Bhaisahab Ki Dukaan

Supercool Bigmuff

2010-10-28T19:10:00.000+05:30

Ghosts in Space

2010-08-26T13:24:00.000+05:30

The ghost-like nebula, IRAS 05437+2502, includes a small star-forming region filled with dark dust that was first noted in images taken by the IRAS satellite in infrared light in 1983. This recently released image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows many new details, but has not uncovered a clear cause of the bright sharp arc. Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, R. Sahai (JPL)

Space.com

Sahi Bola: Man is Vile Indeed

2010-08-15T12:45:00.003+05:30

What Dr. BR Ambedkar told the constituent assembly when India's constitution was finalized:

“If things go wrong under the new Constitution, the reason will not be that we had a bad Constitution. What we will have to say is that Man was vile.”

Bhaisahab says:

Sourced from Patrick French's article in Outlook.

Waiting for Godot

2009-11-26T17:29:00.003+05:30

Why They Don't Make 'em like Richards No More

2009-10-28T02:09:00.006+05:30

In a West Indies vs Australia match, Aussie bowler Greg Thomas beat the bat of Sir Viv Richards a couple of times.

Greg Thomas: "You seem to have trouble locating the ball. Let me help you - it's red and looks like this." (Holds up the ball)

Richards (After hitting the ball for six on the next delivery) : "You know what it looks like maan - now go and fetch it!"

Fetch!

Bhaisahab ke photos: Under My Umbrella

2009-09-21T20:24:00.001+05:30

[Click pic for best view]

UNDER MY UMBRELLA
Versova beach, Monsoon 2009

How To Do A Love Song

2009-09-12T13:58:00.005+05:30

Pete Yorn's Lose You. A four and a half minute masterclass on how to write, compose, render and visually represent a love song.

Or watch @ YouTube

WWW Crazies Vol 1: Nut Aboard

2009-09-11T23:04:00.006+05:30

Who doesn't like glancing at the 'Comments' section on web pages? Often, on torrent sites, comments by other users can save your computer's ass by warning you about dubious torrents. In news and information sites (Cricinfo, YouTube), comments help quickly gauge public opinion, and posters also add more information about the video/news, apart from carrying on lively debates.

Yet sometimes, one finds a comment so bizarre and ludicrous, it could only have been posted by a lunatic. Some of them are so uniquely unintelligible, they deserve recognition. This brand new label is Bhaisahab's effort to preserve instances of internet lunacy as encountered on the 'Comments' section of websites he visits.

The loony who gets the honour of being the first to be thus felicitated is the ironically named 'professorfuntime.' On the 'Comments' section on Pirate Bay for the Roger Corman film 'The Raven' (soon to be reviewed here), the sour professor had this entirely unrelated comment to make:

"^ Fuck off loser! Crawl back under the rock from whence you slithered. Don't you find yourself thinking what the fuck am I doing writing shit like this. "

For the life of me, I couldn't figure out who the prof was admonishing. If you can, pray do enlighten me.

Click here to read the comment in context

Bhaisahab ki poetry: 30 minutes on a borrowed laptop

2009-09-09T11:34:00.004+05:30

So this Monday, Bhaisahab found himself in Mumbai's NCPA, to catch his good friends perform their unique and pioneering art.

Arriving as early as possible, as is his wont, he killed time thus:

@ncpa
silent hall
empty seats
fingers twitch
one hour to go

cap
a boat inverted
a head tonsoured
no vacancy for lice
cotton keeps scalp cool

jug
leaning to the right
reading classical texts
of -isms and -ologies
silver shines bright

row Q
some are driven
others drive
but all arrive
to sit in row Q

Zamyatin on Happiness

2009-09-05T10:08:00.005+05:30

In 1921, Yevgeny Zamyatin published a novel in Russian called We. Set in the distant future, the book describes a dystopian One State in which everything is reduced to mathematically precise equations. (Predictably, Soviet authorities banned the book)

For instance, here's how the narrator, D-503, describes happiness:

"...bliss and envy -
they are the numerator and denominator
of the fraction known as happiness."

Bhaisahab says

Read more about We and Zamyatin.

Bhaisahab ke horror film reviews: Bumper edition

2009-09-03T21:00:00.008+05:30

In which we review Hollywood classic The Changeling, J-horror cult Noroi, and Belgian survival horror Calvaire.

THE CHANGELING (1980)
Directed by Peter Medak
Written by Russell Hunter, William Gray, Diana Maddox

3.5/5

Plot: John Russell, a professor of music, loses his wife and kid in a tragic incident. Six months on, he moves to Seattle to get on with his life, taking a teaching job at the university. He moves into an old mansion, where bizarre noises and sights point to the presence of a spirit. A séance is conducted, and the spirit turns out to be that of a boy called Joseph. Why does Joseph haunt the house? Why does he repeatedly ask Russell for help? John Russell finds the answers in the shady past of the powerful local politician.

Good things: The séance sequence is k.i.c.k. a.s.s. It’s very realistic, extraordinarily spooky, and Helen Burns gives a virtuoso performance as the medium. This is a film not about jolts and shocks but more about atmospherics. Much like The Shining, The Changeling creates a dark foreboding atmosphere inside the Victorian-era mansion, in which the slightest sound, the tiniest of dark spaces, throbs with the promise of terror within it.

Not so good things: Plot wise, it would have helped if John Russell had more at stake to solve the mystery behind Joseph’s death. The way his character has been written, he seems to be driven purely by altruism in his quest for answers. The film would have been edgier if Russell’s own life depended on salvation for Joseph’s unquiet spirit.

Trivia: Apparently, the story is loosely based on events experienced by co-writer Russell Hunter.

NOROI aka The Curse (2005)

Directed by Kôji Shiraishi
Written by Kôji Shiraishi & Naoyuki Yokota

4.5/5

Plot: Masafumi Kobayashi, investigator of the paranormal, has disappeared while filming a documentary on an ancient curse. We are then treated to this documentary, which shows Kobayashi and his intrepid cameraman Kana Yano descend into a series of events that gradually turn from plain weird to ‘holy shit what the fuck was that’ scary. The documentary project leads Kobayashi to a village washed away by a dam, where rituals to a demon called Kagutaba were performed before the village went under water. By the end of the film, Kobayashi’s family is destroyed, his house burnt down, and he himself vanishes.

Good things: Bull’s eye by the Japanese yet again. Shot entirely in DV as a mockumentary (a la Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield), Noroi is scarier than both films put together. At times haunting, at times downright terrifying, and always creepy, Noroi breaks new ground in horror by it’s minute attention to detail and superb pacing. Some of the scenes have to be seen to be believed. Jin Muraki as the fearless explorer Kobayashi is utterly believable, with his rotund frame and polite ways as he inquires his way into the very center of hell. At just over two hours, the film may seem long to many, but trust me – it has enough meat in it to keep you chilled from the first frame to the last.

Not so good things: Are you kidding?

Trivia: The movie’s tagline: Everybody dies. Nice, eh?

CALVAIRE aka The Ordeal (2004)

Directed by Fabrice Du Welz
Written by Fabrice Du Welz & Romain Protat

2/5

Plot: Marc Stevens is a small time singer, who makes a living singing songs in retirement homes and schools. Returning from one such gig, he gets lost in the forest and what’s worse, his van breaks down. He gets help from a gentlemanly inn keeper Monsieur Bartel. At first Bartel and the local village idiot Boris seem forthcoming and eager to call rescue services and get his van towed. But Marc soon realizes, to his utter horror, that Bartel believes in that old Eagles credo – You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. See, Bartel is batshit insane. He thinks Marc is his wife Gloria, who apparently was a ‘slut’ sleeping with all the men in the village. Bartel proceeds to imprison Marc, brutalize him, make him wear Gloria’s frock, and rape him. But Marc’s horror multiplies when the villagers come to know Gloria is back. Turns out, the whole village is batshit insane.

Good things: Not too many. There were a couple of creepy moments, sure. The stand out scene is the disturbing dance by the villagers in the pub, a dance so weird it’s spine chilling.

Not so good things: The film is a little too dense for my simple tastes. Much of the story has to be deduced by reading between the lines. Pretty hard to do when you don’t understand the language. The horror of Calvaire isn't supernatural, nor does it, like traditional survival horror, rely excessively on shock moments. That is to say, there's no chainsaw wielding Leatherface creeping up on you. The horror here has a gritty, queasy, what-if-this-happens-to-me texture. Unfortunately, it isn't forceful enough.

Trivia: "With the exception of the subtle violin tune heard during the final shots and closing credits and the creepy piano play in the bar, the film has no music score." (IMDB)

Rust In Peace Sucker

2009-09-02T13:13:00.004+05:30

In a remarkably hard hitting interview to Outlook, Jaswant Singh cuts Mr. Iron Man down to his right size - just another mediocre Indian polishitian who cannot ever think big, forget thinking out of the box. Sample this:

"To me, it’s a matter of great sadness that Advaniji has singularly failed in his function as a leader to lead. A leader will have to lead by example. Not through diktats, not through vague and unspecified insinuations and fears. And in the army, the leader takes the flak. If you transfer responsibility, and if you do not stand up for those who are colleagues, then you are not a leader. There are numerous examples of how Advaniji, on the occasions that trouble him and where he is likely to come under fire, either keeps quiet or immediately transfers responsibility to somebody else. This is not the trait of a leader."

Or this:

"I’m very distressed and this I do want to say that Advaniji is using the party to which he belongs for his various book launches. Every book launch he goes to in whichever part of India (for language editions of his autobiography, My Country, My Life) is actually organised by the party. Please, this should be asked of the party. The party congregates for his launches. This is a demonstration of sycophancy. Misuse of the party. It’s sickening."

Or this:

"I used to say that other than the Communists and the BJP, all political parties are really private limited companies built around a family or a leader. That no longer applies to the BJP. It has been reduced to the proprietary partnership of a few. This has come about under the leadership of Advani. If you allow this to happen, I say you are then not a fit instrument to serve the interests of the country."

Vinod Mehta must have had multiple orgasms when he got his pseudo-secular hands on the juicy interview, especially following Arun Shourie's hilariously funny (to everyone but the BJP, and even that is not certain) remarks on the idiot Rajnath Singh.

Poor old BJP. I guess if you don't play by god's rules, god finds a way to fuck your trip.

Jaswant Singh's interview at the Outlook website.

Them Yankees

2009-08-22T18:21:00.002+05:30

One more relic from the height of the Bush Years, when America turned from dumb to dumber, as personified by their Decider-In-Chief.

(Click image for full size)

Bhaisahab ke horror film reviews: Creepshow

2009-08-21T16:47:00.007+05:30

CREEPSHOW (1982)

3.5/5

Directed by George Romero
Written by Stephen King

Goddamn! Who would’ve thought Big Stevie King could act, and how!
More on that later – I just had to say it up front.

When you put George Romero and King together, chances of the film going wrong are pretty slim. With Creepshow, Romero – king of the zombie film – demonstrates his oeuvre extends much beyond the undead. And Big Stevie is Big Stevie – on the ball, pulling no punches, ridiculing those who ridicule horror stories while serving up five delectable nasties in this anthology.

The five campy tales that make up Creepshow, bookended by a little story about a rebellious little kid (played by King’s own son Joe) whose dad won’t let him read horror comics, are by and large true to the goal of the film, which I believe was to bring to life 1950s era horror comic books. The plots are pulpy, the boo moments suitably cheesy, and the music is top notch.

