random people will be arguing over something, and then one of them will break into bad English, as if to say, I"m superior to you, I know English. You lout! And then the other guy will say something to the effect of Hey, I know English too. Only you can speak or what? Bastard! And so on.
I’d like to see Justice Iyer get into one those local train fights, actually…
Posted by Amit Varma on 01 October, 2009 in
Arts and entertainment |
India |
Old memes |
Purplocity/Verniness |
Small thoughts |
WTF
I’ve often made the point that parenthood is a massive responsibility, and way too many people become parents before they’re ready for it. Well, here are a few things that validate that belief:
Exhibit one: A Shiv Sainik named Kailash Patil had named his kids Uddhav and Raj after the now-warring Thackerays. Well, Patil is now pissed at the party because they denied a ticket to the candidate he supported. So is is renaming his son Uddhav to Anand. Who knows, if he later ends up in the Congress, he might change Anand’s name to Rahul. Imagine what all this does to the poor kid.
Exhibit two: An Australian baby of Indian origin gets eczema. Her dad, Thomas Sam, happens to be “a college lecturer in homoeopathy.” No doubt driven by hubris and dogma, he insists on treating her with homeopathy alone. Her condition becomes worse, and turns into a “severe skin disorder.” Her father refuses to change course. The girl dies. The parents are arrested—and I recommend that instead of getting a lawyer for themselves, they take Phos1M or Arsenic Iod. Anyway, what’s the point of my sarcasm now? The kid is dead.
Exhibit three: I’ve blogged about this before, but today was the first episode of Pati, Patni aur Woh, so I was reminded of it. What kind of parents would rent their babies out to a television channel? How can they live with themselves after doing that? What will their kids feel about it when they grow older? I’m baffled. Normally I’m a sucker for reality shows—but this one’s just a bit too bizarre.
And now I will reread Philip Larkin’s wonderful “This Be The Verse.”
Update: Whoops, sorry, I forgot to mention that the link to exhibit two was via email from Gaurav.
Posted by Amit Varma on 28 September, 2009 in
Arts and entertainment |
Miscellaneous |
News |
Politics |
WTF
I’m actually okay with that—if you want to attract good people to join the army and defend the country, one of the few functions of a government that I consider legitimate, then you should give them their perks. But what is WTF about this whole thing is that the army claimed it had spent this money on “silent reconnaissance vehicles for missions beyond enemy lines.”
I can totally imagine a Pakistani military convoy cruising outside Islamabad and suddenly coming across a golf buggy with an Indian general in it. They stop it immediately, and the Pak commanding officer asks the Indian, ‘WTF are you doing here?’ And the reply comes:
‘Have you seen the 18th hole? I think I’ve lost my way.’
(Link via email from Anand Bala. For more posts on taxes, click here.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 24 September, 2009 in
India |
News |
Old memes |
Taxes |
WTF
One more priceless case in the annals of taking offence. BBC reports that Nigeria’s government “is asking cinemas to stop showing a science fiction film, District Nine, that it says denigrates the country’s image.” Apparently the Nigerian ganglord in the film has the same surname as a former Nigerian president—Obasanjo—among other sins. Their information minister, Dora Akunyili, has been quoted as saying:
We feel very bad about this because the film clearly denigrated Nigeria’s image by portraying us as if we are cannibals, we are criminals.
The name [of] our former president was clearly spelt out as the head of the criminal gang and our ladies shown like prostitutes sleeping with extra-terrestrial beings.
Imagine the misunderstandings that this could lead to. For example, a Nigerian lady could be walking home from the supermarket when an alien steps in front of her. ‘Excuse me,’ says the Nigerian lady, ‘please let me pass.’
‘No,’ says the alien. ‘I am horny. First we will copulate.’
The Nigerian lady gasps. ‘Oh, how dare you? I am not that kind of woman.’
‘Gimme a break,’ says the alien. ‘I’ve watched District Nine. I know the truth. All Nigerian women sleep with aliens.’
Yes, yes, I know that’s a bit far-fetched. But I didn’t start it!
