Of Police, media and other forms of recreation

Been M.I.A for a while, huh, fellers? What to do, it's well nigh impossible to attend to two blogs at a time. And my other blog had been keeping me completely busy these last few days.

I kid, of course.

In actual point of fact, the venerable broadband service providers of this holy state of Jharkhand were playing games with me. I was practically out of net at home (save a pathetic GPRS connection), and somehow I haven't really got around to writing posts at work. (Don't get me wrong here, it's not about scruples. I mean trading stocks, reading blogs or downloading Madelyn Marie at work is okay for me. Writing something takes a bit of peace and quiet.) It can all be put down to a copped out ADSL modem that took one week to detect and another to replace. But that wouldn't be an interesting story, no? Thought so.

In interesting news, then, there's this young stud. Bears a striking resemblance to Jeff Goldbaum the fly. If looks were the only criterion he would be babe magnet. Maybe he is. What matters, however, is that he and five of his friends took one girl to a pub. They all had plenty to drink. And smoke, maybe . Rest of the matter is sub-judice. This chap,Vinamra Soni, was on a train to Jamshedpur two days later. He took a call from his father, telling him to alight midway and wait for his parents, who were on their way to take him back to Mumbai, to surrender at a police station.

The parents-in-law of my good friend In dino (you can see him here, the bottle opener guy) live in Jamshedpur. They have this sprawling three-storied house in Sonari area. The ground floor they have rented out. Their tenants for the past twenty years are a well-to-do business family who own a few retail outlets in the city and are, reportedly, nice gentle folks. The landlords also report they used to raise their kids in a strict disciplinarian fashion.

You know where this is going, don't you? Only it's not getting there. The young Mr. Soni already has some support in the bloggosphere. I'm not here to strengthen it. Though he appears now to be in the deepest pile of shit. And I tend to have a bit of sympathy for anyone in deep shit.

It went like this. In the morn 21st last week, the Sonis told their landlords they'll be out of town for a few days. Business related problem, they said. Towards evening, cops were all over the premises. State cops and Mumbai police crime branch together. Short of a sniper and a coupla armoured cars, it looked exactly like a terrorist bust. They asked the landlord where were his tenants, and moreover, why he kept such shady tenants. They tried to kick open the tenants' front door. They accused the landlords of not keeping an eye on their tenant's errant son. Eventually they got tired after an hour or so (the door was solid teak) and left in a huff. Perhaps they had received news of the arrest. The landlords slept fitfully through the night.

Only to be woken up by scores of microphone wielding TV people in the morning. Ye hai aj tak, aur ham dikha rahe hain woh ghar jisme... They thrust the mic at their faces, the poor in-laws. Since when have you known Vinamra Soni? Did he have a normal childhood? How do you feel now that the boy who lived under your roof is today a wanted criminal?

I rolled on the floor when narrated the scene. Not because it was funny or anything. But it instantly reminded me of the one scene from Notting Hill, where Spike, in briefs, opens the front door for the paparazzi.


Oh how one wishes one could be in the right place at the right time, wearing the right sort of underwear!

In other news, I was leafing through an old Roald Dahl collection yesterday, when I stumbled on, and re-read, PIG. In these days of swine flu. Funny coincidence. Oddly, I've always loved stories like these, where terrible things happen to protagonists without reason or logic. So much so the macabre borders the surreal. I think I had a troubled childhood.

It was just a wedding in Feb


This is the woman once wooed by Leo. This is the woman that once famously said of her failed relationship with Ronaldo, "Men? who needs men? I have my dogs."


Last Thursday it seems, she finally wed her quarterback. And the bride as well as her dogs, were dressed by Dolce & Gabbana.

Why does that elicit a sigh?

Ah,well,well, well. Best wishes, gal.

Bravo !

We heart Sanjay Dutta of TOI for doing the other side of the story on the failed strike of oil PSUs. This was a strike that had our full moral support as officers of Navaratna brotherhood, since our fates are tied together. Full support, notwithstanding the mad rush for the last drop of fuel at the petrol pumps, and the worry over how to cook dinner without gas, the kind experienced by the whole country. (Of course, we could not go on strike on our own. There are reasons for this. For one, nobody seems to bother if our seel plants stop rolling out bars, sheets and coils for a few days. Or weeks, if we so fancy. In fact, we can almost hear a faint "good riddance". The second thing is that we are cowards. Under extreme aggrievement (not a word. I know), we might consider wearing a "black badge", but please don't ask for more. But I digress...) Our Government, with uncharacteristic toughness, had quashed the oil strike. The groundwork behind the heavy handedness involved a clever manipulation of media, which helped build massive public antagonism against their cause. Take this for example, on that same newspaper two weeks ago. To say nothing of the self styled soapbox newscasters of Aaj Tak and Zee News (Desh bhar me mach gayi hahakar, tel adhikari kar rahe hain betan barhane ka byapaar..)
It seems the oil executives, flailed by the government propaganda machinery more than anything else, have at last anonymously approached the media to let out their story. A good story it is, too. I quote :

