Ambiguity - an Indian's best friend

In a debate about actors, point out to an Indian that Rajinikanth is a pretty ordinary actor and for some reason, the conversation will invariably veer towards, "Oh, but he is the biggest star", or even worse, "But he's a very humble chap".  What the *#@&$ does him being humble have to do with him being a lousy actor?  We're not talking about his qualities as a human being, but Indians have a hard time sticking to topics where a subjective viewpoint is welcomed, but an objective argument is necessary.

Before selecting a course for study, Indian youngsters often end up asking elders for advice.  A few advanced souls have no problem asking the youngsters what s/he is interested in or has an aptitude or liking for.  The rest have no problem dishing out a bewildering array of opinions based on nothing but prejudice, but cloaking it with the invariable ambiguous twenty paisa wisdom that seems to come with age.  These idiots have no problem dishing out nonsense like  "Engineering will always have good scope".  God forbid if the kid asks "So why are you not an engineer?".  It will be considered rude.  The deeper question that begs to be asked is, "If you're not an engineer, how do you know so much about engineering?".  The answer that will likely soak up this challenge will be, "Listen to your elders.  Take some guidance!".  As if good intent always translates to good advice!

Only in India can we see traffic lights AND traffic police working in the same place at the same time.  What are we supposed to pay attention to?  On many ridiculous occasions, I have seen the traffic cop waving traffic onwards, even when the light has not changed!  This really is like us having to trust his judgment on the danger involved, over the unambiguous message from the red light.  No wonder our people use their own judgment when there is no traffic cop to create our much needed drug - confusion!  There has been an occasion when I went ahead and one speeding car trying to get through its green light right of way almost ran into me.  Ambiguity can kill.

In this connected world, we get all sorts of messages, and we Indians have not spared the airwaves with our propensity for rumours either.  We have no problem forwarding SMS messages and e mail messages that contain a lot of untruth, but are cloaked with that overwhelming aura of "doing good".  Case in point - the messages that came out warning people not to go out in the rain, for fear of getting irradiated in India from the leakage in Sendai, Japan!  Not even Tokyo had that sort of an alert, and it is a whole lot closer to Sendai than Chennai.  So, I turned around in an attempt to quell that rumour and questioned the sender where the information had come from.  "It is coming on BBC" was the reply.  I checked the BBC.  Nothing.  So I persisted, checked the internet for various news sources.  Nothing of this sort had ever been even mentioned.  Time to confront.  I asked this rumour artist where the heck this crap had come from.  Instead of an apology, I got, "Better to be careful, no?  What is wrong with that?"

The problem is we seek refuge in ambiguity that is often manufactured, but will take the victim a fair bit of stamina to question an expanding cosmos of confusion.  The Indian bets against your will to fight ambiguity.  This is a crime if it goes unchecked.  Look at the way our government evades questions about terrorism and why we were attacked recently again - "This is not an intelligence failure.  We are plugging all holes in the system, and we will soon get to the bottom of this."  This is the Indian way of saying, "We don't know", but making it sound like, "We will know soon".  But, we know how to make it benign enough by putting things in that sound like sincerity, good intent, competence, while in reality it stinks of incompetence, foolishness, and inability to comprehend.  End result - forgiven!

Assuming you're male here - ask an Indian who has occupied your seat in a train to vacate, and there is a very good chance s/he will try a few social contract loopholes to continue to occupy your seat because it is convenient.  First, the stupid question, "This is your seat, eh?".  Then the shameless, uncouth offering of an alternative usually follows.  (If you were willing to sit in any vacant seat, you'd travel unreserved, would you not?)  If you insist, you better do it nicely, so that the dignity of the crook is not violated.  You are entitled to say, "This is my seat, so get your ass out of it", of course!  But anything even remotely aggressive, like, "No thank you.  Could I have the seat I reserved for myself please?", will invite, especially if you're trying to kick out a fat female, some response, not even from her, but from one of her companions like "Sir, ladies".  This is supposed to mean a whole lot of things starting from, "She is a lady, so be nice to her" and extending to mean - "You're a male, and can travel tough.  She needs to sit comfortably in a seat of her choice".  What is ambiguous about a "reserved" ticket with a coach number and a seat number?  What is so hard to understand here?  OF course I'm entitled to my seat!

The biggest of all playgrounds for this is during a vehicle accident, where a clear mistake has been committed by a rather respectable looking Indian.  The invariable "mob" will almost always take the side of the "respectable looking" fool, rather than the less respectable and rightfully angry person who demands the fool first acknowledge his mistake.  The "mob" represents India accurately - taking the convenience of ambiguity, of assumption that the angry person is more likely to have caused the accident by impatience or speeding, even when all evidence is to the contrary.  What is even worse, the "respectable Indian" who drove like a fool won't make a single attempt to clear the air and accept that it was indeed his fault.  In many cases, the fool will not even know, because there is a great deal of ambiguity already in people's minds on how to drive!  The issue is no longer about who broke the rules, but about who seems more reasonable to "solve the problem".