(Link via @nilanjanaroy.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 20 September, 2009 in
Arts and entertainment |
Dialogue |
Freedom |
News |
WTF
While on the subject of treating people like cattle, CNN-IBN reports:
Veteran Tamil Actor Manorama says that couples should be made to take potency tests before getting married.
Manorama says it should be made compulsory for both men and women to produce medical certificates before getting married and in the case of the groom the certificate should prove that he is sexually potent.
“There should be a certification that he is potent and he doesn’t have HIV. In case of women… she is a woman and she’s fertile and does not have AIDS. And if the doctor gives a fake certificate, then he should be jailed,” said Manorama.
If two people choose to get married, it is surely a business of those two alone, and not of the state—or of Manorama. People get married for various reasons, including companionship, and a couple may choose to hitch up even if the guy isn’t potent or the girl isn’t fertile. So what? That’s their business alone, as long as they’re honest with each other.
And in any case, how is a doctor supposed to ascertain that a guy is potent? Will an issue of Playboy do the trick? What if images don’t do it for him? What if self-consciousness about getting aroused prevents him from getting aroused? Procedural problems abound—as anyone who’s ever been an awkward young man could tell you!
(Link via email from Meera.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 19 September, 2009 in
Freedom |
News |
WTF
I was on Times Now yesterday defending Shashi Tharoor in this ridiculous Twitter controversy, going over pretty much the same points I’d made in my post, “A Cattle-Class Country?” The videos of that debate are embedded below the fold. I didn’t get too many chances to speak, but that’s okay, because Tom Vadakkan, the Congress spokesman, did—and he was hilarious. Check out this bit, which comes in the third video clip below:
Let me tell you something: I did a little research after you phoned me, to find out what is the basic cause for this tweet business. Some of the survey reports that I received was Tweet is a very lonely man, and he needs counselling.
There was much else that was WTF about the discussion, and I leave you to discover the rest of that for yourself! (Videos below the fold.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 18 September, 2009 in
Freedom |
India |
Politics |
WTF
A few moments ago, this is what a section of the ToI homepage looked like:
For a moment, I almost thought “Lenovo G550 Notebook” was a ToI headline—sure, it does say “ads by Google” below, but that’s small and you see it later. The font and the bullet point make it seem like it’s just another of the top stories on the site. Such it goes.
*
And in case you’re wondering what Ayesha Takia has lashed out at Baba Ramdev for, well, the dude apparently said that all actors were “characterless”. Some actors complain about that themselves when they’re not getting any roles, but that’s not what the good Baba meant. Ah, well, whaddya expect?
Posted by Amit Varma on 18 September, 2009 in
Arts and entertainment |
India |
Journalism |
Media |
News |
WTF
This is a bizarre controversy. A couple of days ago, in response to a question about whether he would be travelling economy class, Shashi Tharoor tweeted:
… absolutely, in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!
It’s always nice to see a minister be light-hearted. Sadly, his party isn’t. He’s been rapped on the knuckles for this act, and the party spokesman, Jayanti Natarajan, said:
We totally condemn it (Tharoor’s comments). The statement is not in sync with our political culture. His remarks are not acceptable given the sensitivity of all Indians.
Certainly the party does not endorse it. It is absolutely insensitive. We find it unacceptable and totally insensitive.
We do not approve of this articulation. Thousands of people travel in economy class.
Firstly, the lady desperately needs a thesaurus. She is being insensitive to her readers/listeners by going on and on about ‘sensivity’ and how ‘insensitive’ it all is. Once was enough, no?
Secondly, her party needs a dictionary. The term ‘cattle class’ has not been coined by Tharoor, but is a commonly used term for economy class. If it is derogatory to anyone, it is to the airlines that give their customers so little space, and not to the customers themselves. So whose sensitivity are we talking about here? Air India and Jet?
I’m a bit bemused, actually, by what the Congress is up to these days. An austerity drive means nothing when the government continues wasting our taxes on the scale it is. And berating someone for using the term ‘cattle class’ is needlessly sanctimonious when, after six decades of mostly Congress governance, we have hundreds of millions of people who cannot afford the basic necessities of life. Hell, most people in this country live cattle-class. And here we have the Congress strutting around and talking the talk.