Among the things let out by the government is that the starting salary of these officers is Rs 1 lakh and it goes up to Rs 3 lakh — an amount that does not justify their demand for even higher salaries, especially at a time when the economy is struggling to stay afloat.
The government contention is false. Not just that, it is aimed at creating a national "consensus" for a severe crackdown that would break the officers' back. This is why it has sacked over 70 officers, and with its motivated propaganda, created an atmosphere where the officers have no forum to present their case.
.................................................
This is the salary slip of a Grade B officer in an oil PSU, who is an engineer and an MBA to boot, with five years of service. Here's what the officer got this November — his gross salary came to Rs 38,772 and after deductions, he got a net salary (or take-home salary) of Rs 22,890. And in this case, the deductions were less as the officer has not taken any loan from the company.
.................................................
So, he took home a little less than Rs 23,000. Now, compare this with what professionals of his qualification would be getting in the private sector. This is despite the fact that oil companies are among the most cash rich companies in the country. And this is also despite the fact that bureaucrats, teachers and others have all got hefty pay hikes.

"Attaboy"! We cheered Mr. Dutta. Having suffered the iniquity for so many years oneself, one couldn't have put it better. We mean, this is the voice of support we really needed after all the damage the same publication has done. Sob stories help sell newspapers, but don't amount for anything in this context. Not that this also could help much, since the bureaucracy has maneuvered the situation into an irreparable no-win zone.

So what's the real story? What were the oil PSUs offered and what did they want?

PSU Pay panel recommendation

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Other literature recommendations

The committee headed by Justice MJ Rao submitted their recommendation in last June. They had categorized the CPSEs into five grades. For the topmost A+ category, mainly Navaratnas, they had proposed higher risk pay and performance related incentives across the board. This report was in public domain, viewable by all who could withstand 27 pages of tables and legalspeak. The A+ category was poised to gain substantially. This got the babus green with envy that many executives of top PSUs were going to earn more than them. When in November the proposals came up for approval, they cleverly scrapped away the A+ category, bringing all profit making PSUs in the same grade, irrespective of size, profitability, performance record and importance to the nation. At the same time they whipped up such frenzy that every newspaper, business spread or news channel would refer to the revision thus approved, nothing but a bonanza, a windfall, a jackpot. There were publications bringing forward lone voices of discontent, but these were washed away under the deluge of misinformation.

The oil PSU officers only wanted the proposals in the original report to be implemented in toto. With full clarity towards the variable part of their pay. But it was not to be. The gormint servants wouldn't have any of it.

I will stop ranting right here. If anybody at all has wondered why I didn't write anything in the interim, let it be known that minimum wage earners do not blog much. Adios, amigo. Will post if and when I've got enough to keep the home fires burning.

My country

Revisiting a dear cousin

No one pulls the wool over the eyes of a Gambini. Especially this one.

This piece of news. Somehow it doesn't make me too happy. Maybe because the film about to be remade is a great big personal favorite. Maybe because I'd wanted to make it in Bollywood when I grew up. Maybe because I just cannot look at Ravi Chopra without a certain amount of disdain. He of the B-films. (This is something I just noticed, but all Mr. Chopra's films now seem to start with a B, not unlike Ms. eKta K-apoor.)



But first things first. Do I have reservations against Govinda playing Joe Pesci's role? Let's see, in all of Joe's illustrated career, this will perhaps be rated as one of his two finest roles (the other of course, being Goodfellas). Can Chi-Chi be quite as good? (Will he look too old? C'mon, surely nobody can look older than Joe?) Well, I'm prepared to give him a proper go at it, with a proper director and all. I have faith in him, I do. Not in Mr. Chopra's sensibilities, I don't.

Up next. Is that Lara there playing Marisa Tomei's character, or Tabu? Either way, where is the role for the other? I can't conceive of one. Another sweet brainwave of Mr. Chopra? Look, we can't play much with Ms. Tomei's role here, can we? It was her winning the Academy on an outside chance for this role, remember?



Remember these immortal lines?