There was one occasion when I was a youngster and had a bank account with a rather respectable Indian bank.  One day, I found an extra three hundred rupees in my account, and I was delighted that perhaps my father had put in some more money!  I withdrew it and spent some of it, immensely happy.  The next time I went into the bank, I was called in by the manager, and accused of overdrawing my account.  I showed him my passbook, which clearly had a credit entry of three hundred rupees and as far as all evidence went, I only withdrew the money I had in my account.  I was not even eligible for overdraft, so how could I have withdrawn anything extra?  This was my question.  I was a teenager then, and the manager was a robust fifty something I think.  He asked me how I could not tell my account had been accidentally credited.  I had no problem asking him how I would know the difference between an accidental credit and a real one, based on the entry THEY had made in my passbook.  He had no qualms about threatening me with some action he was going to take, instead of apologizing for their mistake and requesting me to help them out.  All of a sudden, I was guilty of something?  I told him he could take whatever action he wanted, but I knew he could do nothing.  End result - I hated how he was dragging me into his cesspool of inefficiency and ambiguously drawing me into "the mess" I had not created.  I never went to that bank again.  Screw ambiguity and screw the bums who use it to hide their inefficient asses behind.

For some reason, the biggest Indian crooks, the shenanigans who accept bribes, the pigs who pay them even to get perfectly legal work done, the bastards who evade taxes, all have no problem worshipping God.  Many even have pictures of gods in their workplace!  Could this be because they have an ambiguous relationship with God?  Could it be because they're guilty enough about the lives they lead in order to "invest" themselves in some sort of "good"?  Unfortunately, in India, we do not take religious symbols for exactly that!  We get them all mixed up with piety, cleanliness, devotion, humility and even purity!  Any surprise we catch godmen in pretty ungodly activities all the time?  Could it be because of our inability to get out of this morass of ambiguity?  Any surprise we would do our level best not to remove a completely illegal religious structure?  How come the religion has no problem violating our laws, but our laws have a real fear of violating religion by merely removing a structure?  Did I just hear "sentiments"?

Most "sentiments" are nothing but unwanted importance attached to a lot of ambiguous concepts like auspicious time, religion, superstitions, blind beliefs, and indeed India is a fertile breeding ground for stupid sentiments.  Ask Indians how numerology works only in English, and we will begin to kick down this wall of asinine ambiguity.

We Indians love nothing more than character assassination.  We do it with celebrities, public figures, politicians, sportspersons - virtually anybody that is well known or getting there, that we do not "like" or is getting a bit too famous!  It's a good thing we do not dig up too much dirt from our politicians' personal lives in election campaigns, and this is amazing indeed.  But it is not hard to find conversations revolving around which actor is having an affair with whom.  Pure gossip for fun?  Possible.  But confront one of these gossip mongers with "How do you know?", and out comes, what else - ambiguity!  "Come on!  All these movie guys are like that, okay?".  A sweeping ambiguous statement that cannot be conclusively argued against.

Push for something more serious, and go ahead, state that most gossip mongers map their own fantasies to other people they think have the opportunity to live them out, and a defence is bound to come out, "No, I don't want that life, thank you".  As if we're supposed to concede some ground to the rumour in order to not offend the rumour monger because we have now attacked the rumour monger's character!  Now, decency has to be quickly established beyond doubt.  And it will be, because there is no way we can prove anybody's fantasy!  Ambiguity has served its purpose - spreading the rumour is no longer the original crime!  Oh, in conclusion you may even hear the ambiguous, "Who cares about celebrities and their affairs anyway?"!!!

Indians are experts at opening up and increasing the scope for ambiguity in any exchange.  We expect to be forgiven and even appreciated for being of "good moral character", even when we have the lowest levels of social consciousness.  We fully expect to do a mediocre job and not be yelled at because we are willing to be perfectly soft spoken and unthreatening if indeed that is what it takes to get out of a tough situation that might define us as "guilty".

Tell some Indian pig talking on his/her cellphone in the middle of a theatrical movie experience to cut it out, and the pig will continue.  Get rude, say it a second time and there will be a reaction, like, "What's your problem, boss?"  No matter what you say, Mr. Ambiguous will be happy to counter, "Okay, so I've cut my call no?  What is the problem now?".  Like it is my mistake to get angry in the first place and make a bigger noise than the call on the cellphone that the pig made!  The crook just expanded the scope of the problem by including me in it, thus making it ambiguous enough to dissipate anger focus!

We expect to be blessed by the blessings of our ancestors because we show them great reverence, even as we exude nothing but rudeness for our fellow beings who are alive and much more likely to be affected by our obnoxious behaviour in the present.  We have brought about so much ambiguity in defining a "good" person, that it is no longer possible to spit on the dirtbag who behaves "decently", while it is relatively easy to berate the idealistic rebel.  We are ruthless with ambiguity.  It is where we hide all of another incredible Indian trait - hypocrisy.

We have a propensity for manufacturing ambiguity in massive amounts so we may hide all our faults in it, so we may wallow in it, without clarity, accountability, responsibility or humanity.  It is our passive aggressive way of winning - by first denying clarity, then by smearing the other person's clarity with clouds of doubt.  We are incredibly good at this.  We can even claim victory merely by denying the other person success in pointing out our faults.

Strip away ambiguity, and most Indians will actually be corrupt people, with very questionable value systems, and cursed with an inability to separate the objective from the subjective, the personal from the communal.  Terribly sorry, but "We are like this only" doesn't really cut it anymore.  Actually, it never did.  But some of us put up with it.

- BSK.

Hooray! Another terror attack!

