Selective Amnesia !!

Bharathiyanaris*: Save Indian Culture, Stay Indoors !

Every now and then, some visionary individuals come along with a concept that is so original and so revolutionary that your immediate reaction is: ''Those individuals should be on medication.''

Today I want to tell you about such a person, B.S.Yeddy-something-or-other, from Bangalore (No,I don’t really know what the B.S. stands for), who has come up with a concept that is going to make you kick yourself for not thinking of it first: Save Indian Culture Day. As the name suggests, this is a day on which everybody would try to save Indian Culture. Is that a great idea, or what? There are so many practical benefits that I can't even begin to list them all.

Yeddy came up with this idea a few years ago. Just before going on one of his many “Yatras” for which he was almost nominated for an Oscar, he was playing kabbadi**, and, as so often happens, began talking about kabbadi being an Indian cultural sport. And then while auditioning for the role of Slumdog... and looking at a slice of really mouldy roti*** that he had to eat in a scene, it struck him: Why not have a day when EVERYBODY saves Indian Culture? He decided that the logical day would be Jan 24, because that -- as you are no doubt aware -- is the day Yeddy launched his “ Save Grama Rajya” march for the farmers, along with the “Save Cauvery” march.

Since then, Yeddy has made a near-superhuman effort to promote Save Indian Culture Day. As he puts it: ``I've talked against pub culture like a moron, and encouraged my several friends to join, on every Jan 24, except for a couple where I forgot.''

And yet, incredibly, despite this well-orchestrated campaign, the nation has turned a deaf shoulder to Save Indian Culture Day. In desperation, he turned to Mutha Lick of the "Sri Ram Army" (not to be confused with the Indian Army, which is a "Save the Indian Borders" force) for help. As an influential goon, Mutha had the power to ''make or break'' a national day. You may recall that almost nobody celebrated December 6^th as Ayodhya Day until Advani brought down the Babri Masjid.

So Mutha Lick decided to throw his full support behind Save Indian Culture Day, to be observed this Jan 24. To help promote this important cause, Yeddy decided to seek the endorsement of another famous celebrity from the “taking money while promising official favours” stable Ashok Get-a-lot and I am pleased to report that, as of today, Ashok, Raj Thuggery, Ramalinga Raju, Col. Purohit, Swami Sadhvi, the Afghan Taliban, Osama Bin Laden, Adolf Hitler and Anbumani Ramadoss: people who I hoped would read this have all become big supporters. I see no need to recruit Diggu Kamath, because he already talks funny, as we can see from this transcript of a recent Government press conference:

REPORTER: Could you please explain either your policy on Regional Plan 2021 or SEZ's ?

Diggu : Ummm Uhhhh .

To prepare for Save Indian Culture Day, you should practice incorporating cultural terminology into your everyday speech. For example, let's consider a typical conversation between two co-workers in a business office:

KUMAR: Hi, Sachin.

SACHIN: Hi, Kumar. Have you had a chance to look at the Batliwala file?

KUMAR: Yes, and I have some suggestions.

SACHIN: OK, I'll review them.

Now let's see how this same conversation would sound on Save Indian Culture Day:

KUMAR: Bharath Mata ki Jai**** Sachin.

SACHIN: Pranaam and Jai ho Kumar, I'm in such a foul mood today. It's the weekend and I have not found a girl, even an ugly one, who has the slightest interest in me.

KUMAR: Maybe it's your bad breath or your body odour, or the fact that you have dirt under your fingernails. Shall we go out to the pub and beat up some Indian youth and molest their girlfriends to satisfy our loser frustrations. Maybe that will make you feel all better and relieved.

SASHA: Absolutely. But let’s call Mutha Lick and his boys, the more the merrier, no?? If only the two of us go the girls themselves will be able to beat us up. Besides it’s Save Indian Culture Day, that's as good an excuse as any for mauling women. Ask the Taliban.