The special effects are great, especially in the truly horrifying “They’re Creeping Up On You,” which poses a question few would find easy to answer –How many cans of bug spray would you need if trapped in an apartment with billions of cockroaches? The make up effects for the ghouls, on the other hand, are disappointing. Yeah, I get the thing about paying tributes to the 50s, but come on – let’s at least try to hide the seams on the rubber suits guys!

One stand out thing about Creepshow is the seamless transitions of comic book slides and film. While technologically inferior to similar transitions in 2003’s Sin City, which is to be expected, the transitions in Creepshow make up for it with smooth aesthetic choices.

The story I liked most was “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill.” Verrill, played by Stephen King himself, discovers a strange liquid in a meteor that crashes near his shack. He decides to sell the meteor to the university, and takes it home. But gradually, as the night passes, the alien liquid seeds thick otherworldly fungus on whatever it comes into contact with. The floor is not safe, the TV is not safe, the bathroom mirror isn’t safe, the couch is not safe, and Jordy Verrill’s own body is not safe from the frighteningly fast growing fungus.

That's right Mr. Verrill. Go right ahead and touch that meteor.

Stephen King as Jordy Verrill

It’s a wacky story, and King has written many such surreal tragic-comedies – “Trucks,” where a group of travelers are held hostage by monster trucks with minds of their own, “The Moving Finger,” where a man battles an unearthly finger poking out of his sink, are a couple written in the same vein. What took me completely by surprise was this entire side to Stephen King that I was not aware of. The man is an actor! He plays the rustic fool Jordy Verrill in a no holds barred, over the top performance that will warm the cockles of longtime fans.

A toast to Big Stevie! He’s good at whatever he does.

Bhaisahab ka art: Dhishum

2009-08-07T23:02:00.002+05:30

DHISHUM

The Mother of all Poems

2009-08-04T15:02:00.003+05:30

If, as Robert Frost claimed, a poem "begins in delight and ends in wisdom," then surely this is the world's greatest poem.

In The Desert
by Stephen Crane

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.

I said: “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”

Who is Stephen Crane?

Cricinfo: Where it's at

2009-08-01T18:59:00.005+05:30

Cricket fans rejoice. We don't have to suffer the bad grammar, ugly analogies, and embarrasing foot-in-the-mouth moments that Gavaskar, Shastri, Akram et al inflict from the commentary box. All you need to do is head over to Cricinfo. Over the years, the quality of their text commentary has improved by leaps and bounds. What makes following a match at Cricinfo even more pleasing are the interactive features unavailable to television viewers - stats on demand, 3D animation of wickets and boundaries, a newly introduced Hawk Eye, and the ever pleasing feedback from readers across the world bantering with the commentators. Sample this from the 3rd test of the 2009 Ashes:

10.45am: As the umbrellas remain in place in Birmingham, Pete from Australia makes his point: "Merv Hughes has just shown why he should not be selecting teams. They rate Watson as one of 5 openers in the squad because he opens in one-dayers - that is laughable. If that's the case, why didn't Adam Gilchrist ever open in Test matches?"

And Graham asks a question which, frankly, I don't know the answer to: "Didn't Edgbaston used to have a motorised cover for the entire playing area, including the outfield? The 'Brumbrella' wasn't it? What happened to that?"

Gav from Scotland has an answer about the Brumbrella: "It was removed as it was 'too heavy to move once it had rain on it'! - only in England could an umbrella be too heavy to move after a shower."

Good fun isn't it? And rain delays on Cricinfo also lead to interesting off-the-cuff contests. This one, a limerick contest beginning with the promising line - "There once was a man named Flintoff." Apparently there were hundreds of responses. The winner:

There once was a man named Flintoff,
'Oft injured, he rarely had the splint off,
But ten overs at Lord's,
Went through 'Stralia like swords.
And with five wickets in hand he did sprint off
Steve Fox, UK

Bhaisahab's favourite:

There once was a man called Flintoff
Whose bouncers damn near took your head off
But with his bad knee
We'll just have to see
If his dancing is better than that Gough
John King, UK

Read more hilarious Flintoff limericks here.

As for Bhaisahab, he's going to mute the TV and rely on commentary from Cricinfo.

Bhaisahab ki beti: Leela

2009-07-27T16:42:00.004+05:30

LEELA
b. 24 July, 2009
(Click pic for bigger size)

Bhaisahab's 100th post had to be special. And so it is.

Some day soon, I'll recount how we got scammed by the private medical establishment. But not today. Today let's just admire the heir to Bhaisahab Ki Dukaan.

Kabir: On Transience

2009-07-21T10:48:00.004+05:30

जो उग्या सो आंथीबै, फूल्या सो कुमिलाई |
जो चिरिणया सो दहि पड़े, जो आया सो जाई ||

What rises shall set some day, all that blooms must rot,
What has been built shall some day crumble, all who come must leave.

Bhaisahab ke horror film reviews: The Descent

2009-07-20T18:45:00.020+05:30

THE DESCENT (2005)

Written & Directed by Neil Marshall

2.5/5

Oh no. Another much talked about film that Bhaisahab was eagerly waiting to see, and another disappointment. Brit director Neil Marshall's second film, after the highly acclaimed (by others, so I'll take that with a pinch of salt after my experience with The Descent) Dog Soldiers, The Descent flatters to deceive. Big, big time.

The story of a bunch of women who love extreme sports, The Descent begins with a tragedy for the lead - Sarah (Shauna Macdonald). A year later, during which time one assumes Sarah has been too preoccupied overcoming her grief to give enough time to extreme sports, she arrives in the American Appalachian Mountains at the invite of her best friend Juno (Natalie Mendoza, who kicks ass) to explore some of the cave systems in the area. Joining them are four other women, each tough as nails and sexy when they want to be (the kind of babes who'd kick you in the balls without batting a pretty eyelid should you try something stupid, but also seduce you nice and slow till you holler uncle if they like what they see). However, Juno hasn't exactly been honest with them regarding the cave they are about to step into. But by the time she's forced to be honest, the group is trapped deep underground, with primeval eyeless cavemen for company. Cavemen who like the taste of meat.

That's where I lost interest in the film. Up until then, the film does an exceptional job of building a rising sense of claustrophobia as the primary engine of horror. You think getting stuck in an elevator is terrifying? How about being trapped in an unexplored cave where the only way forward is deeper into the darkness? But Marshall ruins it with the cavemen - boring, uninspiring, unscary shriek freaks who make the claustrophobia evaporate like so much ditch water.

The film made it to screens the same year another horror film set in a cave system - The Cave - was released. Comparisons, therefore, are inevitable. In The Cave too, carnivorous creatures replaced claustrophobia as the main agents of horror, but they worked because they were not humanoid - they were a delicious combo - part-human, part-dragon, part-eel, part-Archaeopteryx. Something that reminded me of the supreme monster of all - Ridley Scott's alien bitch. Besides, The Cave had the added chill of underwater terror, which (refer to the review of Rogue) can really max the terror.

Plot wise, The Descent scores over The Cave, with strong characters driving a story that is complicated and many-layered, with themes of maternal inadequacy, female bonding, and friendship under duress propelling the first one hour of the film quite nicely.

As far as climaxes go, The Descent again scores over The Cave. It's an ending that, although not original, represents an independent vision rather than a studio-dictated one, but you wouldn't want me to go into detail about that here would you?

All in all, The Descent was well begun but half done.

Post Script [Spoiler alert]: One notable thing about the film: The Descent is the only horror film I've seen which has an exclusively female cast. Sarah's husband has a 2 minute appearance in the beginning, and the cavemen - well, they're not human are they?

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Are they?

Profano Intus Decor (Being an account of a visit to Nainital)

2009-07-19T11:54:00.007+05:30

Nainital, 2004. A withering rhododendron floating in the gutter on a hot, muggy day.

If you want to know what tourism is doing to the Himalayas, come on up to Nainital. Row to the centre of the deep green lake and take a look around. The hills - as they were and as they always will be - are beautiful, but only if you ignore the hideous, haphazard, tin and wood buildings that pockmark them like small pox boils.

It makes one glum to witness once beautiful hills sheltering a romantic lake metamorphose into a chaotic, unplanned, obscene and unsightly urban slum, greedily sucking in the piles of currency flung at it by the Shahi Paneer crowd.

Only tourists go to Nainital these days. Travelers go elsewhere.

It was our misfortune to arrive at the height of the tourist season - when a wave of well-fed men and women from Delhi and its lesser cousins were roaming Nainital’s Mall Road – the epicentre of the disease, accompanied by thousands upon thousands of ill-behaved children. The kind whose parents never told them an essential truth about life – you don’t seek video games on mountain tops.

They walked up and down Mall Road, parents and kids, shrieking at each other and slobbering over ice creams, all day and all evening. The younger men shamelessly leered at fashionable newly-wed women, who accompanied their pushy husbands as they scoured the crowded roads for a place to eat. Mall Road has hundreds of options for this activity, all of them doing their best to cater to the tourists’ tastes, which evidently boiled down to two – Shahi Paneer or Butter Chicken. The rare exceptions which deviated served food so bad it would have given maggots a bout of queasiness. For instance, I had ordered roast chicken from the continental menu of a restaurant called Flatis (yes, we should have been warned by that, I know), and it looked and tasted like boiled chicken coated with tamarind sauce. The worst part – I paid 100 bucks for that shit.

The crowd was bad, but what was worse was the constant sound of car honking. Perhaps forty, fifty years back, the hills of Nainital knew no other sound but the chattering of crickets and the chirruping of birds. Now, I fear the hills would not be able to take the vehicular noise much longer. One of these days, they are just going to sigh and collapse into the welcoming embrace of the lake. The infernal sound of horns is enough to make one go insane, for the ears keep negating what the eyes see in the distance – that this place is as far away from those mountains as Mumbai is to Shanghai.

As a result of the invasion of the Shahi Paneer crowd, people in the tourism business in Nainital have never had it so good. They’ll charge your shirt off for a walk through a pinhead, if you know what I mean. This is especially the case with accommodation. We walked into a hovel to inquire about rooms, and encountered a faux Anglo Indian (complete with a scarf), the manager and perhaps owner of the hotel. He encouraged us to check out his room before fixing the tariff. We were led to a room which was uglier than a crow’s asshole and stank twice as bad. Its walls were painted a peculiar combination of sky blue and dark green, or I think that is what the combo was because a 40 W bulb was all the light the dank room was equipped with. Its mustiness irritated the nose, and the toilet brought bile to the throat. We walked back to the sahib and asked, more out of politeness, what the charges for that box was. “Thou.” He said. I did not get it in the beginning. Was he going to recite the ten commandments? Then he lifted one finger. “Thou,” he said again, and calmly lit his cigarette. 1000 bucks? For that pile of shit? Mrs Bhaisahab’s outrage was visible, as it always is under such circumstances, while I considered awhile his smug face, hair jelled back and moustache trimmed to the last errant hair. Then we walked out.

Eventually, we had to settle for a room just slightly better than Thou Uncle’s but at a considerably cheaper tariff. Whatever rooms we liked, were priced upwards of 1.5K. And its not like we are the 100-channel TV and personal bar types.

This particular room was in a hotel named Paryatak, a name that looked like a fish on a bicycle amidst the Pine Views and the Lake Views. Its distinctive feature was the Indian style toilet, which was perched on a platform nearly two feet above the bathroom floor. The missus’ take on it was that it was like climbing the Qutub Minar to take a shit. It may not be a good take, but it made us laugh.