Vinny Gambini: What about these pants I got on? You think they're okay?
Mona Lisa Vito: Imagine you're a deer. You're prancing along. You get thirsty. You spot a little brook. You put your little deer lips down to the cool, clear water - BAM. A fuckin' bullet rips off part of your head. Your brains are lying on the ground in little bloody pieces. Now I ask ya, would you give a fuck what kind of pants the son-of-a-bitch who shot you was wearing?

Delicate delicate stuff, constructing this character. Doesn't make it any easier when you want to distribute footage between the lawyer's fiancee' and the defendant's girlfriend.Or is Tabu playing Judge Chamberlain Haller, by an wild stretch of imagination? That, would be fun to watch.

Apart from the lead actors, then, and every other peripheral detail, the film is about two Americas looking at each other with a lot of distrust and hostility. The southerner's attitude to the big city slickers who, as a matter of fact, are Italian-Americans, or worse, Jews, borders on xenophobia. And the City slickers? Their take on these hicks is best summed up by this line:

Vinny Gambini: Hey Stan, you're in Ala-Fuckin-Bama. You come from New York. You killed a good old boy. There is no way this is not going to trial.

Hard to be set into an Indian context, but then, you're reminded of our own north-south divide and you're reminded of Ek Duje Ke Liye and you say, OK, not that hard.

On another level, this is the story of the underdog winning against unsurmountable odds. Because he has truth on his side. Because of John 8.32."ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free". Whenever in my limited power of appreciation for works of art I've had doubts about the quality of something, I've asked myself this:

Does it bring a lump to my throat? Did I come back with a tear in my eyes?

Yes, it does. In more ways than one. And I'd always wanted this dear cousin to be revisited like that. With a tear of joy. Somehow, I find it hard to believe Mr. Chopra and team will be able to recreate that ethos.

The Lotus eaters

We've had it up to here with China now. Not content with eating up our Steel, Textile and Consumer Goods industries on the fly and buzzing over our BPO gravy train with malice, they have now unleashed new age goblins on our national flower. G.S.Mudur reports :

...a fly from China has been eating lotus plants across vast stretches of shallow freshwater fields in Kerala’s Malappuram district, one of India’s largest hubs for commercial lotus cultivation.

The yellowish-brown larvae of the two-winged insect have been feeding on lotus leaves for over two years, causing an infestation not previously observed in the country, scientists at the Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) have said.

Chinese scientists had first identified the fly, Stenochironomus nelumbus, in 1986 a botanical garden in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing. Since then, it has spread fast within China, feeding on the rose-petalled lotus lily.

Link (warning: contains revolting photo of fly maggots)

Feature of the day

This excellent non-interview of Billy Joel by Dan Berry on NYT. Made my day.

Wondering why Vienna in the song Vienna, I was reminded Beethoven's grave is in Vienna. Could it be that as a young and very successful piano player who was ambitious and in a hurry, Billy addresses himself, and thus the allusion to Beethoven's grave in Vienna?

Completely out of context, there's a good joke (in somewhat unsound taste) on that grave. Goes like this...

Beethoven's Ninth

A tourist in Vienna is going through a graveyard and all of a sudden he hears some music. No one is around, so he starts searching for the source.

He finally locates the origin and finds it is coming from a grave with a headstone that reads: Ludwig Van Beethoven, 1770-1827. Then he realizes that the music is the Ninth Symphony and it is being played backward! Puzzled, he leaves the graveyard and persuades a friend to return with him.

By the time they arrive back at the grave, the music has changed. This time it is the Seventh Symphony, but like the previous piece, it is being played backward. Curious, the men agree to consult a music scholar.

When they return with the expert, the Fifth Symphony is playing, again backward. The expert notices that the symphonies are being played in the reverse order in which they were composed, the 9th, then the 7th, then the 5th.

By the next day the word has spread and a throng has gathered around the grave. They are all listening to the Second Symphony being played backward. Just then the graveyard's caretaker ambles up to the group. Someone in the crowd asks him if he has an explanation for the music.

"Don't you get it?" the caretaker said, incredulously. "He's decomposing!"

Where the hell is Matt were my ears?

I can't thank Bongo enough. He first brought it to my notice, via The NY Times, and Sepia Mutiny, that the video which had blown my mind away on first watch about ten days ago, and by now has been viewed five million times already, had music set on lyrics from Rabindranath tagore's poem from Gitanjali. Set to haunting music by Gary Schyman, and sung with rare verve by Palbasha Siddique, a Bangladeshi teenager out of Minnesota. Like the NY Times article says,

In many ways “Dancing” is an almost perfect piece of Internet art: it’s short, pleasingly weird and so minimal in its content that it’s open to a multitude of interpretations. It could be a little commercial for one-world feel-goodism. It could be an allegory of American foreign policy: a bumptious foreigner turning up all over the world and answering just to his own inner music. Or it could be about nothing at all — just a guy dancing.However you interpret it, you can’t watch “Dancing” for very long without feeling a little happier.

