Random Hurrrh

Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels. Having said that, we must acknowledge the wisdom in opting for the second best.


Thank God for handy phrases. Take the phrase ''having said that". Instantly allows you to go back on your premise. How useful is that?

By the way, I'm also mighty impressed with a Punjabi word which I've been hearing recently in a lot of songs. Some word that sounds like Hurrrh. Used once in the Singh is Kingg title (See earlier post). Now, go back to yesteryear's Mauja hi mauja. Again, lots of Hurrrh. Used with great efficacy as a resounding refrain. Makes the sound of somebody herding stray livestock. Like many a potent word, I suspect it can convey most anything under the sun. Even in this authentic qwaali by Nusrat ( singing Bulleh Shah's poetry)

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I would much appreciate it if anyone will enlighten me on the connotations of Hurrh. See, even wiki is not able to offer any help. Plus I'm encouraged by the kind of success gawker had with getting linguistic info on his blog.

In other news, the nearest theater showing Jane tu is 25 miles away, so I couldn't catch it. Saved the trouble of putting down a reaction.

Till kingdom come

The modernists said, " Style is king" ( These were people who also said green is the new fuschia, thereby proving they must never be taken seriously.)
The purists said, "Content is king." ( They were believers of the maxim " God gave you eyes. Plagiarise.")
Proponents of free market said, "Consumer is the king"(and then made a career of royally duping him)
Wiki acknowledges that Simon Pulsifier is the king.
Post US-Open, there's widespread belief that Tiger Woods is the new king (of pain)
Knowledgeable beer lovers would still call Gambrinus their king.



Well it appears that none of them was the real deal. Because come the 8th of August, only Singh is.

Our very own Pritam-da ,who is auditioning for the role of the fattest apostle in the upcoming Monty Python flick called Monty Python and the last supper (hence the tonsorial abstinence and and all that bread and wine he's been soaking up), is all hurt and dejection these days. He is saying, "What variety of a dog needs two g's? And who now are the new RDB? More than one of them, it seems? I mean, I worship Pancham-da and all, and although his tunes are are so oft-heard they're hard to lift, I'm working on it. In the meantime, these RDB chaps and their Dogg come along and steal a number from right under my..er..nose? What sort of a dog-eat-dog business is this?"
(The assorted animals have actually done some groundbreaking work, I think. They've put together, for the first time in the history of music, a lullaby laced with hip-hop sounds.)

So the fun begins to sizzle. And while we're on the subject, I'd love to put in a word sideways about Katrina Kaif the living doll. The way, with every passing day, she's starting to look more and more like a creature of flesh and blood, is making me develop a tender crush on her. Though I must also admit, that when it comes to leggy supermodels my heart is still in the right place. It is in safe hands, so to speak, with Giselle. Like Sir Paul would sing, Giselle, ma belle, those are words which go together well.....

Under duress to go watch Jane tu etc. on the July 4 opening. Wifey's still got a thing for those boy-girl stories. Let's see.

Update: I made a mistake, the video above actually shows the title composed by Pritam-da and not that bunch!

Cherche la femme' chèvre

This is the new resolution we've passed. Henceforth, on every new post, we'll include a strip from Peanuts. Something that suits the mood. Please bear with us.


I don't even know why I'm writing about this. The incident is in no way significant. Not funny, neither outright tragic, nor of great shock value to our inured minds. Only reason I can think of, (besides that I've got way too much time on my hands) is that it says something about the thought process of yours truly. Something I'll be reminded of, when I come back to this page years later, and mutter, "So, I've been like this only".

I was driving down to the market in our small town a few evenings ago. On the way, there was a a confused-looking mob on the road at a busy intersection. Somebody asked us to turn around and take a detour. The crowd was swelling, somebody saying something about an accidental death. It didn't look like any automobile was involved. We didn't wait. Later at the market , I was told somebody got electrocuted at a faulty electric pole. Power supply to that particular area was cut off for the night. I didn't think about it much at that time.