Later, I asked the manager of Paryatak Hotel why Nainital was so expensive. His view was that the population of Nainital depends on the Shahi Paneer crowd for economic sustenance. And the latter arrive only in the summer months, peaking in June. The rest of year, he assured us, Nainital resembles a ghost town. Thus, summer is when Nainital sucks up as much money as is possible from the plains - sucks up enough to sustain it through the harsh winter months, exactly like rodents preparing to hibernate. “You come in winter. You’ll get the same room for 100 bucks,” he grinned.

Coming to the good things now. There were two. One was a horse ride in the hills, and the second was the boat ride in the lake, or tal. You might say a guided trip around the hills of Nainital by a horse – leash tightly in the hands of the handler – is such a Shahi Paneer thing to do. But I had never ridden a horse man!

Thus, we were taken to a point above Nainital by cab to where the horsemen of Nainital lived. These guys were all Muslim, and the owners of some fine looking horses. We were to be taken by Kamran and his father on two horses to five places of visual interest – Dorothy’s Seat (or Dorothi Sheat), Land’s End, Tiffin Top, some wondrous place where Koi Mil Gaya was filmed, and finally to a mandatory Lover’s Point, where - you guessed it - defeated lovers jumped off and crushed the hateful world below with their broken bodies.

Dara, Kamran, Rustam

The horses were beauties – mine was Rustom and Mrs Bhaisahab’s was Dara – and it was cool to be on the saddle. The bigger thrill was when Kamran left the leash with me and pushed off, leaving me in control of a horse clippity-clopping down narrow mountain paths. I was apprehensive as to what the fuck was I supposed to do if the horse suddenly reared, or fell off the steep hill. I mean, sure I loved animals and all, but I was no Alexander. But Rustom had a mind calmer and more able than most MBAs I have met. He just snorted at me to relax and take in the view. All I had to do was pull the leash a little if I felt he was going too fast, twist it to the right if I felt he was going too close to the edge of the mountain for my comfort. That’s all there is to horse riding. Once I got the hang of it, I pretended to be a Louis L’amour cowboy, heading into the Colorado mountains to seek my own piece of ranch land.

The places we saw were pretty ho-hummy, except for Dorothi Sheat. Here, a guy had set up shop (a table and a cupboard) advertising photographs in fancy clothes – whatever you fancy - and the Shahi Paneer crowd was loving it as much they dig their McVeggie burgers. What’s more, it was the same price – twenty bucks for a dress. “Goddamm!” they exclaimed.

They got their kids to dress up in some crazy outfits. There was a plump little boy of no more than 5, who was wearing a yellow superhero suit with black Phantom goggles. Another kid, slightly older, was dressed as a daaku, complete with a fake air-gun and a turban. He was accompanied by a girl robed in a pink ghagra choli. The photographer took them on a rock, made them pose, and clicked – the daaku and his captive damsel in front of ageless green mountains, who surely must be getting some super entertainment at Dorothi Sheat. But at least it was kids who did the tomfoolery there. According to the missus, in Mussorie full-grown adults do the same – dress as fat Basantis and butt ugly Veerus or as Romeos and Juliets and pose for creative businessmen to click their photos.

Our boat in Naini Lake
(Don't miss the ugly buildings in the BG)

The boat ride around the tal was good too. It’s a big lake, is Naini, and the boatman told us it is 120 feet deep at its centre. We had a chat with the boatman on the basics of the boat economy in Nainital, and this is what we found out – most of the boatmen are Hindus, unlike the horse keepers, and none of them owned the boats they rowed. These boats, costing 35-45 grand, were owned by folks in the government machine. The owners would then rent the boats to the pros and charge them 60 bucks per boat ride for the favour. The boatmen in turn would charge tourists 120 bucks for a ride around the lake. We wondered, however, how the owners kept track of the number of rides their boat has done on the lake. They probably install minders on the lake front who keep score. We told the boatman to take us around twice. This way, perhaps the minders would not notice the second round and the boatman could earn an extra 120 bucks. Besides, Shahi Paneer season was when they could make a living with boats. The rest of the year, they had nothing to do but grow potatoes on small plots of terraced land. Hopefully, we gave the dude a leg up.

While cruising along on the green waters of the lake, we passed a boat with a Shahi Paneer family in it. It was a pedal boat, and the family was engaged in pedalling in unison. At the centre of the boat, this family had placed a Made In China two-in-one, which was squeaking out a film tune. We looked at each other with wide grins as a shrill, tinny version of “Mera jeevan kora kagaz” (not a very summer-y song anyway) floated out of the two-in-one, on a boat in the middle of a beautiful green lake. It was something Dali would have approved. Someone in that happy family actually had a brain stupid enough to cook up this plan - canned music on a boat ride in Naini tal. They slowly disappeared from view in the thin mist that had enveloped the lake, pushing pedals with fat, well-fed legs, as Kishore Kumar sang self-piteously about those who are truly happy in life – the ones who can bear pain cheerfully.

Early next day, we checked out of Paryatak Hotel and got the hell out of Nainital, erstwhile queen of the hills.

The water's cold no more

2009-07-18T09:11:00.005+05:30

Way back in 1993, a dude called Baba Sehgal stormed the fledgling Indipop charts with a curious song called 'Thanda Thanda Pani' (lit. cold, cold water). Featuring nonsensical lyrics and a baseline faithfully true to Queen's 'Under Pressure,' TTP was annointed India's first rap song - a full 3 years after rap as a musical genre became known to us thanks to MC Hammer's Grammy winning yet equally curious ditty 'U Can't Touch This.'

Flash forward to 2007, and this is what you get:

Evolution? Oh golly gee yes. Sublime evolution.

Bhaisahab ke photos: Louisa

2009-07-11T16:50:00.004+05:30

LOUISA
Bangalore, 2004
[Click picture for full size]

RIP King of Pop

2009-07-07T13:45:00.003+05:30

"If you enter this world knowing you are loved
and you leave this world knowing the same,
then everything that happens in between can be dealt with."

- Michael Jackson

Jackson fans set for 'King of Pop' final curtain

LOS ANGELES (AFP) — Hundreds of millions of fans were preparing to bid a poignant farewell to Michael Jackson, as Los Angeles went into lockdown ahead of a star-studded memorial service.

Nearly two weeks after the death of the tragic "King of Pop," America is expected to grind to a standstill as the tortured music superstar is finally laid to rest.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Adios dude. You got a bum deal, even though you had everything.

What am I going to miss most about The Gloved One? The signature high pitched 'aaao!' in the middle of songs. Which is also the reason I rarely liked his music. But MJ was so much a part of Bhaisahab's boarding school cultural milieu, he deserves a fond goodbye.

Here's my favorite MJ song:

Give In To Me - Michael Jackson featuring Slash

Bhaisahab ke horror film reviews: Rogue

2009-07-01T14:04:00.015+05:30

ROGUE (2007)

Written & Directed by Greg McLean

4/5

Opinion is divided on which is the meanest killing machine in the waters of the world - the Great White Shark, or the Salt Water Crocodile. Both are ancient hunters, perfecting their skills since the age of the dinosaurs, and both possess huge rows of serrated teeth set in a powerful jaw that can snap a man's head off just as easily as a man snaps a chicken leg into two.

Jaws introduced the Great White way back in the 70s, and what an introduction it was! It set such a high benchmark for the killer shark film, that few filmmakers have attempted further explorations of shark terror, and fewer still have expanded on the concept (Deep Blue Sea comes to mind because of it's innovative idea of genetically modified hyper-intelligent sharks).

Crocodiles and alligators, in contrast, have never really gotten their due. Even though title for title, I’m certain there are more alligator/croc films than shark films. Many a filmmaker has attempted to showcase the brute force of an alligator attack. Yet by and large, most of them have been B movies - shoddy animatronics, poor scripting, and an over reliance on gore to induce horror. (Lake Placid being a notable exception).

But Rogue, an Aussie film about a fiercely territorial 25 feet salt water crocodile hunting a group of tourists in Australia's verdant Northern Territory, could well be the benchmark for the croc film. The tourists are in the hands of Kate Ryan (Radha Mitchell), captain of the boat Suzanne and a backwoods expert on salt water crocodiles. Among the tourists are a travel writer, a man with a mission to immerse his wife's ashes in the river, and a plumpy Irish chick (Celia Ireland, who absolutely rocks in the limited screen time she is given). Their day is going fine - with some great sightings of crocodiles - until they see distress flares coming from the direction of sacred tribal land. Kate, following protocol, plunges the boat into a forbidden gorge. And leads her tourists into a one ton nightmare.

Rogue’s signature, just as it was in Jaws, is tension. That’s the ticket in an underwater monster flick isn’t it? As long as you are in the boat, no matter how flimsy, you are safe. If you fall into the water, all bets are off. Every ripple is a threat. That’s tension.

You're stuck neck deep in a bottomless river, not knowing what is swimming beneath you, inching closer to your thrashing legs. Tension.

You’re caught in a small island in a tidal river, night is creeping up, and so is the tide. Soon the island will be under water, where lurks a huge crocodile, equipped by nature to hunt best at night. That’s tension and you better believe it.

McLean plays out the heart pounding tension so well, building it up so lovingly, it’s hard even for hardened monster flick buffs like Bhaisahab to stop from squirming. Full marks on that score. The film also scores high on death sequences, and its moody music that is able to create an ocular interpretation of the monster croc much before we see it, filling us with dread.

The croc itself has also been wonderfully rendered to life by an efficient crew of animatronics experts, sculptors, and FX supervisors. Compared to Jaws' Great White, Rogue's croc is scarier because crocs are easily the most terrifying of all predators. Their dragon like appearance, coldly calculating reptilian eyes, sinewy jagged tails, and muscular jaws disturbingly similar to a T-Rex’s all add to make them bad news for whoever is unlucky enough to encounter one. And when it’s also a 25-foot chewing machine as in Rogue, oh bother – it’s time to take a piss in your pants and say hasta la vista to the world.

The characters in the film are nicely etched, with a healthy dose of that peculiarly charming redneck Aussie humor. But McLean doesn’t go overboard with his characters. Just when you think there’s going to be a longish character exposition, McLean reintroduces the croc – the star of the film. Nice.

Finally, don’t miss the lush cinematography. The shots of the wild, unexplored Northern Territory, access to large parts of which is judiciously guarded by aboriginal tribes, are spectacular, to say the least. There's breathtaking canyons, deep green waters, miles upon miles of grassland, red, weathered rocky cliffs, and much more.

Scenery to die for. Just ask the folks in the Suzanne.

India's Most Stupid

2009-06-26T21:17:00.006+05:30

The VHP. Now that's a fucking lunatic asylum if there ever was one.

And in the deepest bowels of the asylum lies the dungeon for the criminally insane - currenly occupied by the Bajrang Dal.

Tehelka journalist Tusha Mittal (note to self: not all Mittals are greedy soulless money making machines) went visiting a "camp" for kids organized by the dungeon loonies. Here's a longish extract from her astonished report.

----------

At first glance, one could mistake this for a boys’ summer camp. But a closer look, and something else emerges. There are lathi pyramids, hoops of fire, gunshots and lessons about the different stages of war. The boys must learn to jump through flames if their houses are set on fire by “terrorists, Muslims, illegal immigrants,” must know a gun intimately to use it for maximum impact. On their arms and foreheads are bright orange bands with red imprints. For Sandeep Yadav, 15, the son of a garment shop owner in Sarojni Nagar, the orange brings motivation and a sense of belonging. “It charges me up to fight,” he says.

