Fool on the hill

I have been wondering about the Cosmopolitan magazine lately. They say it’s a girlie thing, but show me a man who doesn’t like sneaking into its lascivious world. We read the magazine covertly, and devour the girls over and over again, but never admit we like reading it. And nobody knows this better than the Cosmopolitan management. Here’s a sampler from the April issue of the UK edition (sadly the Indian one loses it totally). These are the screaming blurbs on the cover: 1) Real Couple: Sex swap (Four couples, one week, more positions that you can imagine) 2) Read his love signals 3) The sexual-health parasites who prey on your health 4) How normal are your breasts (The subtext reads: find out how yours measure up in Cosmo’s great boob comparathon) And they say the magazine’s only for “fun fearless females”. Beats me. The last article in question is really “grabalicious”. (Another post for words coined by the magazine sometime later, but you are free to contribute). The feature has 1...

One more on rock music lyrics. “Mishearing” of lyrics is perhaps as old as rock music itself. With lyrics tightly enmeshed in layers of high-decibel electric music, chances of getting them messed up are quite high. And embarrassing, too, at times. You might be ostracised at rock concerts if you sing She don’t mind, She don’t mind, She don’t mind, Cocaine . The Lynn Trusses of the rock world will cry sacrilege and dunk your head in a barrel full of Woodstock mud. JJ Cale, and later Eric Clapton, had sung this song as She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie, Cocaine . Why, I don’t know. The former interpretation makes more sense. Again, an American was humbled when he was told that the refrain in the Beatles song Across the Universe was Jai guru deva , and not John grew a K-mart . Poor John must have turned in his grave. So, don’t fret if you regularly mishear lyrics. You are not the only one. This website shows us how most of us mishear lyrics. It also allows you to relate the emba...

Let me please introduce myself I’m a man of wealth and taste And I laid traps for troubadours Who get killed before they reached Bombay These lines are from the legendary Rolling Stones song Sympathy for the Devil . Strange are the ways of rock lyricists. Sometimes utterly pedantic lines become cult, like Deep Purple's "Smoke on the water, fire in the sky". At times it is a tad more philosophical – “teenage wasteland” (from The Who’s song Baba o’ Reilly ) became a headbanging catchphrase some time in the seventies. Coming back to The Rolling Stones, the song Sympathy for the Devil seemed strong in its logic till it came to this line – the killing of troubadours before they reached Bombay. I can hardly recall any troubadour coming to India through the Gateway of India. Unless if it is on a metaphysical level. Troubadours are travelling musicians. Some defend the line saying troubadours refer to The Beatles. They became mystical in their song writing after coming to India, ...

The seemless world of Internet seems to be cracking up. The cult search engine Google , which has extended the meaning of the word “information”, is bowing to Chinese political censorship laws. Read this on CNN and here . Try this: Standard Google image search for “tiananmen” China Google image search for “tiananmen” However, if you spell Tiananmen wrong (Tiananmen/tienanmen…) you get the same results on both the Chinese and the standard Google search engines. So there. Also, what about reverse censorship? Think of Google Bihar under Nitish Kumar. Type “fodder” and you get Laloo mugshots galore!

Rang De Basanti is getting flak for the way its director has handled the second half of the film. The film at one point borders on the point of incredulity. Five young students gang up to kill the defence minister because one of their friends is killed in a MiG-21 crash. The film, however, is not about the killing as it is made out to be by “critics”. That is why the director just glosses over it, slips it behind the veneer of the so-called “willing suspension of disbelief”. Killing, at the end, becomes a metaphor. It could have been any simple act that becomes the harbinger of a change. It could be a single man standing in front of tanks on Tiananman Square or it could be the nameless faces involved in Chipko Andolan, facing giant electric hack-saws. As one reviewer puts it, the film is more about humanity than anything else. The film is, in fact, about the awakening of the characters, it’s about spring, and it’s about swathes of mustard field bursting into yellow. It’s about a new...