Oh, and showing rare unity in WTFness, the BJP’s also condemned Tharoor’s tweet. Is there not one political party in this country that understands English and can take a joke?
*
On another note, Times Now has asked me to appear on their show, “Newshour”, to chat about this topic. It’s supposed to be tonight, and while the show runs from 9pm to 10pm, I’m told this segment starts at 9.30. They said it’s titled “A Tweet Too Far”, and if they imply that Tharoor should not be tweeting, I will defend him with as much gusto as I can manage. We all ask for transparency in government, and here you have a minister who’s actually in direct contact with so many of his countrymen, and everyone’s getting all het up. If I was in the Congress, I’d recognise this as a good thing, and encourage more of my ministers to go online. Anyway, such it goes.
(Previous posts on cows: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 , 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 17 September, 2009 in
India |
News |
Old memes |
Cows |
Personal |
Politics |
Small thoughts |
WTF
It’s a tabloid dream, this one. A taxi driver in Mumbai was caught doing zabardasti with a bitch, and duly arrested. In the masterful clip below, a Mid Day reporter asks a bemused policeman the details of the case. Her theory—he must have been missing his wife. Immensely WTF, all of it:
And here’s another clip where the lady who chased and caught the alleged rapist enthusiastically gives details of what she witnessed. Note the dog barking in the background.
And here’s a Punjab Kesari report of it, in which the policeman with the culprit seems to be doing strange things to his nostril. Or is he thinking of the dude who once had section 377 slapped on him because he copulated with a buffalo’s nostril?
(Links via email from Sanjeev Naik.)
*
On a more serious note, the question here, of whether the guy’s act should be a crime, depends on what rights you’re willing to grant a dog. (And how you ascertain its volition, for that matter.) There’s this famous ethics thought experiment where a guy buys a live chicken, takes it home, copulates with it, and then kills it, cleans it and eats it. Sure, it’s yucky—but is it immoral? If killing the chicken and eating it is acceptable, you have already stripped the chicken of any rights—so why should that other thing matter?
One easy answer in this case is that if the dog in question belonged to someone else, then the rapist was infringing on that person’s property rights. But what if the dog had belonged to the rapist? Building the grounds for prosecuting him would then lead us into pretty thorny philosophical terrain.
I don’t think Mid Day would be too concerned about that, though. The dude was missing his wife, and that’s that.
*
Update: I just came across this fine quote by Charles de Gaulle: “The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.”
Posted by Amit Varma on 17 September, 2009 in
India |
News |
Small thoughts |
WTF
The Telegraph tells us about two-headed snakes:
Such animals are often caught and preserved as lucky tokens but have very little chance of surviving in the wild anyway, especially as the heads have a tendency to attack each other.
And I straightaway thought of the BJP.
*
On another note, Mumbai Mirror tells us that Sonia Gandhi recently inaugurated a Congress office in Mumbai that is “neither legal nor austere.” It’s been named Rajiv Gandhi Bhavan.
(Snake link, in another context, via email from Aadisht.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 15 September, 2009 in
India |
News |
Politics |
WTF
That, at least, seems to be the implication of the BJP’s recent behaviour in Jaipur. Apparently, a minister attended a “beer-promotion party”, and the ‘BJP Women Front’ protested. Their president was quoted as saying:
This is a shame for the minister who being a lady and holding portfolio of woman and child development attended the beer promotion party.
This reflects why the BJP is losing support everywhere. The constituency of anti-beer people isn’t very big, and most people reading this news will surely go ‘WTF?’ Sure, many women have problems with alcoholic husbands, but a beer promotion bash at what was reportedly a “posh hotel” has nothing to do with that. If the BJP Women Front wants to take up issues that matter to women, surely there are a hazaar other things at the grassroots they could focus on.
*
On a broader note, much politics in India is, unfortunately, the politics of resentment. All identity politics is based on this—‘the other castes or communities have gotten ahead, vote for me, I’ll look after our interests.’ So is the communal politics the BJP exploits—there are, sadly, enough Hindus in India who resent Muslims for the BJP to have a vote bank there. And moral policing—if you’re not getting much action, you’ll resent anyone who is, and moral policing plays nicely to that constituency.