Next morning at work, while having chai, a colleague was narrating the incident in great detail. The summary is like this. You see, there's a line of butcher shops near that intersection. Late afternoon, a goat escaped from a butcher's place and went scurrying into a nullah. It was a busy day at business, so the butcher called a ragpicker loitering nearby and asked him to go bring the goat back. On the bank of the nullah there was a transmission tower of some mobile network. There must be a live cable leaking somewhere, 'cause when this grown-up male ragpicker went near the nullah, he did not come back. Word started spreading. The scared butcher went to the local police chowki and reported the incident.

The station-in-charge, seeing no merit to the case, sent over an old hawaldar with a known drinking problem. His brief was to cut power, recover dead body, inform next of kin for identification and send the body over for autopsy. While carrying out the third part of the agenda the policeman got a bit jittery. He was getting late for his evening appointment with the bottle. At the door of the dead man's shanty he called out for his wife and unceremoniously gave her the bad news. She was asked to come and identify the body. But the woman started to wail or something, causing delay, and the hawaldar lost all patience. He roughly dragged her by the hand. This is when the mob had risen. The onlookers suddenly got really pissed and they grabbed the old sod and started lynching him. Things went out of control. A full contingent had to be called in and the area cordoned off.

Later a DSP came and apologized to the local people. The hawaldar was suspended. The traders of the area called a Bandh the next day. The usual.

Only, after listening this far, I had to interject, "So what happened to the goat?" Tell me, was that an unreasonable question? Everybody seemed to find it very amusing.

P.S I suppose everybody is familiar with the original reference.

P.S.2 And do try calling in sick on a thursday once in a while and drinking vodka through the day. Busts a lot of stress, I tell you.

Lie down and Listen

Abeeda, bless her soul, is easily one of my five most favorite singers. She of the wild headshakes and the late Fatty Ali Khan Sahab (No offense; just terms of endearment.) This blogger is completely floored by her power, style and range. Alas, it's her inimitable style, that today I'm about to make a weeny-teenie complaint on. You see, it's like this. Whenever Abeeda opens her mouth and lets forth the first notes of her song, she is in communication with divinity. It's a great thing when she's singing sufi. I mean it's overpowering. It makes an agnostic like me go into trances and have visions of a Supreme Being. Take Raqs-e-bismil.

Now consider her singing a simple song of love. She is still talking to Almighty.

Woh Jiski Deed Mei...

Don't get me wrong here, this song also is a big favorite. It's still an awesome rendition and all. It's just that whilst listening to it all these years, I had a foolish notion the poet had meant to convey delicate things about God, in those lines. Thanks to Abeeda's power singing and my proficiency in Urdu. It's only recently I've learnt , that Janab Faiz Ahmad Faiz sahab actually wrote this fine ghazal while hanging out by the wayside and ogling at the beauty queen of Sialkot as she walked by. For all we know. I wanted to translate it, but later realized that like much of great poetry, it's not about what the poet is saying but how he says it. And that, unfortunately, is impossible to translate.

Nuff chitchat. Listen to the song. Browse the lyrics, courtesy schwetank. I've included meanings of certain words and expressions. I had looked for them here and here, while attempting the translation. Thought it might come in useful for people with prolific Urdu, like me.

Woh jiski deed mein laakhoun masarratein pinhaan

Woh husn jiski tamanna mein jannat pinhaan

Masarrat: Happiness, Joy; Pinhaan: Concealed, Hidden

Hazaar fitney tah-e-paa-e-naaz khaak-e-nasheen

Har eik nigaah khumar-e-shabaab se rangeen

Tah : Plait, fold, multiplicity, perplexity; Fitnaa: Sedition, Mischief, Quarrel, Revolt, Temptation, Wickedness

Naaz : coquetry, amorous playfulness

Shabaab jis se takhaiyul pe bijliyaan barsein

Waqaar jiski rafaqat ko shokhiyaan tarsey

Shabaab: Juvenility, Youth ; taḵẖaiyul : imagination, fancy ; Waqaar : Solemnity ;

rafāqat : companionship, society, friendship ; Shokhiyaan : Coquetry, Mischief, Restlessness

Ada-e-laghzisheiy paa par qyamatein qurbaan

Bayaz-e-rukh pey sahar ki sabahatein qurbaan

Laghzish: Blunder, Lapse, Mistake, Tottering ; Bayaaz: Album, Handbook, Notebook, Vade Mecum