Bangalore was under a “terror” attack a few days ago. It had Rajdeep Sardesai standing for almost 4 hours. His channel insists on anchors standing while reading news, precariously holding a piece of paper. Godonly knows why. On NDTV, Vishnu Som was struggling with words and pushing them out before they melted in his mouth. A Reuters journalist wrote towards the end of his story: The gunman was suspected to have escaped from the leafy campus . As if the assailant would have waited for the cops to say, Bengaluru police! Freeze maari! A tired Rajdeep, the verbal pugilist, wanted to break for commercials (sit for a few seconds while his attendants spray water on his face and shove in a pipe of lemonade in his mouth?), but a producer kept him from doing that. A fumbling Rajdeep says, Wait guys, there’s more breaking news, my producer won’t let me go on a break. Great. And AajTak was just like a Laughter Challenge contestant had portrayed it to be: perennially trying to connect with its corr...

That was it, I thought. I had waited for three hours. And saw the sky change from ochre to deep orange to dark red. The last embers of the autumn evening were dying down. The cars and the buses had their lights on. People crowded the bus stop across the road, clambering on to already crowded buses. In a mad rush, the tin buses were darting around, scrambling for passengers. The entrance to the Park Street metro station was in a frenetic whirl. Mostly, people were entering the tube station to head back home. I was sitting on the steps of the Asiatic Society building, a prominent “meeting” place, smoking the last cigarette of the pack. Right across the Chowringhee lay the vast emptiness -- more conspicuous in the growing twilight -- the maidans, and the waste yard of the metro constructions. She had not come. Yes, she had not come to meet me. And now it was almost seven. There was a slight chill in the air. I was shivering. ********************************** The taxi lunged forward, cutt...

Another meeting, another place… That was Calcutta, not the distant Kolkata then. Walking down the Park Street on a steamy wet August...Moulin Rouge and The Park... the Oxford Bookstore... the discount basement. Chilled beer and beef steak at Olympia.. What now ? __ said, sipping Foster's. The finals were over. And a blank future ahead. Studies were that comfortable cocoon. I took the last piece of morsel in, and... Here I am, an old man in a dry month, Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain... __ hated impromptu espousals of poetry. It was indeed a rainy day in Calcutta. Late April. When all of a sudden the sky gets pregnant with rain clouds. And for days the humidity reaches astounding levels. Squelchy underfoot and the acrid odour of perspiration. __'s technicolour umbrella was the brightest spot in the whole of Park Street as the neons hadn't come on. We walked down in contemplation. We are going nowhere , she said, visibly miffed. I looked up at the sky – it was dark ...

Clouds play chiaroscuro with the hills, kids play hop scotch. Mist covers the valleys beneath, a thick white wall erases all. That was Darjeeling, a decade back. Daaju gets me a steaming hot cup of tea. Cha, shaab. I am huddling myself into a ball, hood tight on the head. The tea warms my insides. I light a cigarette. Dark clouds force the mall into frenetic activity. Quick last minute deals and ponies trotting back to their shelters. A girl, shivering in the cold, emerges from the mist and hurriedly enters the tea shack. She is in a red pullover and jeans. And asks for a cup of tea. I can see her companions across the road, buying woolens. Quite cold, I say. Yeah, and it’s going to rain, she says, looking at the ashen sky. You’re from Calcutta? Yes, and you? Calcutta. An uneasy pause follows. I think hard what to say next. I remember rainy days in Calcutta. Moss green walls. The Lake, full to its brim. And I remember my days in Ranchi. The small black hills and the lolling heath-like ...

damp desolate corners in decrepit rundown houses make me think of love… spurned

I don’t know what a tag means. But here I am, tagged by Marauder’s Map . I have to do what my tagger has asked me to. So, here goes: Seven things I plan to do: 1) Grow hair on my scalp. SOS Dr Sarkar of the Arnica-trioffer fame. 2) Be more articulate. 3) Have a proper English breakfast on a sunny Saturday morning 4) Play cricket with gay abandon, like I used to do many, many years back, and bowl toe-crushing inswinging yorkers. 5) A road trip down the Malabar coast, preferably from the northern tip of Goa to Trivandrum. 6) Time travel to the sixties and tour with The Beatles. 7) Flush and pee, and finish before the flush whirl ends. Seven things I can't do : 1) Grow hair on my scalp.. alas 2) Deal with things financial like investments and filing returns. 3) Put an end to the compulsive habit of zapping mercilessly, and then getting stuck at Fashion TV. (I really like the fine cut and the fall of the outfits) 4) Understand the Eric Segal phenomenon. 5) And the brouhaha over graphic...