As you can see, talking like a cultured Indian will infuse your everyday conversations with spirituality and confidence. So join the movement! On Jan24, do not answer the phone with ''hello.'' Answer the phone with ''Bharat Mata ki Jai!'' If the caller objects that he is not an Indian, inform him that he is a "bad word"mangy dog (or, if the caller is female, a "bad word" mangy female dog) who will be roundly abused, beaten and molested.

But the point is, this is a great idea, and you, my compatriots, should be part of it. Join us again on Jan. 24 next year. You HAVE the frustrated goons, darn it: Don't be afraid to let them loose! Let's make this into a grass-roots movement, (like electoral reform, or Bingo Mad Angles*****), that sweeps the pubs of the nation, or wherever Indian women and men congregate, in parks or in movie halls, even in zoos, I truly think this idea could bring us, as a nation, closer together.

But not TOO much closer. Some of us will have guns.

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Legend:
*Bharatiyanaris: What young nubile Indian women are referred to snidely in speeches by lecherous politicians.

**Kabbadi: A contact sport like Sumo Wrestling except that it is played with a single person of one team holding his breath and humming, while the opposing team try to knock the stuffing out of him.

***Mouldy Roti: Bread or Chapatti that when left out too long develops more culture than all political parties combined.

****Bharat Mata ki jai: Clarion call for Indian independence during the British Raj, now used to condone vandalism - a reference to India as our mother (female) was ironically used when molesting women in the Mangalore pub.

***** Bingo Mad Angles: a triangular titbit that comes in hermetically-sealed packets, goes well with draught beer.

Sunburn Vs. AK47's

If music be the food of love..... and all that jazz

It was a whole month after the shootings and mayhem in Mumbai, and Goa too reeled from it's aftermath. Rapid Action Force vehicles from Delhi zoomed around the state, driving mostly on the wrong side of the roads and set up camp, with bazookas and machine guns, in bunkers and foxholes, on the beaches- waiting for another Dunkirkian invasion from the sea which never came. I imagine the terrorist bosses laughing around their campfires in Baluchistan and saying ," Gotcha!"

Anyways with a never-say-die attitude Goa decided to cock a snook at the securitywallahs, terrorist threats, the economic downturn and the odd drowning tourist and partaaaaaay... right into the new year. And so; with great gusto, music, booze and hemp ( the psychoactive variant) salsa'd out onto the streets and beaches.

Back at Camp Porvorim, Goa— I was in the mood to have blood spurt from my ears, so I decided to take in a rock scene at the Candolim beach.
I arrived with some other baby-boomers at “The Sunburn Festival”, which was presenting a rock show by a whole group of bands with names like the Growling Mad Scientists, Medival Punditz, Defected Record Heads, and Order of the Essence. This show went on for three whole days, but failed to move the grounded River Princess even an inch.

When we arrived the party consisted of maybe 1500 youth of Goa, many wearing shock 'n awe attire, featuring torn jeans, chains, pointy- coloured hairdos, tattooed midriffs and pierced body parts. As you can imagine, our group, the Old Rockers from the Woodstock Era of Simla Beat Contests and JS Magazine with our Beatle boots and parallels, blended smoothly into the scene, virtually unnoticed, like water buffalo on a cruise ship.

There was our very own Vachan Chinnappa who also performed; his spontaneity ensuring that a lot of the youth were instantly affected with the St. Vitus’ Dance and spilled out onto the sand.

Festival Director Nikhil Chinappa was generally calm and composed through all the din, noise and smoke; mostly from the weed being consumed backstage in copious amounts.