Sahaba : Wine, Esp. Red Wine ; Rukh : Face, Cheek, Side

Siyaah zulfoun mein badaaon sa nikhatoun ka hujoom

Taweel raatoun ki khwabeedah raahatoun ka hujoom

Siyaah :Black, Dark ; Baadaa : Booze, Wine ; Nikhat: Fragrance;

Hujoom: Assault, Attack, Crowd, Onset, Throng, Tumult ; Taweel: Extended, Lengthy, Long ;

Raahat : Quiet, rest, repose, ease, tranquillity

Woh aankh jiski banao pe khaliq dey raae

Zabaan-e-shair ko tareef kartey sharmaae

Banaao : Appearance, form, shape, colour, Adornment; ḵẖāliq : The Great Creator, the Originator

Gudaaz jism qaba jispe sajke naaz karey

Daraaz qad jisey sarw-e-sahi namaz karey

Gudaaz: Well-Mixed, Well-endowed ;Daraaz : Long, tall; Qaba: Gown, Long Coat Like Garment

Sarw : Affluent, Opulent, Rich, Wealthy; Sahi : A religious mendicant, a Mohammadan faqīr;

Kisi zamaney mein is rah-guzar sey guzraa thaa

Ba-sad guroor-o-tajammul idhar sey guzraa thaa

Tajammul : Dignity, pomp, splendour, magnificence; guroor : pride, vanity, haughtiness,

Ba-sad : by a hundred

Aur ab ye raah guzar bhi hai dilfareb-o-haseen

Hai uski khaak mein kaif-e-sharab-e-sair makeen

Dil fareb : Alluring, Beautiful, Charming, Enticing; Sair : Walk, Excursion, Stroll

Makeen : Firmly fixed; well-established;--in a high station; Kaif: exhilaration, Happiness, Intoxication, Joy

Hawa mein shokhi-e-raftaar ki adaaein hain

Faza mein narmi-e-guftaar ki sadaen hain

Fiza ; Atmosphere, Environment; guftaar : discourse, conversation ; Raftaar: Going, motion, walk, gait, pace

Shokhi : Playfulness, fun, mischief; pertness, sauciness; coquetry, wantonness

Garaz vo husn is raah ka juzu-e-manzar hai

Niyaz-e-ishq kou eik sajda gaah maiyassar hai

Garaz: An object of aim or pursuit, or of desire; aim, end, object, design, view, purpose;

Manzar: Aspect, Countenance, Landscape, Scene, Visage ; Niyaz : Petition, supplication, prayer; Mayassar: easy, feasible, practicable; favourable

Kabhie Kabhie Pyar Mein

You know, you don't have to be wearing Raymonds to be a complete man. For that matter, you don't really have to be a complete man at all. But it helps.




There, it was a-waited. So, Part 2 is now on air. Part 2 is hardly about fairness. Part 2 is about impossible mush. That sort of gooey mush where the fair maiden storms out on an engagement ring when her beau chips her nail trying to put it on her finger. In this mushy world, the jilted girl will still have the number of the man she once loved and lost, through years and through continents. In this world, the greatest dilemma will be over pressing that send button. It's now easier to see where O&M is coming from and where they're trying to go with this. It's all about soft sell. Just replace suitable words in the Raymonds base line from above. And you still have the promise of newsprint white. In fact you have two choices. TOI white and Economic Times white.

Worries me. My daughter (ten going on seventeen) is liking this. In my opinion, she's kinda fair already and really doesn't need to get fairer, but who gave a hoot for my opinion, ever?

My wandering mind and all


1. power outage baby
Years ago, the power went out in San Francisco for a long time. Nine months later, there was a certain increase in birthrate. If you were born nine months after a power outage, you are a power outage baby.
e.g. Thomas is a power outage baby.

The last coupla days we had a major power outage. It prevented me from finishing a longish dissection of Chetan Bhagat. It also reminded me of this phrase from urban dictionary. That in turn reminded me of a term of endearment we frequently used in college. Which, euphemistically translated, would read like, "born out of a burst prophylactic." Amazing how the human mind works, huh?

