Seven years....SEVEN YEARS

Just thinking about the author who spent seven years researching/writing what turned out to be a really bad book. Could anything be worse. Imagine what he could have done in all that time.
1. Adventure sports in New Zealand.
2. Marriage.
3. Divorce.
4. Landscaping his garden.
5. Writing a cookbook after seven years of research enjoyed by friends and family.
6. Being arrested and sentenced to 7 years after committing a non-heinous crime, like a Robin Hood robbery or some Greenpeace activity.
7. Worked for the Books page of a well-reputed publication - because as we all know, those who can't write, review.

Looking forward to this...

Oh, what a lovely war!

I just read two World War 2 books (The Collaborator and Night Soldiers) back-to-back and realized why I like them so much, apart from the fact that they are gloriously written: It was a time when we could see clearly between good and evil. 

The enemy had a face, not a mask. 

We knew who was fighting the good fight and who we had to rally behind. Love, Integrity, Justice, Brotherhood were words we understood and embraced; the opposite of them were so horrific only madmen like Stalin and Hitler could embrace its darkness while normal humans veered to the light.

 Now, there is so much darkness that we are all stumbling around, careening into each other. On one hand, heroes have turned villains, while villains try to outdo them at every turn. Other grey areas abound.

As we speak, there is a strike in the city I live in. When once my country's strikes were symbols of unity and fights against oppression, now they are vehicles where the lawless have a day of partying; young men feel powerful when otherwise they are helpless against a daily ritual of poverty slash ennui. They roam the streets burning tyres, shouting slogans gleefully and strong-arming shopkeepers who disagree with the idea of a strike that takes away their day's earnings. 

So the strike in 2012 means nothing more than fear, not unity, with businessess and ordinary citizens' lives shutting down for 12 hours.

The issue at stake was our highest judicial authority giving a ruling on sharing our river's waters with a neighbouring State. So with a strike, not only are we thumbing our noses at our highest judicial authority but we're also proving that the idea of “good neighbours” hasn't only been twisted on Desperate Housewives.

Found this on a news site today, a bit intense but the sentiment (except for the Kannadiga comment, some of my best friends are smart Kannadigas!) is spot-on:

“To the twits who think water rights are ENTIRELY owned by the region or territory where the river originates, please spend 10 mins on the Net and you will DISCOVER how the world handles it. By your incredibly stupid reasoning, China can completely deny the waters of the Brahmaputra to us - you all fine with that? Knowing the limited intelligence of the average Kannadiga, I wouldn't be surprised if you answered Yes cause you are not affected by the Brahmaputra and could care less about anything else other than 'what is in it for you' !”

The Drone life

Where are we? Beirut? East Berlin? The Gaza Strip? No, we are in a country that borders my own, where my brothers live. And are now dying. When will we say 'Enough'? http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gibson-drones-civilians-20121004,0,1147467.story. If you read this, read the comments below, too.

One tries to differentiate between the Governments of a country and its citizens, but sometimes that's difficult to do. All Pakis are terrorists, going by what white people seem to think. In that case, all white people must be rednecks.

Irrespective of who's who and what's what, I can't for a moment imagine not being able to step out of my house to buy groceries, or take my children to school, or go to work. Oh wait, I'm black. I don't do these things. I'm supposed to build a bomb in my garage, so the Great White Shark, sorry, Saviour from the West has no option but to send flying toys that pack quite a punch to annihilate me and my toddlers - who of course would have grown up to strap more bombs around their chests and kamikazi an embassy or whatever. What a mercy they were blown up themselves before they could achieve that grand ambition.

The scary thing is that American presidents now blatantly encourage murder, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, bin Laden. (Isn't that what terrorists were doing? How now do we tell the difference between anyone?)

Tomorrow, of course, an American Prez could issue a fatwa against Me. Bloody hell, tomorrow it could be You. I guess then we'll give a shit.

Really? Brahmin?

It's a bag company. Rather delicious ones, actually. But surely they could have come up with a better brand name? Casteist and provocative to the very same caste.
Ignorance is no excuse in a world waiting to trample on you the minute you open your mouth about, well, anything really. You want to make a film? Trample. You want to draw a cartoon? Trample. You want to write a book? Trample.
The real problem is that very few of us have lives so anything that can distract us is welcome. Or worse, we're just cretins.
Now let me get back to my crochet.