Here it is again!  Terrorists attacking Mumbai!

I am as tired of this nonsense as anyone and I really have a great deal of sympathy for Mumbaikars.  This goes well beyond the grief and sorrow and the sheer weight of madness that descends upon us each time something like this happens.  Of course we have no real way of knowing what it means to be there, and be directly affected, but it is within us to imagine how bad it can be and we must extend all help and "support" however weak that sounds, to all people affected by this.

Truth is, nobody is terrorized.  Not even a school kid missed school because a few bombs went off.  There have been no outrageous reactions, no overt blame games, no show of panic, and no untoward chain reactions.  Thank God Ram Gopal Varma didn't show up like the punk he is at the attack sites either.

Perhaps it is not so sexy this time.  No white skinned foreigners dead.  No helicopters dropping commandos on buildings.  No high profile buildings burning, no live TV during the "action", and no drama.

But interestingly, Mumbaikars have said one thing that is remarkable both for its timing now, and the absence of it earlier - that they are sick of hearing about the "resilience" and "spirit of Mumbai" etc.  In other words, they are telling the world, "Don't bloody romanticize this nonsense.  We're just doing the one thing we can - move on." 

If the media had an iota of self respect, it would pull out of the things it would normally do - start useless debates, interview hordes of people, find "stories" that it can capsule, and throw in a good deal of its own bullshit to sum it all up, and even field a Disney cute question or two at the end of it, like the rest of us don't already have enough questions.  Usually, this "profound" question would wriggle out something like, "Are we a soft target by choice?".  It would stop, and think about the uselessness of all of this.

Mumbaikars have spelt it out this time - "Don't shag on our misery just because you don't have anything else to do".  But the media, in its rank ineptness but immense opportunism, has now taken up this very sentence - "We don't want to hear anything about resilience and the spirit of Mumbai", and started shagging with it.  This in itself is the new fuel for the next debate!  The question now is, "Are we becoming numb?".  How much lower can this descend?  Where is basic human decency?

Don't we have a right to not be examined all the time by incompetent nincompoops?  Why the heck is Anupam Kher on TV, giving his opinion on what is going on?  Is he in any way competent to either represent Indian civil society or is he a terrorism expert?  Why isn't our media not even capable of going beyond convenience and the regular exercises of trying to get viewership?

What is even more appalling is the assumption that we can't see through how shallow this nonsense is.  Yes indeed, we can switch off our TVs!  But when we give Padma Shris like cinema tickets, we should at the very least wonder why these recipient clowns cannot get their act together.  It has been far too long, and far too exhausting, but the cracks are finally showing.  This is not a test of resilience against terror attacks.  It is a test of our resilience against mediocrity.

Mediocrity in every sphere.  Apathy in every aspect.

Nearly three years after the big attacks of 2008, we do not have closed circuit cameras in all busy areas of our metros.  We do not have any greatly enhanced intelligence gathering apparatus in place, and we do not have information sharing that is immediate and comprehensive between various government agencies.  Our cops do not even have little computers that can dig up ownership information of vehicles on the spot. 

To assuage our feverish yells, the government tamely did what all our governments are good at doing - started another government body, called the National Investigation Agency.  http://www.nia.gov.in/.  Guess what?  Try visiting this site and you will get this message - This site is under maintenance. Sorry for inconvenience.

What freaking maintenance can keep the website of the National Investigation Agency offline?  What if I have key information I want to pass on anonymously and I want to do it through the internet?

Are we even serious about this kind of blunder?  Whoever is in charge of this should be shot dead.  Because s/he is an anti-national criminal.  If s/he is in charge of keeping this window of information open that might lead to great intelligence gathering and prevent terrorist attacks, this fool has failed.  S/he ought to lose his or her job at the very least, and tortured to find what links s/he has with our enemies.  Sadly, that job rests with the NIA itself, perhaps!  How comical does this get?

Try visiting the CIA website and it will never be down.  www.cia.gov.  It is NEVER down. We are an IT power?  Who are we kidding?  How can the NIA website be down at all?  It is the simplest part of the NIA's infrastructure to keep up and running.  So, how can we expect these clowns to take any efficient action during terror attacks, pirates hijacking our ships, espionage, smuggling, human trafficking, and other crimes of great import?  Truth is, we can't.

What is the alternative then?  Surely we can let terrorists know that there isn't much for them to bring down here!  We can't possibly be a threat to anyone!

- BSK.

The advent of SMS in India.

TV9 Live - Indian Andhra Pradesh based television channel covering
live the events following the tragic demise of Chief Minister YSR
Reddy in a helicopter crash in April 2009.  Here are some very profound SMS messages
they flashed live during the coverage.  Extra care has been taken to
reproduce case and spelling accurately.

Ys you are RAKHING a man!

We miss god

I love you.

We miss u YSR. But we never forget u.

We miss d son of soil and a great n dynamic leader

King of AP, YSR

YSR is Andhragandhi

ss you YSR

I miss you Lord

V miss U YSR???

My life is YSR,l miss my life

I cannot believed this situvation

YSR is the king!

YSR u greate person

Farmers miss YSR

YSR greet cm in Andhra tiger.

God is never dead, so? YSR is never dead.

YSR AMARAHE

We miss you YSR we remember you all the time.

I am miss my real God - *** school staff

We r never forget u.