Like I said, I was in the middle of a diatribe on 3 mistakes, a shallow novel for shallow people like me. When the pointlessness of the exercise hit me, I was too far gone. So I thought I'd post that anyway. However, there were other, more significant matters gnawing at my mind in the meanwhile. Namely, what makes Savitha Bhabhi such a rage?

No, I don't think the site targets the minds of young Indians and is more harmful than many other mainstream porn sites, like some enraged people think. I don't even believe the site will appeal particularly strongly to the teenager of today. What it appeals to, greatly, is the fifteen-year-old in all of us greying and about-to-grey Indian male. Those who grew up not on electronic media, but on those thin books in yellow covers, hidden inside textbooks. Though the visuals seem to heavily borrow from mainstream adult entertainment of today. Didn't see much of reverse cowgirl and DP (links NSFW) in those good old yellow-cover days, eh? That way, it embodies the best of both worlds. Plus the serialised strip format. Always keeping interest alive for tomorrow's page. Yeah, that's the secret of her success. By the way, the page would do better to add an age verification thing at the start, for that's the standard procedure for attracting underage viewers.

Speaking of their standard procedure, I'm reminded of the many many BAD places I've gone to on the net. Which in turn, brings us to the crux of this post, an anecdote on what may come off going to those places. This was an incident involving a colleague, one Rajesh Kumar (name changed).

This was in the year 2000 or 2001, way before India had seen broadband. Our Rajesh had recently acquired a dial-up connection at home. One night, after the family had gone to sleep, Rajesh got a little naughty and adventurous. It is difficult to ascertain exactly where he started (it was all so long ago) but desibaba, a great site of those days, would be a good guess. One click, however, led to another, and presently, old Rajesh was in the land of bliss.

Exactly what triggered the onslaught would yet again be difficult to guess, cause by then, Rajesh was clicking away with gay abandon, but it must've been a loose click on some entirely wrong button, and all hell broke loose at once. Cascading windows started to open on Rajesh's desktop. All pointing to very nasty places, with lurid graphics and stuff.

At first Rajesh tried his best to close the windows as they opened. But, this was clearly a battle of unequals. If Rajesh had been blessed with three pairs of hands with half a dozen mice in them, he could still give those windows a run for their money, but such was not the case. So the windows kept cascading @300/min and Rajesh' eyes were popping out.

I know you will jump up and ask why didn't he invoke ctrl-alt-del. The answer to which is i) Dear Rajesh was a technically challenged person, (he still is) and ii) he had lost his nerve at that point in time. By the time he got around to try and shutdown the pc, it had stopped responding completely.

Rajesh then, had no option but to cut the power. In fact, so shaken was he, he yanked off the power chord from its socket as well, for good measure. He then went to the kitchen and drank two tall glasses of water. The house was quiet, everybody sound asleep. Rajesh took deep breaths. Twenty of them. He gathered himself. Only then did he sneak back to the pc and boot it.

But this evil malware, it had him by his balls by that time. It had a bulit-in dialer (we later gathered from his narration) which sat cosily inside startup and connected as soon as the OS loaded. The windows came roaring back again! Much credit to his ready wit, Rajesh knew what to do this time. He pulled out the telephone line from the modem. He said, "Take that, bastard!" and waited.

I guess today nobody uses IE anymore, but there's a feature with IE which used to be very handy in those days of slow speed dial-up. It allowed you to view full pages offline. Somebody must have turned on the feature on Rajesh' computer, and it was not him, for it was clearly beyond his ken (again, something we figured out later from his account). That feature now told heavily on rajesh' already pounding heart. For even with the modem disconnected, his screen was rapidly getting splashed with those lurid windows. Rajesh held his head in his hands and stared at impending doom. A sweat broke out at the back of his neck. It was the end of January.

Rajesh looked towards the bed where his six-year-old son was sleeping. Like other geeks of his generation, the brat would start the pc first thing in the morning and engage in Mortal Combat.
Morning was but six hours away. What's Rajesh gonna do?