I would describe the general musical genre as deafening. Even the youth of Goa seemed reluctant to get too close to the speakers for fear that the sound waves would liquefy their hairdos.
We found chairs toward the back of one of the sound stages, where we met up with Dean D'mello, a young resident architect and observer of the local rock scene.
He gave us a brief but fascinating history of rock music in Goa, which I would happily pass along to you except I couldn't hear most of it.
But from what I gathered, back in the '70s Goa had an active and subversive rock movement, which was a big part of the RP 2011 GBA protests.
Since then, however, Goan music has become much less political and much more about self-expression.
"During the day," Dean said, "a surprising proportion of the bands operate massage parlours and beach shacks."

He said the hardcore rock audience in Goa is actually quite small, which is why most local bands sing in English: "They want to go international." The problem is, their English pronunciation is often not great, the result being that neither the Konkani-speaking audience nor the English-speaking audience can really understand the lyrics. (In other words, it's pretty much the same as Bappi Lahri's compositions.)

At one point, The Con-Artists were performing a song that sounded like this:
LEAD SINGER: Humma! Humma! Hummahummahumma!
GUITARISTS: Humma! Humma! Hummahummahumma!
REMO FERNANDES : Humma! Humma! Hummahummahumma!
LEAD SINGER: Humma! Humma! Hummahummahumma!
And so on. After a while I shouted to Dean, "Are they singing 'Humma'?"
"I have no idea," he shouted back.

Later on, another band was performing another song, and one of the members of our party, sportswriter/author/international media conglomerate Muthuram-a-lingam, after listening intently for a while, said, "I believe this one is called, '(Bad word that rhymes with "duck") the Terrorist.'"
So we all listened, and sure enough, on every chorus, the lead singer appeared to be shouting, with great passion and loudness, "(Bad word) the Terrorist!"
It was a catchy tune, and on the next chorus we oldies joined in, thrusting our fists into the air and shouting "(Bad word) the terrorist!" We were crazy rockin' rebels, Indian-Ishtyle.

I am thinking of getting a tattoo.

Anyway, we had a fine time at Sunburn Goa 2008. If any of the local bands have an international breakthrough and appears in a city near you, I urge you to go hear them. Or, if the city is within 25 kilometers from your house, you can just stay home and hear them from there.

Speaking of bad words: this seems as good a time as any to inform you that the new pedestrian subway stop next to the GMC is open to public. The Bambolim subway (pronounced bum-bo-lee … yeesh!) is modern and efficient. However, it also gets very crowded, and the pedestrians use the entering-and-exiting system developed for Mumbai local trains, wherein the instant the bus stops, everybody getting off and everybody getting on tries to lunge through the same space at the same time, in clear violation of the laws of physics.

Once you manage to get inside the subway, you're generally packed in the middle of a dense mass of people, and although the exits are marked, you run the risk of missing your exit and ending up in, I don't know, Karwar. But I continue to find that whenever I get lost, or have any problem whatsoever, six or seven enthusiastic young men in T-shirts materialize out of thin air (OK, out of really thick air) and offer to help by booking me into a nearby hotel room. They all seem to speak some English, and they get a kick out of it when I try to use my pathetically limited Konkani vocabulary ("hello," "thank you" and "beer").
The volunteers seem especially amused when I use the Konkani phrase for "thank you." At least I've been assuming it means "thank you." It occurs to me, based on their reaction, that maybe it means something else. I hope to heaven it does not involve a terrorist.

Hail to the Chief !!

Kudos to Muntazer al-Zaidi, the shoe-i-cide bomber, with a lousy temper and even lousier aim. He really took one on the chin for team Iraq.... or as Georgie Bush would say "Eye-Rack" even though he was not referring to Sarah Palin.

Personally methinx throwing the shoes made for a great Nike ad..... "Just Do It" or a perfect line from an old Clint Eastwood movie, George W.saying: "Go ahead make my day"

Although CNN really made the mother of all discoveries when they said, "In Iraqi culture throwing shoes at a person is considered an insult" Wow!! Can anyone tell me in which part or the world is throwing shoes considered a compliment!?? Certainly not in the hallowed halls of the Indian Parliament or Secretariats.... the difference being that some chappals actually land with good effect.