It's pretzeling ALL my buttons

You gotta hand it to OPI. Love the names in the German Collection Fall 2012:
Schnapps Out of It!
Danke-Shiny Red
Don't Pretzel My Buttons
-  (and my favourite) -
 Nein! Nein! Nein! OK Fine!

Reflected glory du jour

                                                   Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2012

One Horseman is right here

TLC's "What Not to Wear India" should be a lesson on why Western TV shows can never be successfully replicated in the subcontinent. We're just different animals.
Soha Ali Khan is great. She has the personality and the smarts, not to mention the good looks, to host something like this. Aki Narula, although flinging his hands about indiscriminately, is palpably sincere. So where have they gone wrong? The first client was enough for me to know instantly: It's in the people they've chosen to reinvent. The woman had only one thing to give her a passport to the show: A stunning absence of style. She also had a corresponding absence of a single accent, it being a mixture of Surat and the States. Apart from that, she was inarticulate, dull and never underwent the emotional transition that made Trinny and Susannah's chosen few such a hit.
There is also one other rather inexplicable element: The clothes Soha and Aki choose for the client are horrendous. I cringed every time she appeared in another tasteless, badly-tailored, cheap outfit. What the hell was going on. Especially as Soha herself was dressed beautifully. Then, of course, I got it.
This is India. We don't have anything like Topshop or Forever 21 or H&M. Yes, we have Zara and Aldo but what, that's it? And no one not associated with Bollywood can buy designer labels like Jimmy Choo and Vuitton. The rest of what's available to us, exemplified by the most downmarket malls it's been my misfortune to be surrounded by (in the south of India, admittedly Delhi's are good), is tacky in the extreme.
Which is why this programme is like hearing hooves thundering in the distance; it feels like it's being brought to our screens by one of the Horsemen destined to usher in the Apocalypse.
Like we needed any more.

Material Girl

When all the happiness on hand comes from material possessions, you know you've either discovered the meaning of life - what else but to enjoy worldly goods - or, as the great philosopher said, the abyss has finally decided to stare back. Whatever, I'm currently gloating over my new Zara black suede bag with gold accents, and black pumps from Debenhams.

It's all grey

I know we're almost as Americanised as our parents always foretold we would be (in the most sepulchral tones) but the latest ad on TV for 'Grey's Anatomy' is going one step too far.

Full disclosure: I loathe 'Grey's Anatomy'. The cast of doctors are the most unpleasant, self-obsessed, neurotic individuals I would never get my ill body close to. And they seem to be the same in real life. I don't know about you but I remember poor Isaiah Washington being fired from the show because he got into a fight on set with the gay-in-real-life actor whose name I don't recall but who always looked like he had just spied a pile of dung in the corner of the room. Anyway, poor Isaiah got canned because he yelled 'Faggot!' apparently. Oh boo-hoo. Dude should have just grown a pair and yelled back “Black!'. But no, American studios not only have to do the politically correct thing they have to be seen doing the politically correct thing. So out Isaiah went. But not before everyone from Patrick Dempsey to Katherine Heigl took sides against him, publicly naturellement.

Meredith Grey meanwhile never stopped whining. (You need to see Ellen Pompeo's 'Punk'd' episode to be fearful of your life if you ever done her wrong, btw.) Grey's so-called friendship with Yang is the kind of double-edged sword we would only want to emulate if we had a death wish. This is the role model for Indians in the workplace. 

The TV ad has a woman whining about her colleague, and best friend, being taken to Paris. 'Should I tell my boss her CV is fake?' she wonders, before delivering the punchline: 'What would Meredith do?' Then you have a guy whining about the work he has piled up on his desk on a Friday night while his boss gets to go home. Should he quit, he wonders. 'What would Meredith do?'

Sweet suffering Christ. With friends and employees like this we might as well go strand ourselves on a desert island with a pile of good books because the human species seems to be devolving rapidly. Jealous over a friend's good fortune to the extent that you would destroy her career? Complaining because you have to do what you're getting paid to do? What next? Taking cues from a TV show to chart your sorry life?

The Mayan prediction for December 2012 can't come soon enough. 

Of course the truth is we're already dead. We just don't know it.

Quote of the Week

Bangalore Police keep you on hold when you make an emergency call. When finally asked what the hell they mean by it, the immortal answer: “We aren't Vodofone to answer immediately. We're very busy.'

Best Book Title of the Week