For what? “To protect Bharat Mata.” From what? “Akraman” (Attack). By whom? He stammers. The English. The Australians. The Christians. The Muslims. Probe his newly acquired worldview further and this surfaces: “Hindu girls should not wear sleeveless clothes. That is what Bharatya sanskriti (Indian culture) teaches us. And if a Hindu girl marries a Muslim, her head should be chopped off and the Muslim man’s too.”

Welcome to the training camp of the Bajrang Dal, the youth sect of the rightwing Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). It is a weeklong camp held annually to “instill courage within the Hindu youth and awaken them to their patriotic duties,” says Ashok Kapoor, Bajrang Dal Delhi convenor.

[SNIP]

Ask Vineet Kumar, 14, barely four feet tall, the son of a sports garments factory worker, what is the Bajrang Dal? With a voice not yet cracked, he answers in phrases – “Ram Setu, Ram Janambhoomi, Amarnath yatra, hartal, and chakka jam.” According to him, “Pakistani terrorists” were trying to shut down the Amarnath Yatra but the Bajrang Dal rallied every child in Jammu and Kashmir on the streets to protest. At the camp, Vineet learnt a new word he likes to thrust at every opportunity: Virodh (resist) — that is what he wants to do when he grows up. Ask what he will virodh against and his eyes wander, trying to distill the stew of textbook answers fed to him.

THERE WERE speeches: “Be weary of six M’s,” the boys were told from a booming microphone. “Muslims, Missionaries, Marxists, Lord Macaulay, foreign Media and Maino [UPA President Sonia Gandhi’s middle name].”

-----------------

Did I mention these guys are shit-for-brains morons, besides being pathologically insane? Yes sir. They're weary weary dumb.

Well, that's what you get when your party boss is a dude who looks like Spot Nana.

For Tusha Mittal's article and some interesting pictures of the "camp", click here.

Kabir: Morbid, True.

2009-06-26T10:48:00.008+05:30

माटी कहे कुम्हार से, तू क्या रोंधे मोहे
इक दिन ऐसा आयेगा, मैं रोंधुंगी तोहे

Says the earth to the potter - you think you're crushing me?
Such a day shall come to pass, when I'll be crushing you.

An epiphany

2009-06-20T19:54:00.013+05:30

That's Frances Bean Cobain, old Kurt's daughter. The last time I saw a picture of her, she was a chubby little baby, blissfully unaware that her dad had just blasted his brains out with a shotgun in the garage.

She's 17 years old now.

She's how old I was when I first heard her father's music.

.

.

.

.

As Martin Amiss wrote in Money:

"Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by....
It's passing, yet I'm the one who's doing all the moving."

Bhaisahab says:

Bhaisahab ke horror film reviews: Zibahkhana

2009-06-16T11:25:00.006+05:30

ZIBAHKHANA

2/5

Written by Omar Khan and Peter Toombs
Directed by Omar Khan

When Bhaisahab was little, he went to visit Delhi with his family. He was thrilled because he could finally see those sights he kept reading about in books - Red Fort, Appu Ghar, Purana Qila, Qutub Minar, Alai Minar.

Whoa! Alai Minar? Yeah. Alai Minar - The great Khilji Alauddin's attempt to build a minar taller than the Qutub, and true to the man's character, he ordered it constructed right in front of Qutub Minar.

Unfortunately, the emperor popped it before the cement had dried on the 24 metre first storey, pitifully short of the Qutub's 72 odd metres. But for some unexplained reason, Bhaisahab was more excited about checking out Alai Minar rather than the Qutub.

When the tour bus got there, it was a rude shock to find Alai Minar looking woefully inadequate in front of the stately, majestic, clean Qutub. It sulked in one corner of the Qutub complex, bird poop lining it's floor in a thick carpet, a stale bird smell suffocating the senses, lover’s declarations scratched on the walls, beer bottles and chips packets piled in the corners. A historic garbage dump.

It was, to put it gently, a huge fucking disappointment.

Zibahkhana arouses the same feeling of disappointment. Created by our friends across the border to the west, Zibahkhana had made waves internationally, marketing itself as Pakistan's first zombie horror film. A bloody B-Grade attack on the genteel idiosyncratic sensibility of Urdu aesthetics. So when I finally got my hands on the film, I could not wait to watch it. But it was all for nothing. The film's noble intentions have been stymied by a paper thin plot, a confused screenplay, cheesy dialogues, and terrible, terrible actors (even by horror film standards).

Writers Omar Khan and Peter Toombs (sepulchral name, that) packed in all the clichés - flesh eating, slow moving undead, vague insinuations of water pollution spreading the zombie virus, doltish, good looking, dope smoking teens on their way to a rock concert, a bizarre sideways shift to a burkha-clad psycho killer, and buckets and buckets of blood.

But as the pioneer of the zombie horror flick George Romero himself will testify, gore alone doth not a zombie flick make. In the end, like in any another genre, story matters, depth of character matters, originality of vision matters.

However, let's not withhold credit where it's due. Bad execution should not overwhelm good intentions. Omar Khan is obviously a huge fan of the horror genre. In the room of one of the characters, he's put up the chilling poster of Maniac, one of the scariest movie posters ever. I think I have it here somewhere....

Ah here it is.

To get back to Omar Khan, he's done a great job with the zombie scenes. The communal flesh eating scene is raw, ferocious, and brutal. Great stuff. The spiked ball on a chain used by the psycho (see poster) is another great spark, a truly innovative idea. Finally, the title track - an instrumental ditty - kicks ass. Ataullah Khan meets RD Burman. A most apt track for the cheesy, campy feel of the film.

When little Bhaisahab's Delhi trip was over, he'd returned home feeling kind of sad for poor Alauddin Khilji and his unfinished dream. Alai Minar has since then held a fond place in his heart. Zibahkhana likewise is floating down into that deep dark part of his heart where such things as imperfect ugliness and unfinished dreams are stored.

In fact, I'm already quite fond of the film.

Peculiar Secular Pickle Tickle

2009-06-15T23:57:00.004+05:30

It’s a word that rhymes with peculiar and smells like politics when it appears in newspapers. In television debates, evoking the word immediately enables the audience to bracket the speaker in a particular category – the ‘good guy’ category or the ‘pseudo’ category – depending on your own political dispensation. The word of course is “Secular”, and it has by and large defined political debate in the country since the days of the Ayodhya kar sevas.

You have the defenders of secularism on one side of the debate, led ostensibly by groupings of polishitians calling themselves Congress, Samajwadi, Leftist etc, who argue that secularism is the only glue that holds India together. Never mind the simmering caste and class tensions. On the other side are the so-called Hinduism-defenders – polishitians in half-pants, who hold the view that secularism (or ‘pseudo-secularism’ if you please) is nothing but appeasement of minority religious groups for power and profit. Never mind that majority-appeasement is also about power and profit. In fact, politics itself is about power and profit, as much as religion is about faith and devotion.

Thankfully, in these glorious days of the early 21st century, secularism remains only in the bottomless pit of politics, so we can leave those honorable members of parliament to beat each other silly with the ifs and buts of it and go on with our lives. Because according to the preamble of our fastidious constitution:

"WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC....."

Personally speaking, they should amend the preamble (won't be the first time either) to just say this:

"When I do good, I feel good.
When I do bad, I feel bad.
And that is my religion."*

And in a freakish co-incidence, that's also the essence of secularism.

* attributed to Abraham Lincoln.

Bhaisahab ke horror film reviews: Child's Play

2009-06-12T13:59:00.003+05:30

CHILD’S PLAY (1988)

Story by Don Mancini
Screenplay by Don Mancini, John Lafia, Tom Holland
Directed by Tom Holland

3/5

Child’s Play begins with serial killer Charles Ray cornered in a toy shop, shot and wounded by cops. Ray, knowing he is dying, wants revenge against the cop who shot him, and his partner who had ditched him. But how’s he to get it, lying as he is in a pool of blood in the dolls section of the toy store? Luckily for him, he knows some mean voodoo tricks. He invokes incantations and transfers his soul into a “Good Guy” brand doll.

A day later, single mother Karen disappoints her son Andy on his birthday. He had expected a talking Good Guy doll like the one he had seen on TV. But those dolls are expensive, and she’s only a salesgirl in a departmental shop. Help comes through her friend Maggie, who tells her a hobo in the back alley has a Good Guy doll to sell. She buys the doll and gets it home. Of course, it is the doll with Charles Ray’s soul in it.

And thus comes the darkness into her life.

Child’s Play is an out-an-out 80s horror flick – cheesy digital effects, loud synths, weird hairdos… you get the drift. But all of that hardly matters the moment Chucky comes alive.

The brilliant puppeteers who put together Chucky the killer doll deserve a blooming Oscar for the result of their hard work – a seriously frightening, obscenity mouthing, bad ass doll. Fact is, it’s those obscenities – ranging from ‘stupid bitch’ to ‘fuck you asshole’ – sprouting from the doll’s mouth that ratchets up the scare factor, partly because it’s so alien to hear dolls swear like lunatics.

In Chucky the talking doll, Child’s Play created one of the scariest (and coolest) icons of horror cinema, one that the audience kept demanding more of. This led to sequel after sequel, albeit each – as is wont with sequels – inferior to the one preceding it. In fact, by 1998’s Bride of Chucky, the series had degenerated into the awkward horror-comedy sub-genre. Sad.

But also as is wont with franchise films, the first one is the best (although not necessarily the scariest – my vote for that goes to Child’s Play II).

So if you want to experience a peculiar adult nightmare dressed as a child’s toy, check this cult hit out.

The Tank Man of Beijing

2009-06-02T11:50:00.006+05:30

Who remembers the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre? I do. State run Doordarshan gave some sketchy details, India Today published the horrible pictures, and then Prannoy Roy's fledgling NDTV show 'The World This Week' broadcast this jaw dropping video of one unarmed man's act of bravery.

According to Wiki, the man is/was Wang Wei Lin. Some say he was dragged away and executed, other accounts claim he is still alive and in hiding - either in China itself or in Taiwan.

There is another hero in this video. The unknown, unseen tank driver. He could have easily rolled over Wang. But he chose not to. He, like a true soldier, recognized and respected bravery when he saw it.

And for that, he in turn has Bhaisahab's deep respect.

Bhaisahab ke photos: The Thinker

2009-06-01T15:01:00.003+05:30

THE THINKER
Guwahati, November 2003
[click picture for bigger size]

Dive

2009-05-27T12:18:00.003+05:30

Nirvana plays the song Dive, live. A fine example of what Seattle grunge was all about.

Cross-dressing, just one of those things I love about Nirvana.

Bhaisahab ke horror film reviews: Freaks

2009-05-25T10:04:00.005+05:30

FREAKS (1932)
Directed by Tod Browning
Written by Tod Robbins

3.5/5

It's uncanny how I happened to watch Freaks just a few days after Cronenberg's The Brood. Since Cronenberg's oeuvre is body shock, I wouldn't be surprised if he, with his fascination for physiological anomalies, considers Freaks as the mother lode of his twisted imagination.

Freaks tells the story of a bunch of sideshow performers in a circus - dwarves, limbless men and women, siamese twins, microcephalics, hermophrodites, etc. When the beautiful, normal Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova) ensnares the midget Hans (Harry Earles) for his inheritance, slowly trying to poison him to death and run away with her lover Hercules, the circus strongman, the freaks gang up and take revenge. A simple enough story, but one which packs a punch.