Hope ur sole live in peace.

YSRGRATCM.

Sir my tears are uncontrollable.

YSR did not die. He is in our heart.

YSR is living legend.

God gives yr sole peace

U R D king of D politics

We.miss.only.tiger

I am really very very sorry sorry, ysr

God of farmers went to God.

YSR is not Andhra king he is India king, HERO

State and country will miss great leader

NO ONE CAN DO LIKE YSR

Sir you are a great person you don't died you are ever living

thank u it is my deauty

we miss u the one

YSR we lost you

We are badgluck

YS YS YS YS YS YS

YSR is a dareing dashing diemalick

Please play fresh news

Hes a legend...he will be with us forever ...joy.

YSR IS A POLITICAL PERSON

Real God. YSR

YSR is a great cm.

YSR is a Kaliyuga

YSR wont die

Forallthepeoplegodisthere but for Y.S.

We miss A Great KING

YSR is a great man god always him

God has never end.

V CANT DIGEST YOUR DEATH

Jesus will definitely receive cm

We miss you uncle.  I am so sorry for this

ysr long long ago u r a great man

IS MANE OF THE POWAR Y.S.R

CHIEF MINISTER I MISS YOU. PLEASE COME BACK

Badluck.....

We.born.again.and.we.again.c.

m.

God has cheated....

Hatsup ysr

God is so selfish he taken over our leader

God BLEASE YOU YSR.

This is bad for A.P. people

HANDS UP Y.S.R

YSR JAYHO

I cont believe this only for YSR my heart hole

Sir were are you sir v want to c u

Dynamic leader of A.P is nowhere


- BSK

Why I don't trust Baba Ramdev.

When I was a kid, my friends and I used to ransack other people's gardens for fruit.  We loved the thrill of it, and we ate a lot of fruit.  We were always ready for action, and we were a menace in the neighbourhood, but people put up with us.  It's not "legal" to steal other people's fruits, but a group of mischievous boys who carried no real malice clearly could be allowed to carry out some "illegal" activities.  But, those times passed, and none of us turned out to be thieves as we grew up.

Today, for some reason, a lot of adults in India ARE okay with much more blatant, dangerous, and clearly malicious and malignant levels of illegality.  They have no problem paying bribes, breaking traffic rules, and staying absolutely mute to a lot of wrong that goes on.  They have no problem cheating with their ration cards, no problem evading taxes, and no problem looting crores of rupees from the nation's exchequer.  Where do these people come from?

What I remember from my friends as a kid is that we were always happy.  Sure we got into trouble once in a while, but we didn't have too much to worry about.  I also remember that we had a lot in common - we signed on to the same ideas of "fun", and we had no hidden agendas.  Most importantly, we stood by each other and understood each other's perils and challenges.  On a raid, we could trust one another.  Success or failure, we were there together, to try again!

This is where I have a problem with this bearded troublemaker Baba Ramdev.  I don't trust him.  I like the fact that he is making trouble, and I like the fact that he's got a lot of fools riled up with his demands against corruption.  But he isn't one of us, folks.  In fact, he's very much like the guys we're fighting against - wealthy, well connected, and powerful.  Imagine if a thirty five year old father of two wanted to go on a fruit raid with us ten year olds.  You think we'd take him along for the ride?  Of course not!  He has no business coming along with us.

This Baba Ramdev has planes to fly him wherever he wants, more than a thousand crore rupees in money, an island somewhere in Scotland, and a whole lot of followers who are willing to give him money.  He has highly qualified people to advise him, legally and financially, and he has a bit of an "empire".  Is this the guy who would be under pressure if asked to pay a bribe to get an apartment registered in his name?  Is this the guy who will stand for hours in line to get something done at some government office with me?  I don't think so.  He doesn't need the same things I do, at a fundamental human level.

He wants all black money stashed abroad to be brought back to India.  The task is noble, but the demand is not just naive, it is outright stupid, because it is steeped against a looming fast unto death.  If this money has ever been quantified, or identified as belonging to such and such persons, we would have to initiate criminal proceedings against such persons, then declare them guilty, inform international law enforcement agencies such as Interpol, then ask respective governments of these tax haven countries to initiate transfer of funds.  This is a precise process, and if a nobody like me can know what is involved, someone who is asking for that money to be brought back to India must actually ask for this process to be set under way, not just scream for the money to come back.  Clearly, this guy is not very well informed and he doesn't present himself effectively.  No leader.

I still stand by his right to protest peacefully, gather with any number of people anywhere, and make his demands to the government.  But if he is important enough for cabinet ministers to receive at the airport, and important enough to be on the news making the Prime Minister and the government in power so nervous, we better know who this bum is.  To me, an ill informed, unthinking, flashy, religious, dodgy, attention seeking noise maker is just a bum.

So, who IS Baba Ramdev?  He is no Anna Hazare.  He has no record of public service.  He isn't qualified in any way to lead any enterprise.  But he has an empire.  How?  He isn't a famous philosopher to have changed the way we perceive the world and the universe.  He is not a great teacher either as far as I know.  He sure as hell did not make his empire charging fees for yoga lessons.  So what is his enterprise?  I am all for yoga teachers getting into public service, and that is not my problem.  The problem is, I don't know this guy well enough to let him represent me or any other Indian.  So, I don't want him speaking for me.  It is that simple.