But beer? Who resents beer or beer drinkers?
Posted by Amit Varma on 14 September, 2009 in
India |
News |
Politics |
WTF
After I tweeted earlier today about Baba Ramdev being invited to take part in Bigg Boss, my friend Anand Ramachandran asked me to check out his (Ramdev’s, not Anand’s) instructional video on Yogic Jogging on YouTube. Anand and I raided Landmark after that—their big annual sale is on—and over coffee, he described it in some detail for me. ‘No way, man,’ I dismissed him, ‘you’re exaggerating.’
He was understating.
I now urge you to watch Baba Ramdev teach Yogic Jogging:
The shots of the crowd doing Yogic Jogging in the middle are marvellously WTF. And look at the Baba himself—especially when he’s doing those high kicks and his dress is riding up. He’s already barechested—and hell, isn’t that a family audience out there?
This is the same guy, by the way, who claims to be able to “cure” homosexuality. I wonder if doing PT is part of the treatment.
*
And imagine if Baba Ramdev starts teaching Yogic Jogging on Bigg Boss. I’m hoping he does end up as part of the show, and that they manage to get the likes of Sherlyn Chopra and (even better!) Mallika Sherawat on there as well. It sure would be fun to watch them, um, stay fit.
*
Update: Via Nitya Pillai, here’s Baba Ramdev on how homosexuality is a disease. He sure can work a crowd—and his opposition in the debate in this particular clip is rather inept. It makes the blood boil, listening to this dude…
This is pretty bizarre. Reuters reports:
South Africa reacted angrily on Friday to a report that tests on its world champion runner Caster Semenya had found she was a hermaphrodite, threatening a “third world war” over the affair.
Athletics’ governing body declined to confirm the report in Australia’s Daily Telegraph newspaper, which said the 18-year-old runner had both male and female sexual characteristics.
The IAAF said medical experts were examining the results of gender tests on Semenya, who won the women’s 800 metres at last month’s World Championships in Berlin. No decision would be taken until late November.
“I think it would be the third world war. We will go to the highest levels in contesting such a decision. I think it would be totally unfair and totally unjust,” said Sports Minister Makhenkesi Stofile.
That’s totally the wrong choice of words, and I bet the Taliban dudes are scratching their heads wondering who this new player in the game is. ‘We fight the West for so long,’ I can imagine Wali-ur-Rehman telling Hakimullah Mehsud, ‘and South Africa is in the news for threatening the third world war. WTF?’
‘I know what we can do,’ says Hakimullah Mehsud. ‘Let’s turn you into a woman, and when those filthy Americans question your gender, we’ll also declare a third world war. He he he.’
‘You insult me, fool,’ roars Wali-ur-Rehman, ‘and for this you must die.’
You know the rest.
*
No, but really, the issue at the heart of this is quite complex. Reportedly, “tests had found Semenya had no womb or ovaries, but that she had internal testes, the male sexual organs which produce testosterone, and her levels of the hormone were three times that of a ‘normal’ female.” This led Pierre Weiss, the secretary-general of the International Association of Athletics Federations, to say:
It is clear that she is a woman but maybe not 100 percent.
This brings up the thorny philosophical question of what makes a woman a woman. Do you have to have a womb? Is there a level of testosterone you cannot go over? Do men have to find you inexplicable? What is the meaning of a conclusion that someone is “maybe not 100 percent” as a woman? What’s the pass percentage?
And ya, sure, these peculiarities do give Semenya an advantage over fellow athletes—but there is no level playing field in sports anyway. Top sportspeople are often physically abnormal in some way or the other: Lance Armstrong’s heart is one-third larger than normal, for example, and his his aerobic capacity is twice that of a normal human. So is he more than 100 percent man, and therefore at an unfair advantage? If you start barring sportspeople for biological advantages they are born with, you’d cut down on a lot of the excellence and thrill of sport.