Good things. Freaks was banned in the United Kingdom for 30 years, because it's cast of real deformed people was deemed too horrific for public sensibilities. Although it's a mystery why such a step was necessary considering any member of the public could visit any of the myriad circuses floating around and see freaks for himself/herself. But yeah, for audiences not used to the ribaldry of the 1930s and 1940s, the freaks in the film can be quite disturbing, especially the limbless man aka 'The Human Torso' (who by the way was a Hindi-speaking immigrant from British Guayana), the haunting sadness in the eyes of 'half man-half woman' Josephine/Joseph, the brittle persona of the human skeleton, and the creepy vulnerability of the microcephalics. But 20 minutes into the film (the film's short at one hour 2 minutes), you start emphatizing with the freaks. And that's also when the real monsters expose themselves - the 'normal' people in the circus - harking back to Bhaisahab's contention that real horror is what man does to man.

Bad things? Nothing really, save to say that this cult film is an old skool horror classic, and hence, the chill factor is considerably low. But don't let that come in the way of experiencing a good piece of cinematic storytelling.

Mandate 2009: Compassionate Corruption

2009-05-24T10:48:00.006+05:30

India held it's general elections last week, and the strong showing by the UPA has got all the psephologists and analysts in a tizzy. It is a vote for youthful change, some claim. Others, typically the Congress sycophants, credit the performance to Rahul Gandhi (no prizes for guessing who would not have been blamed if the party had done badly). Still others credit the Congress victory to the negative-aggressive campaign ran by the BJP. Advani's personal attack on Dr Singh was responsible, some say. Others say projecting Modi was a mistake. And Varun 'I Eat Muslims For Breakfast' Gandhi's idiocy did not help the cause.

But to Bhaisahab, here's what the 2009 general election shows:
The electorate has finally accepted that corruption is a doughty villain, like Al Qaeda. It cannot be stamped out. Having accepted that, the electorate has set a tolerance level for corruption, which essentially states that the government can encourage a basic level of corruption, provided this level does not exceed minimum developmental aspirations of the country. Say, for instance, the Ministry of HRD siphons away 100 crores every year out of the ministerial budget for the ubiquitous 'party fund.' The ministry must therefore spend at least thrice that on doing what it is supposed to do - build schools for rural kids, fund universities adequately, ensure primacy is given to the education of the girl child, etc.

In essence, the electorate was demanding compassionate corruption from it's polishitians.

The UPA found favour among the electorate as the combine most amenable to this arrangement. After all, in their 5-year stint in government, the NDA had exposed themselves as hypergreedy and déclassé. Likewise for the Third Front, which the nation's leading advertising bulletin delightfully referred to as 'Thud Front' after the elections. I mean, you've got to be the stupidest mofo in the world to expect smash and grab operators like Mayawati, Mulayam and Laloo to understand a nuanced idea like compassionate corruption. Unlike for these pretenders, corruption is old hat for the Congress. So maybe, during Dr. Singh's first term, it did just enough to convince the people that the traditional 30-70 split between development and corruption had come down to a more acceptable 50-50.

And now, onwards to a 60-40 ratio, although Bhaisahab's considered opinion is that it should ideally be 75-25. Close to western standards, you see?

His Grace

2009-05-23T19:21:00.005+05:30

While hunting for a WG Grace photo for the graphic in the last post, I came across this stunning photograph of a sculpture of Dr. Grace, with sculptor Louis Lamen beside it. I have touched it up a bit. Nothing fancy, just tweaked the brightness and contrast to as per my aesthetic sense.
Click here to view the original.

The Ghost of WG Grace

2009-05-23T11:51:00.010+05:30

(click for bigger view)

Dr. Grace is quoting a Rajasthani saying, which goes:

"Banya, your ways are beyond simple folk
You drink water only after filtering it
But blood you drink straight up."

PS: From The Indian Express -

Now, Lalit Modi wants two IPLs every year
With the Indian Premier League proving a smashing hit in its adopted home in South Africa, the organisers of the Twenty20 razzmatazz are mulling a second and shorter version of the event in the same calendar year at an overseas location.

IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi told 'The Daily Telegraph' that the success of the second IPL has prompted the organisers to explore untapped territories like United States and Canada and the League's Governing Council would discuss the issue after the tournament ends in Johannesburg on Sunday.

"The potential is huge," Modi said.

Continues at link above.

Bhaisahab ke horror film reviews: The Brood

2009-05-10T12:11:00.003+05:30

THE BROOD (1979)

Written and directed by David Cronenberg

4/5

Canadian horror auteur Cronenberg has a formidable reputation. His greatest contribution to the genre has been his pioneering work on body shock – i.e., Bhaisahab’s fancy term for exploring the potential for horror in the human body. The idea has a more lucid name, but the internet’s down and I can’t find out what it is. In film after film, starting with Shivers (1975), DC has lovingly mangled, distorted, deformed and mutated the human body to create such horror masterpieces as Videodrome (1983), The Fly (remake, 1986), Rabid (1977), and Crash (1996).

In The Brood, DC explores Parthenogenesis - basically, asexual reproduction - in humans. In a psychological treatment center in the suburbs, Dr. Raglan uses a controversial method to cure trauma in his patients – he encourages them to express through their bodies their internal pain. So you have a guy who had been abused by his father developing welts all over his body, another who manifests his hatred for himself through throat cancer, etc. But one of his patients – Nola Carveth – has been his biggest success, and his biggest nightmare. See, she’s paranoid that the world is conspiring to destroy her family – which includes her husband Frank and 5 year old daughter Candice. She’s always been this way, which is why Frank had to put her in Dr. Raglan’s care. But in the clinic, she expresses her fear – of potential rivals for Frank’s affection, of surrogate mothers to her child – by asexually delivering a brood of mutated children, who are telepathically linked to her. She directs her rage to her deformed brood, who kill in brutal hate-filled attacks all those their mother considers a threat.

Charming story, eh?

Lest it seem that The Brood is all gore, let me assure you that the scenes where the brood hunt their victims are nail bitingly spooky. That's why the film worked for me. In the first two killings, the pleasure of being spooked is heightened because one is completely in the dark about this dwarf killer whose face is not shown and who makes guttural sounds, and who seems to possess great strength. It's classic horror strategy isn't it? Max the spook by hiding the bhoot.

But of course, the scene that grabs the most attention is the birth of a new addition to the brood. Samantha Eggar, playing Nola, pulls no punches as she loving tears open the sac outside her stomach that holds the baby, and then plucks it out, licking the placental blood clean.

Obviously, this is not a film recommended for pregnant women.

Bhaisahab ke photos: The Migrants

2009-05-06T12:16:00.005+05:30

THE MIGRANTS

Bhaisahab ke horror film reviews: Audition

2009-05-05T10:58:00.006+05:30

AUDITION (Japanese: Ōdishon) [1999]

Written by Daisuke Tengan, based on the novel by Ryû Murakami

Directed by Takashi Miike

4.5/5

The Japanese sure push the bar when it comes to horror cinema. Ringu demonstrated the final victory of fear over gore as the key driver of a horror film. Dark Water showcased the tremendous potential of children as agents of the macabre. Ju-On explored the possibilities of horror in simple contortions of the human body, an art lost after The Exorcist's mind bending spider walk.

Audition is another J-horror gem that ranks right up there with the best of the genre. And it's calling card is the use of silence to ratchet up the tension.

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this strange, haunting fable of loneliness, love and torture. The story revolves around film producer Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi). Seven years after his wife died, he leads a lonely life. His 17 year old son - a sensitive kid - wants him to re-marry. It gets Aoyama thinking, till he confides in his partner Yoshikawa that he'd like to marry, but can't find a girl. Yoshikawa comes up with the brilliant idea of having an audition for a dummy film. Aoyama can choose the best among the girls and woo her.

(Aoyama mesmerised by Asami at the audition)

The whacky idea works a little too brilliantly. During the audition, Aoyama is enchanted by the mysterious, painfully beautiful Asami Yamakazi (Eihi Shiina). The two start seeing each other, but soon - Aoyama realizes Asami is not exactly a girl you'd want to marry. And then, the pain begins for him.

Technically, Audition has the best sound design I have seen in horror films. And that's not because it had an A R Rahman, but because of how it uses silence. There are very few films which will scare the crap out of you without the aid of cymbals and drums. Yet silence is so integral to horror film. Audition understands that, and uses it so effectively you want some sound, any sound, break the tension.

(Effective use of silence: Asami waits for Aoyama's call)

Eihi Shiina's character, Asami, is the brand new entrant on Bhaisahab's list of horror film icons. The moment you hear her voice, you understand why Aoyama is head-over-heels crazy about her; and the moment you see her, you know that although there's something wrong about her, you don't give a damn because she's such an achingly beautiful, vulnerable woman. Aoyama was just like you, and thus, he suffered.

Frankly, Audition deserves a 5 on 5ver, but I'm shaving .5 away because the plot gets a little dense towards the end, during Aoyama's dream sequence.

I'm a simple dude, complexities intimidate me.

Chimp Update

2009-05-01T12:19:00.005+05:30

From the Dallas News:

Methodist Church's highest court clears deal for George W. Bush policy center at SMU

12:31 AM CDT on Friday, May 1, 2009

By LAURA ISENSEE / The Dallas Morning News
lisensee@dallasnews.com

The United Methodist Church's highest court has cleared the way for the George W. Bush policy center at Southern Methodist University, but some critics say they will continue their fight to keep it off campus.

The church's Judicial Council ruled at its spring meeting last week that the lease agreement between SMU and the library complex and affiliated policy institute did not violate any church laws.

Leon Bennett, who helped argue the school's case before the court, said he was optimistic the victory was final.

"We've prevailed at every level as we've moved through the church process," he said.

Critics say the center will promote policies that the church officially opposed, such as the Iraq war, and argue that the lease violated the school's articles of incorporation.

Continued here.

----------------
"George W Bush Policy Center" - now that's an oxymoron. Can he even spell 'policy?' What are they going to do in this so-called "policy center?" Play ping pong and choke on pretzels? Or maybe this is another attempt by the shithead to, in his words, "replenish the 'ol coffers."

.

Bhaisahab ke horror film reviews:The Last House On The Left

2009-04-29T12:15:00.003+05:30

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972)
Written & Directed by Wes Craven

3/5

Horror maestro Wes Craven's first flick, the low budget and no frills The Last House... routinely features in Top 25 horror film lists. But if I had to make one such list, I doubt I would include this one.

The plot of the film revolves around 2 teenaged girls - Phyllis, a Bohemian spirit, and Mari, a pretty, sheltered suburanite doted on by her middle class parents. One day, the two girls take off for a concert, and on the way, looking for some grass, run into a gang of deranged convicts. The convicts - 3 men and a woman - torture, abuse, rape and humiliate them, before killing both girls in the forest right behind Mari's house, where her parents are preparing a surprise birthday party for her. By a freakish coincidence, the gang lands up in Mari's house seeking shelter. The parents - gracious hosts - grant the odd foursome a room to sleep in. But during the night, Mari's mother discovers these strangers had killed her daughter.

Burning with cold, amateur rage, the parents then seek revenge. And get it.

One of the good things about the film is the sensitive portrayal of the brutality the two girls endured. Unlike I Spit On Your Grave (1976), the rape and torture is not in your face. I was pleasantly surprised by the sensitivity with which the then young Wes Craven approached the film's story. The manner in which Phyllis comforts Mari as she is forced to make love to her is a gulp-in-the-throat moment if there ever was one. One would have thought the high priest of gore would have begun his illustrious career on a more grisly note.