His followers being many Indians cannot automatically make him the leader of many other Indians.  His followers follow him for being the Baba, but Ramdev is who we don't know much about.  Any Baba has followers, but not many of them can lead something they don't know much about.  We're talking about the nation of India here.  Baba Ramdev wants Hindi to replace English.  Anybody who respects the Constitution of India and who is not a fool knows Hindi is not the national language of India.  It irks me that after so many years of being a democracy, our public education level is so low that many, even political leaders, talk as if Hindi is the national language of India.

Now, he's called for an armed rebellion.  He says he has a force of 11,000 people trained in the art of self-defence.  Fair enough.  But defence against what?  Against our police forces?  You don't need anything too sophisticated to take on our cops.  Just post a couple of women journalists with video cameras, and all our cops will behave rather well.  The only reason this police raid on this Baba's camp occurred at midnight was because media was asleep at the time.  This Baba is going crazy, and this "sena" reminds me of the raid on the Babri Masjid - flat out trouble.  It is the same monkeys that are backing this fool now.

The RSS and the BJP are his friends.  The RSS is political, and so is the BJP.  What is a yogi doing with the support of political entities?  If something is political, it is not automatically corrupted, but there is plenty of historical record for us to worry about.  The India I know and respect sometimes is secular, and does not lean towards any religion or political mindset.  So, what does this Baba Ramdev represent?  I'm not sure it is a healthy, vibrant, democratic, secular, forward thinking India.  He talks of "shaastra" (knowledge) and "shastra" (weapons).  What might be next?  "Sati"?  I hope not, but this guy can surprise anyone!

This is a prime example of how democracy can throw up lunatics who are free to do everything, including making asses of themselves - and others who follow him.  What he is clearly doing here is protesting against the very government our own people voted for!  He thinks we should be up in arms against the people we put in office?  This is as anti-nationalistic as it gets!

This call for "swadeshi" when he flies in a foreign made aeroplane (which he himself by the way, exempts from his "swadeshi" list!), using foreign oil, owning an island in Scotland, and with a thousand other violations of the already outdated principle of "swadeshi" just make him an outdated lunatic to me.

He is not shy of theatrics, attracting attention to himself, doing stunts like dressing up like a woman to escape detection - there's an element of drama in him.  But, anyone who mixes his religion and his politics, for whatever gain, is in my opinion an untrustworthy rascal.  This is a secular country, and all religions are indeed welcome, but personal.  So far, he hasn't spoken about his god, and that's a plus, but there is far too much saffron in his support group.

The bigger reason I resent this fool, even while giving him credit where it is due is this - after more than sixty years of being a nation, after reaching a point where we should be taking up an excellent place amongst the league of nations, after all the advancements we have made, is this Baba Ramdev the best face we could come up with to fight against corruption?

None of these misgivings should rob from this man, however, his right to speak his mind, gather with people, or start a movement.  He should not have been evicted or thwarted from doing anything that is not a law and order threat.  I do think however, that this man has some sort of power over people in government.  I don't need to know what that power is, but he does attract an awful lot of attention from many bigwigs.  Maybe he knows some of their dirty secrets?  Maybe he sells a powerful aphrodisiac?  He did try to export some medicines to the USA that were stopped by the Food and Drug Administration there!  This is one hell of an active monkey!  I wouldn't vote for him, or endorse his ways, but I would like to see him around.  He is just too much fun!

-  BSK.

Cannes and Cannots.

No Indian film has gone to Cannes this year.

The only film going from India is made by a Sri Lankan director called Vimukthi Jayasundara, called "Ghatak" and Vimukthi is Sri Lankan.

But we have sent Sonam Kapoor to "walk" the red carpet, and she has the wishes of Deepika Padukone that walked the damn thing last year.  Two years ago, Aishwarya Rai got mad that Sonam was going to walk that same red carpet where she goes every year to sell her perfume or deodorant or soap or whatever for that company she endorses.  This is what we get our idiots to go to Cannes for.

If I made a lousy cake, I would not go anywhere near a cake baking competition.  If I couldn't run fast, I wouldn't go anywhere near a running race.  If I didn't look good, I wouldn't enter a beauty pageant.  So, what is it with movies?  We make totally shitty movies, that even our audiences don't want to watch that much, but for some reason, these bozos from Bollywood, well, mostly from Bollywood, have no problem going to Cannes just to rub shoulders with some better film makers.  Don't these shitheads have any shame?  Or maybe they don't even know good cinema!  Wonder which is worse.

Listen to this Sonam Kapoor talk - it is all about the dress she is going to wear.  Fair enough.  She doesn't have much else to carry to Cannes.  That Rai woman has been going for years, and apparently it is a "dream team" to be on that red carpet with Eva Longoria and Lucy Liu!  God, can anybody NOT see that this is a way for that perfume company or deodorant company to cover all races and nothing else?  Okay, these three are old hags now, but what about young Sonam?  Why should she get sucked into this shit?

Because she can't find any real work.  By real work, I mean, finding a real movie to do, one that has a script and some integrity.  Her Dad Anil Kapoor apparently gave her a pen, according to an advertisement he features in.  Like he is some incredible achiever passing on some ageless ancient wisdom of his lineage to his young daughter!  Up until Slumdog Millionaire, which the whole of India shagged with for a while, even though it was not an Indian film, nobody in the world knew who the fuck Anil Kapoor was.  They still do not, but the Americans thought they should cast him in 24, to make 24 more "global".  So Anil Kapoor went!  He played a Middle Eastern prince!  Could he play an Eskimo?!!  This shit is hilarious.