I was so happy watching the video I couldn't, or didn't bother about lyrics at all. At first watch, it sounded like something in in an obscure language, maybe Maori. The music was appropriate. I even showed it to two Bengali friends last Sunday morning, over beer. They had the same reaction. Nobody caught the words.

Bongo was curious about what the poem actually was, so I thought about looking a little more and found it was from Gitanjali. Utube has even released a version of the music with subtitles here. The number is selling wildly on Amazon too. The lyrics I will Ctrl-C Ctrl-V from here for fellow Bengalis who might be too lazy to read subtitles.

Bhulbona ar shohojete
Shei praan e mon uthbe mete
Mrittu majhe dhaka ache
je ontohin praan

Bojre tomar baje bashi
She ki shohoj gaan
Shei shurete jagbo ami

Shei jhor jeno shoi anonde
Chittobinar taare
Shotto-shundu dosh digonto
Nachao je jhonkare!

Bojre tomar baje bashi
She ki shohoj gaan
Shei shurete jagbo ami
She ki shohoj gaan.

Two things. I'm as true red a Bong as they come, though I don't readily recall that poem. Second, as many Bongs would agree, the work that got Tagore his Nobel was definitely not his best. It was like giving the Coen Brothers the Best Picture Oscar for No Country, and not for Fargo or Oh Brother, where art thou?

Wifey, of course, effortlessly took the cake. Last weekend I once went running some errands while the video was playing on the pc. She was pottering about the house and not watching. She now says she caught the words right then and it sounded vaguely like Rabindranath. I'm like, stop pheko-ing, mama!

No news is good news

I live in the land of no-news. Suits me fine, since after living here for almost two decades, I'm slightly afraid of hip-and-happening places. Apart from the absence of globalized marketplaces and entertainment complexes which are so de rigeur for modern city living, I have little to complain about this back-of-beyondness. The no-good surd visited our city just the other day. During his ten-minute speech, we noticed something . That the name of our city had completely escaped his consciousness. He mentioned Jharkhand six times and Jamshedpur, four, but not for once did he utter the name we so wanted to hear, from his lips. I think he didn't learn zis' vaard.

We were a bit depressed at first. Then I saw this cartogram of the US of A. Modified by the quotient of news generated vis-a-vis territory. And realization dawned.

pic courtesy : Strange Maps

Apparently we are in good company. Good company like Topeka, Boise, and Cheyenne, to name just a few. If that sounds incomprehensible, read this. This cartogram, originally from the August 2004 issue of Science News Magazine, where it illustrated an article entitled ‘A Better Distorted View: The Physics of Diffusion Offers A New Way of Generating Maps’. Seems news has a system of redistributing maps. What do you think?

Easily this morning's most interesting news. Pity for the Khan. BTW, I think Salman is getting completely favorable media coverage these days. Everybody says he's fine. Including Madame Tussauds. Me, I always thought he was fine. I love the way he never emotes. He's developed a really cool method of thumbing his nose at high drama on screen. Most women always loved him anyways. It's lately that the menfolk have been converted. Guess it's got to do with his holding down a relationship with a bomb of a GF long enough. He should, however go a little easy on promoting his films on TV music shows. Doesn't seem to suit his style. That's so SRK.

The good Doc.

Immense entertainment value bit of news this.

One feels a little sorry for the good doc. No, I've no sympathy for pervs and I'm not one of them, for the two of you who'll be reading! But , c'mon now, this is the sort of thing happening all the time these days. Date rape, fake identities, taking advantage of the coy Indian woman desperately seeking love, romance and a life partner ... so what else is new? The news in the item is the startling perversions of the good doc, that he would feel the urge to watch a cricket match after inflicting 10 inches of pain ( you know where), that he would ask the victim "How do you feel on your suhagrat night?" One feels a little sorry just because our good doc was a legit GP who was otherwise doing fine ( a quick google search reveals he's listed on the Newham recorder too) who got busted probably only because he couldn't take it a bit easy and had to go the whole hog ( I mean anal rape, O My God!) on the very first date. I think he could have gotten away like so many other bastards, if only....

Pardon me my bad taste. But we live in India. Here we're used to news items like the Nithari killings and villains like M.S.Pandher. This Tangotra sod looks like an amusing old punk, in perspective. Lastly, the profile of young desi professionals( in UK?) who had no sexual experience whatsoever sounds as phony as a three GBP note.