On the bad side, what the fuck was with the completely off-putting Laurel & Hardy track? For some strange reason, Craven lovingly devotes a good 15 minutes of the film on the antics of the bumbling local sheriff and his deputy. Minutes he could have used to excite more fear in the viewer. Whatever he was smoking when he was writing those scenes, make sure he doesn't pass it to you.

Overall though, The Last House... is more a revenge drama than a horror film. Armed with that knowledge, and if you like your films with shots of severed hands in them (in fact, the severed hand sequence is the stand out horror moment of the film), check it out.

Bad Boys

2009-04-23T00:19:00.009+05:30

This, from Dawn, Karachi:

Buner falls into the hands of Swat Taliban
Wednesday, 22 Apr, 2009 | 03:42 AM PST |

BUNER: Taliban militants from Swat took control of Buner on Tuesday and started patrolling bazaars, villages and towns in the district.

The militants, who had sneaked into Gokand valley of Buner on April 4, were reported to have been on a looting spree for the past five days.

They have robbed government and NGO offices of vehicles, computers, printers, generators, edible oil containers, and food and nutrition packets.

Sources said that leading political figures, businessmen, NGO officials and Khawaneen, who had played a role in setting up a Lashkar to stop the Taliban from entering Buner, had been forced to move to other areas.

The Taliban have extended their control to almost all tehsils of the district and law-enforcement personnel remained confined to police stations and camps.

The Taliban, equipped with advanced weapons, were reported to be advancing towards border areas of Swabi, Malakand and Mardan, the hometown of NWFP Chief Minister Amir Haider Khan Hoti.

Continued here.

Here's a picture accompanying the article:

Taliban are seen at an entrance of the shrine of the Pir Baba adjacent to a mosque, which was closed by Taliban after taking it over in Buner.—AP/File

I got a song for those who thought up the insane Shariat deal in Swat. You know, those who rubbished the 'conjecture' that the deal in Swat would embolden the Taliban to make further inroads into the country. The song goes:

"Bad boys, bad boys
Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?"

Bhaisahab ke Photos: It's Gettin' Hot In Here

2009-04-03T18:50:00.003+05:30

IT'S GETTIN' HOT IN HERE

How to Kill Your Own Heart

2009-03-05T21:06:00.004+05:30

This is from Reuters:

Pashtun poet's mausoleum bombed in Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, March 5 (Reuters) - Suspected Islamist militants in Pakistan blew up on Thursday the mausoleum of a 17th century poet revered in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, apparently because women visited the shrine.

The ethnic Pashtun poet, Abdul Rehman, is commonly known as Rehman Baba, and is loved by Pashtuns for his mystical verse.

People regularly go to his white, marble mausoleum on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar to pay their respects but no one was hurt in the pre-dawn blast.

"The structure of the shrine has been badly damaged but there were no casualties," said police officer Zar Noor.

Militants had warned people to stop women visiting the shrine, a resident told DawnNews television.

More here

Here's a poem by Rahman Baba:

SOW FLOWERS

"Sow flowers so your surroundings become a garden
Don’t sow thorns; for they will prick your feet

If you shoot arrows at others,
Know that the same arrow will come back to hit you.

Don’t dig a well in another’s path,
In case you come to the well’s edge

You look at everyone with hungry eyes
But you will be first to become mere dirt.

Humans are all one body,
Whoever tortures another, wounds himself.".

Obviously, such a man must never be left in peace.

Translation from http://rahmanbaba-poetry.com/rahmanbaba-samples

Bhaisahab ke photos: Marijuana

2009-01-22T12:36:00.004+05:30

MARIJUANA

The World Says Goodbye To The Psycho Prezdint

2009-01-20T14:28:00.005+05:30

A couple of months back, Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi hurled a goodbye shoe at George Bush. Today, as he leaves office, peers hurl their missives at Chimpler, from all over the world (except Israel, of course).

Retuers sampled some of the newspaper columns on George 'Dubya' Bush.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany: "A weak leader, Bush was just overwhelmed in the job."

Stern, Germany: "Bush led the world's most powerful nation to ruin. He lied to the world, tortured in the name of freedom and caused lasting damage to America's standing."

Toronto Star, Canada: "Goodbye to the worst president ever."

Sunday Times, UK: "Bush leaves a country and an economy in tatters."

Daily Mail, UK: "He leaves the world facing its biggest crisis since the Depression, the Middle East in flames and U.S. standing at an all-time low."

The Scottish Daily Record, Scotland: "Bush leaves a legacy of wars and the world economy in meltdown. He has been dismissed as a buffoon and a war-monger, a man who made the world a more dangerous place while sending it to the brink of economic collapse."

The Economist: "He leaves as one of the least popular and most divisive presidents in American history."

Le Monde, France: "It's hard to find a historian who won't say that Bush was the most catastrophic leader the U.S. has ever known."

The entire article is here - 'Editorials pillory Bush one final time.'

Bhaisahab is happy to see the back of this psychotic idiot, but is also pissed off that Bush is being allowed to go free. In a just world, he would be headed straight to prison.

I've watched with increasing incredulity over the past eight years how Bush and his handlers have manipulated the law in the supposedly most democratic and transparent country - a fucking beacon to the world. But led by the organically evil Dick Cheney, the Bush team has harvested the country of its public wealth and ordinary blood - and lavished the results on the super-rich oligarchs. Who can forget the lies told to invade Iraq? The slow and inept response to Katrina? And the final audacious heist, in broad daylight - bailing out sleazy corporations with public funds!

For America's own good, and the world's, let's hope the fascists in pin stripes never manage to pull off another coup like this again. Because the next time, it won't be a dolt in charge like GWB. It would be someone much smarter. And that would be serious trouble.

Bhaisahab ke horror film reviews: Whatever Happened To Baby Jane

2009-01-19T22:35:00.005+05:30

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?
Directed by Robert Aldrich
Written by Lukas Heller
(based on the novel by Henry Farrell)

4/5

When you have a horror movie from the 50s in your hand, you generally expect tame stuff - mostly to do with blobs from outer space or tentacles from beneath.

But Baby Jane, now that's a blast from the past that'll leave you disturbed. The film is a gem in the horror genre because it is one of those rare films where the chills are delivered by the intensity of performance. Not some snazzy sound or effects-laden camera work.

The story of two sisters caught up in a whirlpool of mutual hate and love, Baby Jane is also a very effective miniature of madness, played with panache by Bette Davis. We feel sorry for her sister Blanche's (Joan Crawford - brilliant) fate, but the mental disintegration of Jane's mind evokes even greater pity. For proof, check out the last scene. Jane looks scary, insane, and yet so vulnerable holding on to her ice cream cones that you can't help but pity her.

Thanks to Bette Davis' stellar performance, Baby Jane Hudson is now one of Bhaisahab's favourite horror icons; and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane is hereby pronounced an old skool classic.

Bhaisahab ki poetry: ASU 1513

2009-01-16T20:13:00.002+05:30

ASU 1513

You, friend
How does it feel now?
The burden
Do you feel it now?
No?
Then take some more

Venomous Mammal Caught On Camera

2009-01-09T15:25:00.007+05:30

From the BBC's Science & Environment Desk:

Rare footage of one of the world's most strange and elusive mammals has been captured by scientists.

Large, and with a long, thin snout, the Hispaniolan solenodon resembles an overgrown shrew; it can inject passing prey with a venom-loaded bite.

Little is known about the creature, which is found in the Caribbean, but it is under threat from deforestation, hunting and introduced species.

Researchers say conservation efforts are now needed.

The mammal was filmed in the summer of 2008 during a month-long expedition to the Dominican Republic - one of only two countries where this nocturnal, insect-eating animal (Solenodon paradoxus) can be found (the other is Haiti).

/snip/

Dr Sam Turvey, a ZSL researcher involved with the programme, told BBC News: "It is an amazing creature - it is one of the most evolutionary distinct mammals in the world.

"Along with the other species of solenodon, which is found in Cuba (Solenodon cubanus), it is the only living mammal that can actually inject venom into their prey through specialised teeth.

Read the full report at BBC

There's a video of the little thing at the link above. It's cute and fuzzy looking. Certainly not as venomous as these mammals:

2009-01-02T15:33:00.002+05:30

This is it folks. Either we give those that come after us a cleaner future, or condemn them to extinction. How's that for a happy new year?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Climate scientists: it's time for 'Plan B'
Poll of international experts by The Independent reveals consensus that CO2 cuts have failed – and their growing support for technological intervention

By Steve Connor, Science Editor and Chris Green
Independent UK
Friday, 2 January 2009

An emergency "Plan B" using the latest technology is needed to save the world from dangerous climate change, according to a poll of leading scientists carried out by The Independent. The collective international failure to curb the growing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has meant that an alternative to merely curbing emissions may become necessary.

The plan would involve highly controversial proposals to lower global temperatures artificially through daringly ambitious schemes that either reduce sunlight levels by man-made means or take CO2 out of the air. This "geoengineering" approach – including schemes such as fertilising the oceans with iron to stimulate algal blooms – would have been dismissed as a distraction a few years ago but is now being seen by the majority of scientists we surveyed as a viable emergency backup plan that could save the planet from the worst effects of climate change, at least until deep cuts are made in CO2 emissions.

What has worried many of the experts, who include recognised authorities from the world's leading universities and research institutes, as well as a Nobel Laureate, is the failure to curb global greenhouse gas emissions through international agreements, namely the Kyoto Treaty, and recent studies indicating that the Earth's natural carbon "sinks" are becoming less efficient at absorbing man-made CO2 from the atmosphere.

Continued at The Independent (UK)

Sourced from Wikimedia

Bhaisahab ke horror film reviews: Let The Right One In

2008-12-28T21:37:00.009+05:30

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
(Swedish: Låt Den Rätte Komma In)
Directed by Tomas Alfredson
Written by John Ajvide Lindqvist

5/5

Can horror be beautiful? Yes it can, and we have Let The Right One In to prove it.

The story, based on the Swedish bestseller of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist, is an achingly chilling vampire story. It contains most of the devices of the classical vampire tale, except that it is placed in the world of children. 12 year old Oskar is bullied by a group of boys in school. The traumatised kid takes his frustration out on a snowy neighbourhood tree - stabbing it with a knife repeatedly, urging it to scream like a stuck pig. Then one day (actually, one night) he meets his next door neighbour Eli - a weird girl who doesn't seem to mind the bitter cold of the Swedish winter. The two misfits strike up a friendship. And it begins.

Director Tomas Alfredson affirms Bhaisahab's firm belief that the Hollywood-defined horror paradigm of crashing music and snappy editing is inhibiting the art of the horror film. Horror is an emotion that doesn't hit you like a ton of bricks the way panic or shock does. Horror creeps up on you - brooding, calculating, approaching up your spine with a stealthy sliminess. The camera work on Let The Right One In is scrumptious - I'm talking long, painstakingly composed shots that build a measured sense of foreboding. The cinematography makes dialogue mostly redundant throughout the film, allowing viewers to feel the film rather than listen to it. It's every director's dream. The same holds for editing. There are no rapid cuts to spice up the gore. It's as mellow and as contemplative as the camera work.

Technical brilliance apart, the story also blends two narratives to create a richer story. Again, that's a good way to approach a horror film. For too long now, horror films have relied solely on the single narrative of terror. This has largely kept horror films out of the mainstream. Yet horror doesn't occur in isolation. Things are happening all around the protagonists facing the horror. In Let The Right One In, the second narrative is one of two kids coming of age. A very simple story that usually resonates with audiences. I mean, who doesn't want to watch a story about two pre-pubescent kids falling in love? This engaging story holds the horror narrative of the film in place. It also allows for the (depends on how you look at it) happy ending. And as we all know, people love happy endings.

