WTF?

Last Jan we went on the famed IEEE Trip to Bangalore, Mysore Ooty and Calicut. Many funny incidents occured, famous among them "The incident of the magic pants", the "Haraami Bengali comment" and AG's immortal "My ambition in life is to be a telephone operator in a Mysore Hotel" story. One of these incidents had me wondering, WTF?

We were going to Calicut from Ooty in a bus meant for kindergarten students and we stopped at a place to have breakfast. It was a small truck stop where you could be confident of getting idlis and wadas and stuff.

So we occupy a table and I am told that only masala dosa is available. So we call the waiter and I rattle off the order in Tamil. After listening to the entire order, the guy tells me in hindi that he doesn't understand Tamil. At this point, AG tells me she doesn't want a masala dosa because she doesn't trust the potatoes in Ooty or something and so I tell the guy in Hindi, instead of one of the masala dosas, please bring a saadha dosa.

The guy stiffens, looks me square in the face and solemnly tells me, " the cook does not know how to make saadha dosa. Only masala dosa is available".................WTF?

Later on after we finish laughing and eating, the guy looks at me, laughs and tells me in Tamil, "the bill is 109 rupees". Once again .................. WTF?

True Democracy?

I cannot fathom the reason behind the amount of media attention given to the emergency in Pakistan. Pakistan was never a truly democratic state to begin with and the emergency imposed by Pervez Musharraf does not come as a great surprise. But inspite of this glaring fact, the Indian media seems to be taken up with this event.

Is this a clever political tactic to divert our attention from the situation in Nandigram, a village in the world's largest democracy? I saw no evidence of Lincoln's principles in Nandigram when scenes from the village were broadcast last night. It appears that CPI cadres have taken over the area with the tacit approval of the police and are holding the villagers hostage.

The news channels seem to have nothing better to do than station reporters in front of theatres across Mumbai and Delhi and ask people which movie is better, Om Shanti Om or Saawaria.

Words like freedom of choice and such are regularly bandied about by our esteemed Prime Minister, but inspite of having the third largest standing army in the world at his disposal, Mr. Singh seems to be powerless to stop this situation. Why this hypocrisy? I am sure if the BJP was responsible for the problems in Nandigram, the Congress would stop at nothing to hunt them down. However Mr. Singh has taken a liking to 7, Racecourse Road, and would go to any extent to humour his allies.

While scenes from the area are broadcast for the entire nation to see, Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya comes on camera, trying to downplay the incident and has the audacity to say no one in the area in under duress. We believe you sir.

While we can all rejoice the fact that another diwali has gone with several of us getting new cell-phones and cars for the festive season, some of our fellow countrymen are still fighting the battle which was supposedly over in 1947. Is this what all our heroes died for?

Mission Submission

Submissions are getting more and more irritating with each passing semester and this sem is the toughest yet. I had, at the beginning of last week 59 assignments pending and was in for a bad time. Glad to announce that the rahu-kaalam is now over. I have only 3 more journals to submit and two of them are complete and i am completing the third as I blog.

In other news, I am the proud owner of a Honda Unicorn Sport. Pics to be uploaded soon......

Ciao.

Joginder Sharma

India's 20-20 World Cup hero. Man, does this guy look like a hostelite or what?

Hilarious Mythology

Every time I hear about something incredibly stupid in a soap or a movie, I start wondering where the script writers get these ideas. After several of these moments, I realized Indian mythology is a great source of inspiration. Some of these incidents are so hilarious, that were they not part of the great sanskriti and ethos of our land, people will be laughing their asses off.

There is the story of the fight between Krishna and Jambavan (King of the bears). The story says they fought continuously for twenty eight, that's right, twenty eight days when Jambavan somehow realized that Krishna is the incarnation of Vishnu and he will take birth again as Rama. So he drops the whole thing and begs for forgiveness. Not only that, he also offers his daughter Jambavati's (no kidding, that's her name; imaginative right?) hand in marriage to Krishna who accepts it.

Now if I fight a guy for 28 minutes, leave alone 28 days, the only thing I will be thinking of offering him is a stick up his ass. I think if we had Jambavan instead of Gandhi, we would have been free in even lesser time. The British would never have been willing to rule such a moronic race of people right?

Another well known story is the incident where Arjuna has to fire 6 arrows through a spinning wheel while looking not at the target, but at its reflection. And surprise surprise, he succeeds. Anyone laughing at a Mithun or Rajnikanth flick now better brace your asses now.

Another one is the ultra filmy scene where the Pandavas return to their hut after Arjuna wins Draupadi. He calls out to Kunti and says "Hey mom look what I got!!!". Kunti shouts at him for disturbing her sleep and says," Whatever you got share it equally with your brothers". And now instead of running inside and telling her he won a girl, our hero decides that "Maa ke aagnya ka paalan karna humaara kartavya hai" and all five brothers marry her. Hilarious or what?

I can think of several more scenes but you get the idea right? The next time you see some cliched sequence on screen, don't blame the script writer, blame our treasure trove of epics and the amazingly cool sages who wrote them.

P.S. I wont be surprised if a bunch of guys from the BJP or VHP call for my head now. Though i suspect they will offer a significantly lesser amount for it than Karunanidhi's. In the range of 1000 Rs. maybe?????