The Americans are dumb enough to think putting Indian faces will sell their shit to India.  It won't.  We will buy OUR shit, or THEIR shit, not them making our shit, or us making their shit.  Why can't these nitwits wake the fuck up?  No Hollywood studio has succeeded in making an Indian film.  No Indian producer wants to make an international film.  There are a few but those chicks are horrible film makers.  They showed up in some of these festivals with their "issue based" shit because of the issues and because they were chicks.  Nothing else.  Now, there is a hole, and what a relief that must be!  It would be hard to defend any of our mainstream B-wood movies against anything of quality, a roadroller included.  Imagine what torture some of these fools must go through when they land in Cannes with totally pretentious, clueless movies that our audiences lap up with generous doses of forgiveness!

Now this Vimukthi kid has been devoting himself to watch Sathyajit Ray films.  Ugh!  Could he have found anybody less marketable?  And he's even mentioning how his film might open Indian films to international audiences!  Our films are already OPEN to international audiences!!!  There are any number of Patels and Singhs and other Indians all over the world.  All of them DO watch our movies!  Ray did make movies that people in film schools shag over, while the honest mainstream audiences mostly sleep.  Drowsy art.  But at the very least, Ray would not have chased after glory at Cannes.

Doesn't Europe produce shitty movies?  OF course they do!  French directors themselves are caught in a warped bubble of imagination that neither sells nor inspires, and hardly ever connects.  They are mad about Hollywood taking all their money, but will never make the kind of movies Americans make.  Americans don't care too much about high art, but are fantastic at telling stories on screen.  They keep it simple, and they take everybody's money.  So, Cannes wants as many rowdies in its gang as possible, and who to fill the gap better than Bollywood?  Just to make noise, not to show up with anything of quality - doing exactly what they do in India anyway.

Cannes = a place for our actors to show up.  TV = a place to find out where our actors are showing up.  Cricket grounds = a place for our actors to make sure they showed up.  Advertisements = seriously, what the fuck does Shah Rukh Khan know about paint?  Social causes = shoot endangered animals, but talk about saving the tiger.

Ah, showing up!  What else do Bollywood actors have to do anyway?  Why do they have to make this single act so painful for so many of us?

Why do we have to show up anywhere, anyway?


http://www.indianexpress.com/news/sonam-turns-style-diva-on-cannes-red-carpet/791883/

"The gown had a sense of humour"?  No shit.  The other Indian chick showed her panties?  Are you kidding me?  I bet there are some hooligans cheering and clapping there.  There'd be many more if these fools did this on the streets of Mumbai, but they won't be white skinned.  Anything for whitey, bitches?

Well done, Bollywood.

- BSK.

Here we fall again!

I really didn't want to do it again. 

But since when did Osama Bin Laden become the "world's most wanted terrorist"?  How is it even possible?

Spitting on India's media whores is one of my most annoying and irritating reactions, but if we don't watch what they are saying, they really will bullshit us.

I have no idea why North Indian English language media outlets have to parrot US media outlets, no matter what garbage those idiots spew out.  There has been plenty of terror by so many organizations, including the US military, well before Sept 11th, 2001.  Now that we have broadly concluded that only terror conducted by Muslims is popularly acceptable as terror, let's take another look at this pompous rank of "most wanted" given to Osama Bin Laden.

Seriously, as an Indian, I couldn't wait to get my hands on Dawood Ibrahim.  I couldn't really give a rat's ass about Osama Bin Laden.  I'd like to lynch those bastards we spinelessly released when IC 814 was hijacked and we allowed ourselves to be blackmailed.  That was the Taliban, and the scum released were Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Maulana Masood Azhar.  The last of these scum is our most wanted terrorist, for he has done much damage since.  Between him and Dawood Ibrahim, it's stiff competition.  OBL is nowhere in this race.

India is 18% of the world's population.  The USA is 4%.  Our most wanted terrorist is the world's most wanted terrorist, unless the Chinese are chasing one of these dicks.  Fuck the 4%.  There ends the argument.

OBL the most wanted in the world?  What the heck are you talking about?  This is the sort of absolute fiction our media vomits on us every time there is an event of any significance that tickles the USA.  I have said time and again that our journalists, particularly the English speaking bitches are not just self absorbed megalomaniacs, they are plain stupid.  Their incompetence is monumental in most situations.

Today, the woman on NDTV, said at 6:55 PM, "That was Osama Bin Laden's speech to the American people", just after President Obama finished his speech to his people.  Indeed, the world's most wanted terrorist being on the news must have scared them into blabbering shit like this.  I often wonder if they even think about what they are saying.  Clearly, it is not hard to see how bad these fools are.