Don't miss this one dudes.

Bhaisahab ke Photos: Winter In Versova Beach

2008-12-25T15:06:00.005+05:30

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Yeah, It Rocks

2008-12-24T12:34:00.004+05:30

When Bhaisahab was in college, sometime in the early 90s, he used to fantasize being the frontman of the first super successful Indian rock band. A band that would win fans because it's songs were rooted in the culture from which it sprang.

Now, if I have to fantasize all over again, a song like this would surely be the album showpiece. And I wouldn't complain if Kailash Kher took over most of the vocals too, because that little dude has a voice tailor made for earthy Indian rock 'n roll.

Summertime Rocks by Smoke

Mumbai Attacks: The Polishitians

2008-11-29T14:02:00.008+05:30

Let’s look at these incompetents one by one. Let’s take the polishitians first. Why? Because no matter how much crap you heap on them, they always deserve more.

Throughout the summer, the ‘shitians were mucking up New Delhi buying and selling each other’s votes for the No Confidence Motion. While the BJP was conspiring it’s cash4votes scam, the Congress – being the party in power – activated all arms of the intelligence network of our benighted country to keep track of who’s ripe for the plucking from among the opposition benches. The office of the National Security Advisor, according to Outlook (Polscape, ‘The Hand That Rocks...’), was fully devoted to making sure the government won the trust vote. Those bright sparks were burning the midnight oil for two whole months on ‘the project.’ Well, that ensured the government won the trust vote in dubious circumstances. But what did the country lose? Just another 50 odd anonymous suckers going about their business – probably fantasizing how just one of those thick wads of notes in the Lok Sabha could change their life.

The blasts in Ahmedabad and Bangalore, two days after the government won the trust vote, could have been avoided had not the polishitians forced the NSA (and most probably the IB and RAW too) to focus on a crummy trust vote rather than keeping an eye out for warning signs of a terror strike.

Unless polishitians take their grubby hands off the collars of the professionals, we’ll continue to be hit.

But the issue with the ‘shitians is more than incompetence, really. What we have today are some of the most snivelling (Shivraj ‘People Hate Me But I Have Madam’s Blessings’ Patil), unimaginative (Manmohan ‘I Love Feeding Words To My Beard’ Singh, LK ‘I’d Say Anything To Be PM’ Advani), petty (Raj ‘I’m An Idiot & And Mumbai Belongs to Idiots’ Thackerey, ‘Diamonds Are A Dalit’s Best Friends’ Mayawati), and downright callous (all of them fuckers) bunch to have ever set foot in Parliament since Independence.

You should have heard Manmohan Singh’s supposed ‘address to the nation’ the next day. We needed a speech that would calm frayed nerves, a speech that would lift our spirits up, words that would inspire us to stay united and fight together. Instead, what we got was this.

We got a PM who looks like a zombie and talks like one, eyes so focused on the teleprompter you hardly see them blinking. Not that the teleprompter was of any help, because the lines he said come reflexively to him by now. You know the score – ‘We will not tolerate...’, ‘We will prevent such...’, ‘We will punish the...’ and on and on it goes, like a painful Kurt Cobain solo. Hell, at least old Kurt’s solos had feeling.

With due respects to the doc, he’s clearly out of his comfort zone here. He’s no leader. He’s not even a halfway decent orator. Imagine an Obama giving such an address instead. And you’ll know what I mean.

And then there’s Shivraj ‘I’d Lick Your Butt For Free If Your Name is Gandhi’ Patil. Used to be a time when ministers would take moral responsibility for a disaster and resign from their post. This shameless butt-licker hasn’t even mentioned that possibility after – what? – 17 or 18 terror attacks on his watch. But you mark Bhaisahab’s words - one look from Sonia ‘Am I Trying Too Hard To Be My Mother-in-Law?’ Gandhi and Patil would resign not just his post, but his entire material world and head off to the Himalayas to become a friggin’ sanyasi.

Speaking of sanyasis, the BJP started milking Mumbai within hours. Narendra ‘I Organized A Mass Murder And All I Got For It Was The Chief Minister’s Post’ Modi landed up in Mumbai, showing off his ugly mug and being a nuisance to military operations. NDTV reported a while back that Modi had gone to slain ATS Chief Hemant Karkare’s wife and offered her a ‘compensation’ of ten million rupees. What did Mrs. Karkare do? She told him to shove the cash up his ass and get the fuck out of her house. That lady has more character than the entire political class.

Finally, where was Raj ‘My Mouth Is Bigger Than My Brain And I Can Prove It If You Dare To Come Out To The Streets’ Thackerey while his beloved Maharashtrian citadel was ablaze? Considering the passion with which he takes up the Manoos ‘cause’ in Mumbai, you would have expected him and his goons to be out in the streets, pelting stones at the terrorists. But nope. There was not a peep from Raj And His Magnificent Cowards. It’s one thing to hurl stones at unarmed, poor, toiling migrants, quite another when the other side shoots back with automatic weapons.

Fucking pussies.

To this type of polishitian, N Kunju has the perfect take in his letter to The Indian Express:

“Mumbai burned this week. Where was Raj Thackeray through it all? He says he owns Maharashtra. He challenged a police officer to come out into the streets of Mumbai to find out to whom the city belongs. Where was the ‘tiger’ when police officers were dying defending Mumbai?”
— N. Kunju, Delhi

To that, Bhaisahab has to say:

Tomorrow, maybe, the bureaucracy. Another cesspool of incompetence.

When Mumbai Was Attacked (Again)

2008-11-28T18:20:00.003+05:30

This may or may not be India’s worst terror attack, but for sure it is one in which the country’s political, bureaucratic, and policing incompetence has danced like never before, shaking its hideous, tottering ass in a performance that has trumped all the incompetencies preceding this day.

For fuck’s sake. The system has lost the battle to incompetence.

M V Kumawat, the IAS man in the Internal Security Department of the Home Ministry (which under Shivraj Patil has been turned into the Take it Up The Ass, Condemn, & Forget Ministry) brazenly blurted out the names of two soldiers killed in operations at a press conference a while back. Any moron who watches a couple of decent Hollywood films a year will tell you, you do not make names of deceased soldiers public before first intimating the families. And this guy here is supposed to be QUALIFIED to be a secretary in a high profile government ministry. And to hear him talk was painful. He paused more times than a corpse giving a speech. It was painfully evident he was scanning the lines they had written down for him with fastidious suspicion – sifting sentences from paragraphs, words from sentences, letters from words, smelling, sniffing, trying to locate traps. If he found one, he would cover his ass immediately – ‘According to him (DG NSG), 9 terrorists have been killed.’ Ass covered, job ensured. That’s incompetence for you.

Maybe more on this whole Mumbai clusterfuck later.

(Click pic for better resolution)

Bhaisahab ke Photos: Time Takes Toll

2008-11-12T16:33:00.006+05:30

Time Takes Toll
Govitri village, Maharashtra, 2008
(Click picture for bigger version)

End of a Nightmare

2008-11-07T17:28:00.005+05:30

As seen on Democratic Underground.

But this should not mean Bush gets a free ticket out of the White House. That man should be investigated for war crimes, 911, financial irregularities and the Katrina debacle. President Obama must ensure there's no escape for Bush and Cheney. Particularly Cheney. Only then will justice prevail (I'm not holding my breath though).

Will America Make History Tomorrow?

2008-11-04T11:21:00.008+05:30

(as seen on Bartcop)

I sure hope they do.
That battered country needs a break after eight years of this.

(as seen on Funny Times)

Somebody Make Him Stop

2008-11-01T20:09:00.006+05:30

The relief is writ large on Anil Kumble's face after trapping Brett Lee lbw, India v Australia, 3rd Test, Delhi, 4th day, November 1, 2008 (photo AFP / Caption Cricinfo)

What does this picture tell you?

It tells me of a stubborn man who refuses to smell the change blowing in the wind. Somebody who will go to any length to prove he is relevant to something, anything. Desperate for a wicket, any wicket, even a tail-ender would do. The caption is telling - a 'sigh of relief.' As if one wicket is not enough, but two are (Lee was his second scalp of the day). Such low standards Kumbal?

Look, we all already know you're a great spinner. You've got nothing to prove to anyone anymore. Retire.

Update Nov. 02:
This just in. Looks like Kumble took Bhaisahab's advice. Or perhaps I 'misunderestimated' the man's character. Goodbye dude. Thanks for the moments.

Anil Kumble gets a farewell from his team-mates, India v Australia, 3rd Test, Delhi, 5th day, November 2, 2008 (photo Getty Images / Caption Cricinfo)

(Still) Livin’ on The Edge

2008-10-30T18:27:00.010+05:30

It was in 1993 that Aerosmith sang that song. What else happened in 1993? Let’s see… oh yeah – there were riots in Mumbai post the demolition of Babri Masjid. The Sensex was still recovering from the Harshad Mehta scam. In UP and Bihar, regional politics was building up critical mass.

But all that was just the side show. The real deal those days was MTV. And the state of the art video accompanying Aerosmith’s Livin’ On The Edge? That was on our minds. But nobody paid much attention to the lyrics – apart from memorizing the chorus for concert singalongs. Nobody paid much attention to these words – ‘There's somethin' wrong with the world today/I don't know what it is/Something's wrong with our eyes.’ Perhaps it didn’t deserve much attention – just pretty words strung together. But because truth mostly resides in clichés, Aerosmith had hit the nail on the head. It wouldn’t have stopped the riots, but at least it would have made listening to the song twice as satisfying.

And then time flew, fresh videos took over MTV, and lots of interesting new ways of making money occupied the people of the continent of Circe.

Now it’s 2008. There’s a global recession that is looming over us like a monster hurricane – threatening to wipe out the smug grin off India Shining’s face. Every day there’s a picture in the paper of a portly share trader – who’s been as busy as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest all these years – holding his head in his hands. And Livin’ On The Edge comes to mind again – ‘If Chicken Little told you the sky was fallin’/Even if it wasn’t would you still come crawlin’/Back again?’

There’s also the arrest of a few hard line Hindu activists for bombing a Muslim locality in Malegaon. More disturbing is the fact that the hardliners were assisted by ex-army men. There’s a peculiar sense of unease about this. Are we one step closer to civil war then? Not there yet, but close enough for rock n roll maybe? Holy shit (indeed). And Livin’ On The Edge comes to mind again – ‘We're seeing things in a different way/And God knows it ain't His.’

And finally – what’s to say about the peculiar buggery indulged in by mobs of Mumbai last week? I’m talking about the shit for brains dudes who went around baying for the blood of anybody who smells like the Ganga. How about a dose from Aerosmith for them too - ‘If you can judge a wise man/By the color of his skin/Then mister you're a better man than I.’

Seriously, there’s such negativity, violence, hatred all around. Man, it’s like 1993 all over again. So Bhaisahab is of the opinion that we should play some Aerosmith, pop open a can of beer, and watch the chaos unfold. Because, as another truth in a cliché puts it – ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same/Everyone's your brother till you turn the other way.’

That’s not Aerosmith, that’s Cinderella.

(A heart felt Up Yours to Blogger for over-optimizing the image above. It sure looks shitty.)