Myriad Mistakes

People say that the 3 mistakes Chetan Bhagat has made in his life are the three novellas he's written. On my part, I think that these people are jealous and unkind, to the point of being rude. I don't wholly subscribe to their school of opinion. For starters, as financially viable ventures, they have all handsomely paid off. In the process, he's also making India read like never before (this, a gem of a coinage by m/s Penguin India, instantly puts him on the same kind of a pedestal as a certain Dr. Radhakrishnan, a Gokhale or a Vidyasagar.) Yessir, In his life, Mr. Bhagat has done good, despite all the jealousy, and he's merrily dedicated his book to "My Country, which called me back." He's still keeping his day job, through when does he make time to visit office in between all the book promotion tours and reading sessions is anybody's guess. In short, his life so far reads like an utterly improbable balancing act, brilliantly pulled.

So, what gives?

You know, it's difficult to put a finger to it. Unfortunately there's no better way to put it than say that it just doesn't feel right. It's like watching Arnold do a drag show time and again. It's obvious Mr. Bhagat has Bollywood aspirations. All he wants to play to is his college student readership. All he wants to write for is a mainstream Indie film. He even drops names of his Bolly friends in Acknowledgements. There's nothing essentially wrong with that. One only wishes that with his kind of education and his capacity for lucid prose in an undergrad vocab (a rare trait in an MBA, who has been trained to jargonise and obfuscate.. but I digress), he should try and scratch the surface a little, put up a little classier act, and kind of do an Sabrina Dhawan instead of a Vijay Krishna Acharya, if that's the allegory I want. But there, that's his one undoing. He seems fixated on kitsch.

Let's look at Chetan's other strength. He has the ability to structure a compounded story with multiple characters woven around real life surroundings and sometimes, incidents. His first born, mostly autobiographical, had hit home with its freshness and cadence. His second, just to cash on his debut success, was born out of second hard research and third hand influences, noticeably of Hollywood flicks. The effect showed. You can't produce a halfway decent novel out of some idea that struck you upon watching Bruce Almighty. Perversely, this again sold. So, by the time of his third release, Mr.Bhagat had developed some very annoying habits. Even though much of his storytelling is still in the autobiographical mode, he will needlessly start and end his story in first person, encounter a protagonist, and try to stitch it all into his real life. Every story will also have a happy ending, fuck probability and likelihood. Every story will have a drawn out climax which reads like more a screenplay than a book. (In fact, this time around, the finale, y'know, the felling of Kans mama with a cricket ball, was so graphic, it evoked visions of an Ekta Kapoor serial. It cried for that same zoom in, zoom out, pan right, pan left, then go negative and back to color...treatment.) To make things worse, now and then, in between workaday storytelling, he will throw in some profundity which is the written equivalent of a ceetee bajao piece of dialogue. Sample this :

A very good friend is a dangerous category with Indian girls. From here you can either make fast progress. Or, if you play it wrong, you go down to the lowest category invented by Indian women ever..the rakhi brother.

In my humble opinion, this time around, Chetan had bargained with too big a landscape to go with his inane storyline. If there is one part of India which has seen the most action during the last decade, it is Gujarat. If he had to keep in frame that time, and those events, he should not have dealt in such shallow sentiments.
Two: by the time he was shaping up for Godhra, the whole ruse of his plot had fallen into a predictability trap. Which is not a good thing for a novel which has a purported USP of pace, twists, and turns.
And three, if he is writing about a child cricket prodigy and his abilities, he has to be a little convincing in his cricket commentary. I mean, "the medium pace ball rose high on the bounce and smash! another six," or, " Ali spun as if in a dance and connected-six!" just don't cut it.

Source and Source

White=Beauty?



Yes. I can't help talking about this ad. But maybe that's the whole idea behind the campaign. To make people like you and me mad and hate it so much the marketers have already created awareness for their product. I mean, till recently, they used their fresh faces and new discoveries to sell to the fairness obsession. Think fair and lovely and their models. Now Lever has gone and upped the ante and hired two-and-a-quarter of the country's hottest stars ( Neha Dhupia, stand up and be counted) to "act" in a "film" doing the same fairness routine. Yuck! I mean, the blood boils, the mind boggles, and words fail me. If you want more sickening info, check out here.

One thing is certain. I can never forgive Saif for doing this stuff. I mean, I thought he was way too classy and all....well, forget it.

IMHO, the worse thing than celebrities endorsing whiskey is ...... celebrities endorsing fairness concoctions!