Now, we're busy listening to Hameed Gul, the ex chief of the ISI, and that fox Pervez Musharraf, who is always happy to talk to our North Indian English news channels.  Gul has headed one of the shadiest outfits in the world, that actively arms and supports terror groups in the name of national interest, and is particularly inimical to India.  We don't need to show the prick any respect.  Period.  Now, he is on TV, trying to convince us very nicely indeed that a fortress that American forces had been keeping an eye on for months, only 800 metres from the Pakistan Military Academy, not far from Islamabad, could not really have been Osama Bin Laden's hiding place.  But he must have come there for treatment or something!!!   Treatment?  Well shit!  I thought he was the world's most wanted terrorist!!!??   And we're listening to this bullshit?  Well, let me try one here!  Please.  "Osama Bin Laden was a bird lover and at this time of the year, the blue necked mynah is famous for singing its mating tune, and so Bin Laden must have come to watch it in these peaceful neck of the woods."

Back to Pervez.  That son of a bitch that was part of that whole Kargil war in which they got their bums kicked, even though we lost 400 lives before deciding to use fighter jets.  Mushy cannot even come to his own country for fear of being thrown in jail.  So, he's in asylum in the UK.  But today he is the expert telling us that there is no way this operation could have been carried out without the active assistance of the Pakistani intelligence agencies.  This comes AFTER the US has officially stated that they went and did this alone!  Now let me get this straight - this is the country which claims they didn't even know where Osama Bin Laden was.  This is the country that has regularly attacked NATO convoys, supplied terrorists with weapons, money and training, and even officially claimed that this is nothing wrong when done in national interest, and now we're listening to an exiled general from that country telling us that Pakistan co-operated and co-ordinated an attack on one of their guests?  Do we really look that stupid?

Of course our North Indian English language media will never embarrass its guests, but it has no problem choosing monkeys to come as guests.  Let's get one thing straight, for heaven's sake!  Pakistan, the state, is the ENEMY of the nation of India.  Pakistan is lawless and will remain so!  We will never get any story straight from the Pakistani state.  Shahid Afridi may be the innocent buffoon they send to genuinely repair this image, and we love that buffoon and the cricket his team plays, but even there, freaking match fixing!  Dirty.  This is one filthy neighbour we have.  Let's not measure them with our scale of decency, even though we ourselves are pretty dirty.

There is a lot of "he said, she said" going on at the moment.  I don't give a rat's ass who said what.  If I was leading India (as opposed to misleading it), I'd look at actions.  I haven't seen any actions in reality that give me confidence in either Pakistan or the USA.  Those two richly deserve each other, because both are opportunistic foxes.  Why do we have to come into any equation with either of them?

Why is this so hard for our media to project?  Why is our society so backward in our thinking that we somehow imagine we are inferior and need to be approved by the USA or "the world"?  We shouldn't give a fuck.  That is a great attitude that has worked very well for Israel, and there is no reason it should not work for us.

Incompetence, they name is India.  We know.  But do we have to constantly look for ways to get worse?

- BSK.

A Nation of Passive Opportunists.

Anna Hazare has re-written history.  In fact, he has ensured the history of India is being written again.  He did the same thing Mahatma Gandhi did to the British - occupy high moral ground and blackmail the powers to succumb to his demand.  This word "blackmail" has a negative ring to it, doesn't it?  That's only because it conjures up images of cheap, witless psychopaths getting something they do not deserve, through devious means.  There's nothing devious about Anna Hazare's means, so clowns like Karan Thapar should stop acting like they are experts of this word "blackmail".  Long live the blackmailer, for the victim is the villain in this case.  Forty two years to pass a bill that gives us the right to prosecute the corrupt?  Enough of this, indeed, Annaji.

The mediocre always has to be pushed, prodded, woken up, beaten, and thrust into action by the extreme to get it to out of its inertial slumber.  India is a nation of massive mediocrity, dying to get worse, but somehow not allowed to by economic pressures.  We are not a non violent nation at all, as some of us would think.  We just choose the safer option because we're afraid of violence when it could turn against us.  What kind of influence do political parties regularly have on the "hapless" masses?  Any local MLA can call upon the services of murderers, thugs and rowdies to beat up any citizen that dares question any move!  This is why we are passive, not non-violent. 

But, we're opportunistic!  Anna Hazare gave us the opportunity, and we pounced on it.  This was our opportunity, not to clean up the nation, but to let our frustrations out.  We might get something out of it, but we might also forget all about it by the time the final draft of the Lokpal Bill comes out around the 30th of June this year.  It is a good thing indeed, but the movement that Hazare talks about is yet to happen.  It takes a fair amount of stamina to fight the system, especially when every moron around us has subscribed to a corrupt system.  Easier to pay the bribe, and get things done smooth and quiet - can this attitude change because of a Bill?  Most definitely not.  It still takes the citizen to approach the Lokpal and complain!  This takes work!  How can we Indians be expected to do work that doesn't pay?

Given the opportunity to get rich through corrupt means, without a major risk of being punished, most Indians would not hesitate for a second to jump into the cesspool.  How is the Lokpal bill going to address this mindset?  It will not, and it is indeed not the aim of the bill.  Given the opportunity to get "ahead" through corrupt means, short circuiting fair competition, most Indians would indeed do exactly this.  How else would we have fake pilots flying our aeroplanes?  We are cowards and we feel sick about it sometimes, but we convince ourselves we are being smart about it.  This is what our intelligence is used for.  Centuries of training in survival have taught us to flourish by staying out of the way, like germs.  Germs don't threaten enough to invite extermination, but are dangerous enough to keep us sick and unproductive - exactly what India is today.