It all started one day when Rituparno Ghosh asked Mrs Moon Moon Sen, the mother of all bong boudies, in that coy tone of his: “Moon Moon Di, toke shobai naeka keno bole re?” The goddess of voluptuous said: "Achha, Ritu, tui naeka’r definition ta bol to…" A snapshot from the Antarmahal floor: Act I Sc I: Love-making scene between Jackie Shroff and Soha Ali Khan Rituparno Ghosh (RG): Ei Jaaggu, shon! Tui na, laav-making’er scene ta ektu Rangeela’r moto kore dichis. Amra janish, oto overt hobo na! Eita art house cinema, toder Bollywood bioscope na. JS (Jackie Shroff): R se Ritu Da. Ch se cho**n dekhalei shudhu hobe? Ektu..Ch se chulkuni na hole ke hobe? (Aside: Na se Naeka ch**a, saala. Bombay te role pachhina bole ei Pa se panpenani sojhho korte hoche) RG: Ki shob je bolish. (blushes ruddy). Chhhi. (Bites his fingers) Jaai hok. RG: [Picks up the megaphone and simpers into it] Soha, tui shuye por. Jaaggu, tui or opor chor. Soha: Ritu Da, maa je bole pathiye chilo dummy diye kora...

Delhi grows on you. It is an acquired taste. Like whiskey or like seafood. I used to hate the sprawling metropolis like anything when I had begun my professional life there. But now I am in Bangalore; and there are times when I miss the earthiness, the unpredictability of the whore-city. The first sight itself in the morning as the train cut through the NCR suburbs was revolting. Banal station names that had no poetry. Like Shakur Basti or Buradi. Far from the tintinabulating Chinsurah or Dankuni. Walls splattered with the ubiquitous Dr Kothari peddling quack treatments for sexual dysfunctions. Or, just the brown scrubs that seemed to grow everywhere. They were so depressing. And then the heat, the ungainly jaats (whom I later came to admire, another acquired taste!) and the marauding blue-lines. But the city grew on me. The wide roads, the vast stretches of open land and the winters. Fog rolling down the Noida link road, over the Yamuna. The few days of rains were magical – roasted co...

Shoshti… The smell of new tailor-stitched jama ; running around in the pandal with a gang of friends, bursting rollcaps. Spending pocket money on cheap lozenges. Saptami… Adolescence. Cracked voice. Wearing the first pair of jeans. And North Star sneakers. Egg rolls and Gold Spot. Furtive glances at girls… Ashtami... Pandal-hopping (how I hate the word) with college crowd. Loud, risque jokes. Cigarettes. Yapping till the wee hours. Nabami… French leave. Pujas in philistine Delhi. Thakur dekha. Bhog khawa . Anjan at CR Park. Feel strangely youthful. A bottle of Old Monk and the close circle. Reminiscences. Dashami… Aashchey bochor abar hobe!

Ever bought air? Hollywood hottie and Welsh beauty Catherine Zeta Jones does. Read about it here . How about some bottles of early morning air collected from a Himalayan village, laced with dung smoke and the smell of dew-soaked ground?