Anyway, I don’t care one way or another about the Semenya controversy. As long as Barack Obama doesn’t shift his troops from Afghanistan to South Africa, I’m okay.
(Link via email from Luv.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 12 September, 2009 in
News |
Politics |
Small thoughts |
Sport |
WTF
You can’t make this shit up. Mumbai Mirror reports that the superintendent of Customs Intelligence has been scammed by a Nigerian scamster, and has “lost Rs 7.5 lakh to the racket that had declared him the winner of $1 million through a ‘lucky dip’ contest, which was organised by a certain Orange Communications Pvt Ltd.” The report adds:
The customs officer - whom we can’t name because he still hasn’t made an official statement - has now asked the police for a few more days before he believes that he has actually been cheated.
“He asks, ‘how can such a well-drafted email with the logo of Orange Communications be fake?’ He believes Orange Communications is the parent company of Vodafone, and since he has a Vodafone number, he is a natural beneficiary,” an officer with the JJ Marg Police Station disclosed.
“He even argued that the mail has a logo of the renowned Natwest Bank.”
My theory—he’s incredulous that an entity other than the government could possibly rob people on such a scale. The nerve!
Posted by Amit Varma on 11 September, 2009 in
India |
News |
WTF
Early humans may have taken a detour into Eurasia before embarking on their epic journey out of Africa, according to new fossil evidence.
Palaeontologists in Georgia have unearthed remains of five primitive humans that date back to 1.8m years ago, suggesting some of our oldest ancestors lived in the region at the time.
Squatting on his haunches, dhoti-clad and bare-chested, Mahendra Singh Tikait declares: “We live by a moral code where honour has to be protected at any cost.’’
As the chaudhary of the Baliyan khap, the 79-year-old farmer’s views matter. He presides over a system of justice that is almost medieval and disdains the laws of the Indian state.
Tikait’s moral code is simple. In his own words: [...] “Love marriages are dirty, I don’t even want to repeat the word… Only whores can choose their partners.”
To think this guy was once a politician with significant clout. Such it goes.
Posted by Amit Varma on 10 September, 2009 in
India |
News |
Politics |
WTF
Australian authorities said two girls lost in a drainage well system used their phones to update their Facebook statuses instead of calling police.
Friends who saw their status updates then called the cops, who rescued the girls. An emergency services spokesman quoted in the piece is pissed because he thinks the girls should have called the cops first, and then done whatever else they wanted. He should realise that the girls were probably busy. Having posted their status updates, they were surely busy taking pictures for their wall. Priorities, you know?
(Link via Prem.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 10 September, 2009 in
Miscellaneous |
WTF
I tweeted a couple of hours ago about the bizarrely headlined feature on Sherlyn Chopra (“Have Breasts, Will Talk”), but the most WTF thing about the article wasn’t any of the priceless quotes from Sherlyn, or the report’s inept attempts at eloquence, but the para at the end:
While it’s clear that the Internet is the way of the future, she has entered into an exclusive agreement with Times Internet Limited. Under this agreement exclusive mobile rights of all her mobile content lie with Times Internet Limited, specifically to be provisioned by Indiatimes 58888, on SMS, WAP, Voice and all operator platforms. “It’s a great honour! With most actresses shedding their inhibitions, there is a lot of competition on the internet. And I love it. It compels me to redefine excellence,” she says. You can follow more about Sherlyn. Get her mobile downloads, for example, send messages or listen to her thoughts, straight from her. Just call 58888799 or SMS SHERLYN to 58888. Call rates are Rs 7 per minute and SMS rates are up to Rs 3 per message.
This is ostensibly a feature article, mind you. So much for the wall between editorial and business.
Nevertheless, isn’t it delicious how they snuck that quote in the middle? Sherlyn has my best wishes for redefining excellence in the context she mentions.
Posted by Amit Varma on 10 September, 2009 in
Arts and entertainment |
Journalism |
Media |
WTF
On a Rs 42 crore mansion, on “a sprawling 1,00,000 sq ft area”, for Mayawati.