How is the Lokpal Bill going to work, when it becomes the duty of the germs to inform the body of the invading disease?  We love the dis-ease.  We thrive in it, we thrive because of it, and we love the calmness of the sick patient, who has given up all hopes of fighting back.  In other words, this Anna Hazare character is a pest who is making us come out of our slumber and telling us we don't have to be germs anymore, because the patient is willing to let us lead a healthy existence within her body.  God bless Mother India, but how will the sheer masses of incompetence cope with an India that wants to throw out corruption?  Corruption is what keeps our masses lazy, well fed, and uncomplaining.  What can replace this incredible fuel?

We want opportunities.  Opportunities to further our laziness, opportunities to further our economic goals, and our sense of entitlement and power.  These have always existed.  Now, we also want opportunities to "feel good" about ourselves.  This is a new want, a new addiction in new age India.  We didn't want our boys to win the world cup because they played the best cricket and were truly deserving of the honour.  We wanted them to win so that we as "Indians" could wave the flag and yell at the world.  This is very sophomoric and idiotic of course, but it is also very American.  The USA is the country for us to look up to, for some reason.  No wonder a lot of our idiots have started putting their hands on their unfit chests when OUR national anthem is playing.  This again is nothing but an "opportunity" to showcase our patriotism just like Americans, but it has indeed become the opportunity for us to show how stupid we are, since even the Americans are supposed to do it not for their national anthem but for the Pledge of Allegiance!

There is nothing wrong in wanting to be Number One.  So, the pride we feel in our cricket team is natural.  How about doing something about the #119 we have in the Human Development Index?  See, we do not have the shining, sexy, fashionable opportunity for doing this.  It is not going to be quick, it is not going to be jingoistic, and it is not going to be vocal, so this process is going to be dull, unattractive, grinding, and horrendously time consuming.  We may not even be around when we get within #100 of this pesky index!  So, indeed we are not going to even try!

Anna Hazare didn't just provide the platform.  In this age of media glare, he provided the stage for many of our clowns to show up and perform.  The government yielded, not because it was morally forced to, but because it did not want to look like a failure on this stage!  It is all about perception, and performance on the stage!  No wonder Bollywood is completely in support of Anna Hazare although it produces movies with underworld money, has actors who shoot down wildlife, and even those who buy machine guns from terrorist outfits!  Was India outraged when Sanjay Dutt came on TV feeling bad about the terrorist attacks of 26th November?  Of course not!  We forgot that he had immersed himself in criminal anti-national activity but remembered him for his role in Munna Bhai or whatever crap.

We have become a nation of simplistic, easily manipulated fools.  We are no longer capable of critical thinking.  We go with what we like or dislike.  Anna Hazare is rather hard to dislike.  He is also not in the grey area, where critical thinking becomes immensely necessary.  He is out there in the white area, which is easy to sign up for!  That is why we chose to support him, not because we understood the full import of this Lokpal Bill and his blackmail tactic.  It takes the threat of calamity to force India to act in any haste to do ANY good.  We Indians love the foreboding threat of anything larger than life.  That is why we love our movie heroes to beat up fifty villains.  If he was human, it would require fifty of us to help him, and that won't be so interesting would it?

If we had to vote for a Supremo, a dictator or a king, (called "President" in some countries), we would gladly switch to that system.  We have grown up for centuries with kings as our benevolent dictators.  We even fondly recollect those times as the golden past of India.  The BJP even has a king Ram as their idol, so I wonder why nobody has asked them what the heck they are doing in a democracy while talking about a king all the time!  We do not like democracy really, because it puts responsibility on us.  If we could be slaves, we would.  That is why we make kings out of our elected leaders, and they gladly accept!  That is why they loot, and we applaud.  Look at those statues Mayawati has built of herself, and we know exactly what "opportunity" means for an Indian.

So, how to we function in the collective?  We do not!  We did not choose democracy.  It was chosen for us.  And now it may be too late to switch to a benevolent dictatorship, because too many of us would want to be the dictator.  So, we have this farce of a system where we elect people who don't have to listen to us or serve our interests as soon as they are elected.  Now, we're going to have the means to throw them in jail for corruption.  What about our own apathy, our incompetence, and our complete acceptance, even sympathy, for the crooked?  After all, we're the nation of really passive germs, who totally understand the need for survival.  How do we switch to intolerance?  We should suddenly thrash the peon who wants ten rupees for his "coffee"?  Or refuse to pay a donation that will ensure our unfit kid's a seat in that engineering college?  How are we going to change ourselves?

Our media has played a massive role in popularizing Anna Hazare and his campaign.  But this is not a service it embarked upon performing.  This was a big enough story to carry at the top.  Viewership!  Numbers!  Money!  Opportunity indeed!  From the World Cup to the IPL, the news channels were forced to fight for scraps.  Now Anna Hazare has provided them with phenomenal gravity.  It's a good thing this did not happen during the India-Pakistan match!  Very clever of you, Annaji!  Perfect timing!

Now, whatever happened to our sailors captured by Somali pirates, the Adarsh building scam, the 2G scam, the Commonwealth Games scam, and the thousand of other scams?  None of them are worth our attention now?  Eerily, it is time for something to come crashing down.  People must die for us to pay attention.  That is what Indian lives are worth - to bring viewership to our TV channels.  Aha!  Now, there's an opportunity!

- BSK.