It all started when the wily Harbhajan Singh hit a massive six that almost cleared the stadium. The ball could not be retrieved. The commentators – Mpumelelo Mbangwa and Arun Lal -- got some breather from Harbhajan’s adrenalin rush. Here’s the gem of a conversation: Arun Lal : Here comes the third umpire with his basket of old balls. Mbangwa : It will be difficult to replace such an old ball. They are already in tatters and, anyway, 80-over-old balls do not extract any “juice” from the track. Arun Lal : I wonder how they maintain 80-over-old balls. But these are red and I guess that’s okay. In a one-day scenario, it must be really difficult to replace a white ball. [The umpires decide on a ball] Mbangwa : This ball is in a really bad shape. [Has got quite a humping, is what he must have meant] Arun Lal : The new old ball, you mean! [Both laugh] Arun Lal : Coming back to the one-day scenario, I wonder how they find 45-over old balls. [The ball fixation is getting worse. Needs a shrink]....

After a whale of an Ashes, the India-Zimbabwe series seems no better that para/gali cricket. And even the commentators are feeling the effect of it. Watching in a post-lunch daze, I heard Sunil Gavaskar exclaim, “Well, that’s a plop ball!” Plop. How well it sums up the series. This is what happened. The voluble Harsha Bhogle and Sunny were jabbering inanities as a soporific session was on. Zaheer Khan bowled a bouncer which rose and then the trajectory wilted till the keeper caught the ball near his ankles. Here is the commentary excerpt: Sunny : Well, that’s a plop ball! Bhogle : Sunny, now what’s a plop ball? Sunny : You see, balls that don’t carry through. It loses steam and the trajectory dips. Maybe, it’s because the soft side of the ball grips the surface. Bhogle : (laughing) So, there must be a quack ball, a plock ball, a schlock ball…. [The inanities go on] Sunny : There is a curve ball, a speed ball, a zap ball… Bhogle : There you go! Another plop ball. (Both laugh) Sunny : An...

Learnt here and here that Kolkata now has a KFC and a Subway outlet. What’s more, the other weekend the Subway store ran out of sandwich breads. The article says: Having inaugurated the Subway outlet, US consul-general Henry V Jardine was happy to hear how Calcutta had taken to it. “It is a reflection of how dynamic, changing and cosmopolitan the city is today,” he said. I'm sure it’s for the good. But, are we losing our Waldorfs, Tangra, Flury’s, Shirazs and Amenias? And the neighbourhood roll stalls and phuchka wallas? Till date I’ve never had better biryani or better hakka chowmein outside of Kolkata. Au contraire, I had decent paturi/muittha only outside of Kolkata. Can anybody solve the paradox? Read India Uncut’s take on this here .

Just when I had thought all the punners had quit TOI and joined DNA, I was proved wrong. I almost hit bullseye when I had predicted on the eve of the Sania Mirza-Maria Sharapova US Open 4th round match that TOI was sure to carry the headline: Sania, yet so far . Next morning I was disappointed. The headline said something very tame. But I reconciled myself to the fact that the match ran late into the night and the chief punners might have left for the day. However, yesterday I was vindicated. The paper's esteemed supplement carried the headline: Sania, not so far . Inverting the legendary Outlook (?) headline: Sonia, yet so far . So, the punners are still there, alive and kicking the hell out of clichés. This reminds me of a wonderful post Tridib had written about how headlines reflected the tone of newspapers. The talking point was Bush winning the second term. Taking cue from the post , I am woolgathering on how some of the papers must have tackled the Sania-Maria clash. The Tim...

Fellow blogger J.A.P ., in a comment on a previous post, rekindled an old debate that’s very close to my heart. He said he could not wade through Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet . Neither could I. It would be wrong to state that I was a Rushdie fan. Actually, I used to be a Rushdie fanatic. But then, he fell by the way, and so did my love for him. What beggars belief is the slovenly denouement in the genius’ literary career. It somewhat reflects the climax of his magnum opus, Midnight’s Children , which shows the protagonist, Saleem Sinai, disintegrate – alluding to the fractious state of the Indian republic. Rushdie, too, disintegrates after completing the novel -- the death of the artist as a philanderer, a controversy-mongerer… Shame was so similar to Midnight’s Children that I didn’t bother to flip beyond page 5. The Moor’s Last Sigh was somewhat palatable. And the less said about The Ground Beneath Her Feet , the better. Fury was too convoluted, couldn’t finish even...