Mayawati’s latest mansion is to be seen to be believed. With 18-ft high stone walls and matching copper and brass gates, it looks more like a fortress on Mall Avenue, the most prized address in Lucknow. With every second house here having been taken over directly or indirectly by Mayawati—be it in the name of the Bahujan Trust or the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) office—her detractors, including Mulayam Yadav, have taken to calling the street ‘Maya Avenue’.
The chateau-like bungalow betrays Mayawati’s weakness for pink Dholpur stone and expensive granite.
‘Maya Avenue’ is a suitable name in more ways than one. The nugget I found most delicious in the report was that to make room for her bungalow, “Behenji ordered that the Sugarcane Commissioner’s office shift out from next door.” A sugarcane commissioner? Why the fug do we need a sugarcane commissioner anyway?
Mayawati has featured in the Where Your Taxes Go series before, here and here. I’m no longer surprised at the scale of her excesses, though. The way our political system is structured, it is entirely rational to enjoy the spoils of power after you get to such a post. We elect governments not to serve us, but to rule us. As long as that is so, our rulers will take full advantage.
(Link via email from Noor. For more on how our government loots us, click here.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 07 September, 2009 in
India |
News |
Old memes |
Taxes |
Politics |
WTF
The state of Texas requires a report on all the reports produced by its own agencies – all 1,600 of them – not forgetting the one by the chief inspector of tomatoes.
It’s quite a magnificent report, and I particularly love the last line:
The Required Reports Prepared by State Agencies and Institutions of Higher Education is not itself listed in the Required Reports Prepared by State Agencies and Institutions of Higher Education.
Bureaucracy at its most revealing. I can just imagine the conversation between the head boffin and his minion boffin.
Head Boffin: Minion, have you prepared your report on why our bureaucracy is such a lumbering, ancient beast?
Minion Boffin: Yes, Mr Head. It seems that we waste too many resources into producing unnecessary reports.
Head Boffin: Hmm. There is only way to sort this out. Do a report on the reports.
Minion Boffin: Yes, sir. And if that doesn’t solve the problem?
Head Boffin: Well, then we’ll just have to do a report on that.
Such it goes.
(Link via email from Udhay.)
Shocked by the sudden and tragic end of their leader, 14 people died in different parts of Andhra Pradesh on Thursday. Six people died in East Godavari, five in Chittoor, while another YSR fan got a cardiac arrest in Vishakhapatnam. Two others died in Vizianagaram and Srikakulam.
[...]
A farmer from Kadapa, Narsaiah (75), who came to Piler on personal work along with his wife and children two days ago, died of cardiac arrest after hearing the tragic news. In Durgasamudram, Shankaramma (37), a daily wage labourer, who recently underwent a heart surgery under Arogyasri, died at around 6 pm.
A degree student, Laxminarayana (19), studying in Chittoor Government Degree College, consumed pesticide. “My son could not take the sad news and resorted to the extreme step,’’ his weeping mother C Lakshmamma said.
Quite bizarre. YSR was no MGR that people would kill himself over his death. It’s quite possible that many of these deaths, if not all, randomly happened around that time, and YSR’s people are building this narrative around them to embellish his legend. Why would a 19-year-old, with his whole life in front of him, kill himself because a political leader is dead? Fishy.
This could be the subject of a great farce. Imagine a novel that begins with the death of a political giant. His successors want to ensure that more people die on hearing this news than did for his predecessor. So they use the government machinery to set each district a target. Officials in those districts fan out looking for random deaths. Except in one thinly-populated district where everyone is in the pink of health. But the targets have to be met. So what to do?
Someday if I have the time…
*
On another note, the eulogizing of YSR feels a bit weird. Listen, he was a top political leader who rose from the grassroots. Given the political system in this country, there is no way he could be anything but a thuggish megalomaniac. (Check out this old article by Swaminathan Aiyar about YSR’s rise to power.) Still, that’s how it goes.
(Links via Gaurav and Atanu respectively.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 04 September, 2009 in
India |
News |
Politics |
WTF
The New York Times has a bizarre story up now titled ‘Facebook Exodus’. The story begins:
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Facebook, the online social grid, could not command loyalty forever. If you ask around, as I did, you’ll find quitters. One person shut down her account because she disliked how nosy it made her. Another thought the scene had turned desperate. A third feared stalkers. A fourth believed his privacy was compromised. A fifth disappeared without a word.