There were not one but TWO presidents on the podium that fateful day... and there were not one but TWO shoes thrown as well... unfortunately both missed... since George W., so used to ducking issues, managed adroitly to avoid being hit by these as well. The question to be asked here is "Where was the famed secret service??" In the event of danger to the President of the United States they are supposed to even leap in front of a speeding bullet!! I suppose speeding shoes are not listed in their operating manuals as dangerous weapons.


To return to the brogues of our reporter however we are sad to inform you that we have not elicited a confession as to the origin of said footwear, nor of style. For instance were they leather, denim or suede. Were they strap-ups or lace-ups or slip-ons. Were they produced in the Asian sweat shops or in an Italian Fashion house. Were they Oxfords or Espadrilles, Mocassins or Balmorals... although one wag was heard to comment on the scribes "loafers". One thing is for is certain, we will never know for they were summarily burnt right after the incident; to the disappointment of shoe collectors everywhere.

George W. Bush confirmed that at least he was the most fit President America has ever had..... just not fit to be the President.

Our Iraqi correspondent tells us that the shoes were destroyed as Homeland Security declared them to be weapons of mass destruction. Imagine that!Finally ! Closure !!

Aroma L'amore

I’m obsessed with toast.... there is a strange sensuality with dropping the soft white bread into twin slots, pushing the lever down and feeling a satisfying click as it hits the bottom of it’s long slick groove and then locks into place.

The heat gradually envelops my face, I stay over it, breathe in the aroma, my pulse quickens in anticipation, sweat streaks my cheeks like ripened juice.

I see my image bend on the satiny chrome – performing a simple epicurean task- and inside the core, down there where I cannot see, I sense separate molecules of bread transcend their paleness, ripen and ooze and drift toward gold. I imagine a pair of scented clouds, succulent and contained, rising up and teasing my olfactory senses.

The toastness of toast, its primary grainy essence. Then the toast pops. It takes me by surprise, those two identical slices bounding upward, like a pair of swollen lips, perfectly browned and symbolically (it seems to me) aligned, and bringing every single intake of breath a shock of happiness.

Shades of Eleanor Rigby

Sometimes, You Just Don't Have Any Answers

I can't tell you that this blog will be funny or entertaining in the near future. I'm crawling into this black hole and writing every now and then just to try to keep my skeleton inside my body.

My usual daily routine for the past 11 days has included about 16 hours of sleep. When I’m not dreaming, I want to be. I start begging to go to bed for the night in the late afternoon. As though my battery is incredibly low and I’m half conscious.

When I first got to bed mid-morning 10 days ago, the sleeping continued. This was a bit of a blessing, because I could tell myself that I was getting to do what I wanted to do: sleep as much as I want. Most of the time I did not even realize I was not in bed.

Last night, however when I woke around 1:00 a.m., everything went tilt. I started talking and did not stop. I did not sleep a single wink, I talked NON-STOP all night, from when I got here to when I left my old home. And I don't care HOW melodramatic this may sound, but it was as though Satan himself had written the script for me to directly torture all and sundry.

These were my repetitive lines:
"I was beginning to think I was going to GNC today.""Why can't I go home?""Why won't you let me go home?""I thought I was a good boy. I must be a bad boy or I would get to go home.""Don't people miss me anymore? I miss them!""I don't like it here. I want to go home.""Why can't I sleep in the same place again?""Who determines when I get to go home?""I don't want to stay here the rest of my life. I need to go home."
And it DID. NOT. STOP.

It felt like I was putting cigarettes out on my arm. I felt so drained, ached all the way to my bones, and wanted to duct tape my mouth shut.

I was stunned by exhaustion and guilt and grief when I went to sleep at dawn.

This is what a man, abandoned, endures. Left behind, imprisoned, living in meaninglessness, trying to make rational decisions, trying to find a reason to go on. Left behind in lucidity.