The exodus is not evident from the site’s overall numbers.
Well, if you ask around, you’ll find people who believe that Israel planned 9/11, or the earth is flat, or that Christianity began in India and was originally called Krishnaniti. Really, WTF is a phrase like “if you ask around” doing in serious journalism? At least the story is honest enough to tell us that “the exodus is not evident from the site’s overall numbers”—but if there’s no exodus, there should also be no story, no?
I suspect the story emerged out of this classic template of how many feature stories are born:
1] Editor asks in his weekly meeting for ideas for stories.
2] Enthu young journo offers an idea: Facebook exodus!
3] Editor is excited. He roars, Do it, do it, let’s burst the bubble of the biggest thing going on the net!
4] Journo gets to work, interviews her pals who have left Facebook, feels good about all this. She crafts a smartass opening line. Everything’s going well till she sees the numbers, which reveal that the premise behind the story is wrong. There’s no Facebook exodus.
5] But so what? She won’t let the facts come in the way of an otherwise perfectly good feature story. And the editor doesn’t care—he’s not going to rush around now looking for a replacement story for that slot.
6] So boom, the story comes out, rich in anecdotes, poor in data.
I’ve seen this play out so often in my career, it’s not funny. Most journalists approach their stories with a preconceived notion of how it will turn out, and after that it’s a matter of getting the facts to fit the narrative, and not the other way around. Such it goes.
(Link via email from Jitendra Vaidya.)
*
I certainly need to ditch Facebook, that’s for sure. Especially Scrabble. An extremely evil and immoral friend invited me to play a game a few days ago, and once hooked, I’ve played about 80 games since then with an 80% win record, and four Bingos in a row in the last game that I played. In all this time, work has suffered. I think I need to go cold turkey.
Or maybe I’ll just play one more before I stop…
*
Update: On another note, zzzzzzz.
When are India Today and Outlook going to do their next social networking cover stories, I wonder.
(Link via email from Sudarshan.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 03 September, 2009 in
Journalism |
Media |
Personal |
WTF
On bribing people to delay having kids.
This is wrong on three levels:
One, the premise that population growth is a problem is mistaken. Malthus is dead in more ways than one.
Two, such social engineering is unethical. What business does the government have influencing the personal choices of people in this manner?
Three, that’s our money being spent there.
Coming to think of it, this whole business is a bit perverse even from the government’s point of view. They’re spending taxpayers’ money to ensure that there are less taxpayers in the future. WTF?
(For more on how our taxes are misused, click here.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 18 August, 2009 in
Freedom |
India |
News |
Old memes |
Taxes |
WTF
India can’t get enough of Rakhi Sawant. After the swayamwar where she found herself a fiancee, she is now going to simulate being a parent on a reality show. Along with her man, Elesh Parujanwala, who was named by a Canadian Bong after his favourite fish, she is taking part in a show in which five celeb couples will spend time bringing up borrowed children on television. Check out this snippet from the news item:
Rakhi and the audience may be used to her infamous low-cut blouses, but obviously, the bachchas aren’t. And, as a source present at the launch of the programme told us, one baby couldn’t help but explore the territory! Embarrassing? You bet!
If the kid becomes a techie when he grows up, he’ll at least have prior work experience in silicon valley. And think of the TRPs of the show now, as millions of Indians tune in to live vicariously through a baby’s exploration.
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Ribald jokes apart, this is one reality show concept that I find appalling. Are the parents of these kids actually renting their babies out? Other reality shows feature adults being placed in situations of their own volition—but babies? How could someone do that?
Parenthood is a massive responsibility, and it’s irresponsible to become a parent if you can’t live up to that. I see too many parents around me who are simply not ready for that role, who have unfairly screwed with their kids by bringing them on the planet. This is a fine illustration of that.
(Link via Arnab’s Facebook status message.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 11 August, 2009 in
Arts and entertainment |
India |
Media |
News |
Small thoughts |
WTF