Sahi Bola: What Bajrang Dal Amounts To

2008-10-27T18:12:00.005+05:30

Chaitanya from Bangalore wrote in to Outlook magazine, Issue dated Oct 20, 2008, to say what he thought about the Bajrang Dal:

"The Bajrang Dal is as bad as any incompetent fundamentalist organisation can get (Some Bombs Get Defused). There is no class or method in what it does. It deserves contempt."
Link

Bhaisahab says:

Amerika, Year 8 of The Bush Coup

2008-10-27T16:33:00.000+05:30

It's amazing how the American right wing still holds the little chimp in such high regard. They think the moron is the grandest defender of 'The American Way' (tm) - rapacious capitalism, basically. But Bush has demolished the American economy to such a degree that only a stiff dose of socialist policies can save it. And the guy who is trying to give that injection - Barack Obama - is reviled as a communist by the American right.

PS: I'd advise Obama to watch his back once he is elected President. Those racist groups are not going to be too happy to see a Black man in the White House. And it only takes one bullet for bigotry to triumph. Ask Gandhi.

The Army of Dipshits Strikes Again

2008-10-22T13:26:00.004+05:30

The stupidest, crudest and most pathetic of all religious fundamentalist groups has proven yet again why it has earned those epithets. This looks like a story straight out of Aa Pak.

Now, VHP takes on family planning
Indian Express, Oct 22, 2008
Ayodhya, October 21 : The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has decided to launch a campaign against family planning and will use a book to urge Hindus to ensure that they produce at least four male children —”two for the family and two for the Hindu cause”.
To spread its new strategy among the Hindu masses, the VHP will circulate a book Bharat mein Hindu Bahumat (Hindu majority in India). About 10,000 copies of this book have been collected in Karsewak Puram, the local headquarters of VHP here, said Rama Patnaik, a VHP full-timer.
(Continued here)

And even if you think they're going to succeed in this sensational bit of buggery, think again. The little fools with their little trishuls cannot even run a decent website.

Behold the Sun

2008-10-15T09:30:00.007+05:30

21 stunning, beautiful pictures of the sun are up at the Boston Globe website. Here's a sampler. For the rest, click here.

This LASCO C2 image, taken 8 January 2002, shows a widely spreading coronal mass ejection (CME) as it blasts more than a billion tons of matter out into space at millions of kilometers per hour. The C2 image was turned 90 degrees so that the blast seems to be pointing down. An EIT 304 Angstrom image from a different day was enlarged and superimposed on the C2 image so that it filled the occulting disk for effect (Courtesy of SOHO/LASCO consortium)

Detailed closeup of magnetic structures on the Sun's surface, seen in the H-alpha wavelength on August 22, 2003. (Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope (SST) operated by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Oddbjorn Engvold, Jun Elin Wiik, Luc Rouppe van der Voort)

Bhaisahab ka art: Travelling While Sleeping

2008-09-24T17:29:00.004+05:30

TRAVELLING WHILE SLEEPING

Sahi Bola: What al-Qaeda Really Is

2008-09-23T16:02:00.008+05:30

To mark Bhaisahab Ki Dukaan's 50th post, here's a new section - 'Sahi Bola'- where a range of opinions receive Bhaisahab's endorsement, in that they have helped expand his own understanding of the matrix.

Kickstarting this section is 'McCamy Taylor', member of the online liberal forum Democratic Underground, who has this insight:

By now, the world's leftists should have realized that Al Qaeda is a front for Saudi Royals. It is a phony "radical" group whose job is to suck up disaffected Muslims who might join together to kick out the corrupt Saudi Royal family and kick out foreign colonial powers that drain the third world of its oil. Its job is to prevent the peaceful, socialist revolution that will empower the citizens of the oil producing countries to seize control of their own lives.

Al Qaeda is David Rockefeller in a headscarf, toting an automatic weapon. It is a fiction. Sooner or later its members will wise up.

Real revolutionaries are not driven by religion. They are driven by economics.
(Read it in context here)

Bhaisahab says:

You know your country is in trouble...

2008-09-16T11:50:00.007+05:30

...when your Home Minister is proud about being blessed by the Party Leader.

I have full blessings of my leader: Shivraj Patil
Hindustan Times

Brushing aside speculation that he would be asked to step down, Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil on Monday asserted that he enjoyed "full blessings" of Congress President Sonia Gandhi.

"Well, I have full blessings of my leader," he told CNN-IBN when asked if he enjoyed the confidence of his leader.

[SNIP]

Full story
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Err.. who uses old-skool feudal words like ‘blessings’ in a modern democracy? That too when you are the country’s Home Minister?

Oh right, this is Shivraj Patil we’re talking about here. 18+ bomb attacks (and counting), 500+ dead (and counting), and Patil sits twiddling his thumbs, enjoying Madam Sonia’s blessings.

As Bhaisahab has pointed out to friends and family, Shivraj Patil got where he has today only by out-licking competitors in the Congress' obsession with licking Madam's posterior. In a party of sycophants, he is sycophant no. 1. And it shows. How pathetically it shows.

Bhaisahab ka art: Barrel

2008-09-14T19:43:00.004+05:30

BARREL

Bhaisahab ke photos: Golden Brown

2008-08-18T11:52:00.001+05:30

Bhaisahab ke horror film reviews: Borderland

2008-08-05T19:06:00.003+05:30

BORDERLAND
Written and Directed by Zev Berman

1.5/5

Supposedly based on true events, the film follows in the Hostel franchisee's steps and shows us 3 American post-teens on a sex and drugs romp in a Mexican border town. Here, one of them is kidnapped by the local drug lord Santiani, who also heads a bizzare cult involving mutilation, torture and human sacrifice.

Interesting visuals, but predictable plot and hardly any chills (a lot of gore though). The climax just disintegrates into a callow shoot out more befitting a chessy thriller.

1.5 out of 5; and that extra .5 is only because of the scene where a terrified Phil moans at Santiani - 'what do want from me?' Santiani (whispers) -
'Screams.'

That's the goose bump moment of the film.

Mogambo's Palace in Lutyens Delhi

2008-08-04T12:24:00.006+05:30

Edward Luce’s book, In Spite of the Gods – The Strange Rise of Modern India, has many sordid tales of the depths to which our polishitians have sunk for personal aggrandizement. But everything else pales in comparison to this terrifying account of Amar Singh’s bungalow in New Delhi.

I am reproducing extracts from it, in the hope that the next time farmers commit suicide, innocents are bombed, babies die in hellish government hospitals, women are gang raped, and old men are denied long overdue pensions, you can take comfort from the fact that at least some of those responsible for this sorry state of affairs are living in mind numbing spirit crunching luxury. Over to Luce:

'As a journalist, I have been inside the homes of many wealthy people. But nothing has compared to the interior of 27 Lodhi Estate in central New Delhi. It is the official residence of Amar Singh, a member of Parliament for Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party.'

*SNIP*

'Amar Singh, who had agreed to allow me and a mutual acquaintance to look over the property, had generated controversy in the newspapers for carrying out extensive alterations to the bungalow. During our guided tour, he was keen to stress that the changes he had made were in fact ‘improvements.’'

*SNIP*

'Our tour of the bungalow began with the garden. Singh took us along the outer perimeter, whose walls had been recast with white marble bas-reliefs of gambolling cherubs and nubile winged angels, a curious hybrid of classical Greek art and modern pornography. Next we entered the prefab annex Singh had erected which contained a modern gym with the usual Nordic Trackers and cycle machines. In the adjoining room there was a large marble Jacuzzi with gold plated taps. Singh then took us across to the main building, against the exterior of which he had constructed a sweeping Gone With The Wind staircase that took us up to the terrace, which had been converted into a roof garden with grass turf and rose beds. “Are you liking this?” He asked. Next we went inside. The main room was dominated by a vast portrait of Singh and his family. Next to it were gold, jewellery-studded depictions of Krishna.'

*SNIP*

'In each of the main rooms Singh had given pride of place to one of the most expensive items of home entertainment in the world; the sixty-inch plasma screen Bang & Olufsen TV. Each retails for as much as $60,000 in India.'

'But the grandest cut was reserved until last. Singh, whose excitement had been mounting as the tour progressed, took us into the main dining room. At the side of the room he had demolished a portion of the wall to create a small alcove that jutted into the garden and which was protected by a glass screen. Behind the screen was a small, illuminated marble basin, out of which gurgled a soothing stream of water. Singh took out what looked to be a giant TV remote control and pointed it at the high ceiling above the dining table. I half expected another TV screen to pop out. He pressed the button and something started to happen to the heavy stone Lutyens ceiling. Slowly but noiselessly, it began to divide. It was impossible to guess what was about to be revealed. We seemed to be characters in a Bond film, with Singh about to feed us to birds of prey. After the ceiling had fully parted we were greeted with a dazzling view of the roof through the prism of a small glass pyramid that was clearly modelled on what sits above the Louvre in Paris. The shimmering glass refracted the verdant foliage of the terrace beyond. Everyone gasped, half of us in shock, the other half in admiration. “Now,” said Singh, turning towards us, beaming from ear to ear, “do you think these are improvements or just alterations?”'

- Extracted from In Spite of the Gods – The Strange Rise of Modern India, Edward Luce, Pages 134 - 137.

The BEST Onion story ever!

2008-08-03T20:26:00.004+05:30

Just when I thought there were limits to the talent at America's Finest News Source, it has hit a winner. A quick scan at Digg.com shows it is already listed as the most popular Onion story. Bravo!

Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet

Young Gore sets out for his new home, where the sky is clear, the water is clean, and there are no Republicans.

EARTH—Former vice president Al Gore—who for the past three decades has unsuccessfully attempted to warn humanity of the coming destruction of our planet, only to be mocked and derided by the very people he has tried to save—launched his infant son into space Monday in the faint hope that his only child would reach the safety of another world.
"I tried to warn them, but the Elders of this planet would not listen," said Gore, who in 2000 was nearly banished to a featureless realm of nonexistence for promoting his unpopular message. "They called me foolish and laughed at my predictions. Yet even now, the Midwest is flooded, the ice caps are melting, and the cities are rocked with tremors, just as I foretold. Fools! Why didn't they heed me before it was too late?"
CONTINUED HERE

Bhaisahab ke horror film reviews: The Hamiltons

2008-08-02T11:56:00.002+05:30

THE HAMILTONS
Written and Directed by:Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores

2/5

Here's the plot. A family of vampires - three brothers and one sister - are forced to move from city to city, trying to fit in while murdering people on the sly for blood. Because their vampirism is a hereditary 'disease,' the teenaged brother Francis struggles throughout the film to quell the urge to suck blood. Will he succeed? Or will he give in to his destiny?

The film adds a touch of humanity to vampires. Although I wish it hadn't. I like my vampires big and bad.

The Hamiltons projects itself as a horror film which breaks most genre rules; indeed, it's more a melodrama than a horror film. It will appeal to a wider audience because it is a coming of age story, even though it's in a twisted context. But hard core horror fans would be disappointed.

Bhaisahab ke photos: Someday I'll be Saturday Night

2008-07-31T14:27:00.006+05:30

What'll you do when the oil runs out?

2008-07-31T14:04:00.002+05:30

It was in 1999, as far as I can remember, that I first thought about it. The end of oil. I was with a couple of friends in Munirka, Delhi. One friend was studying International Relations in JNU, the other doing his masters in Chemistry in IIT. And me, I was riding the dot com wave. Yeah baby.

As the night wore on, talk veered, as they invariably did with those two, towards politics, and the great Hindu-Muslim divide that had seeped into every street in this country. Being steadfast liberals, we threw a few choice invectives at the BJP, cusswords that did nothing but die weakly as they crashed into the walls of the room, like an old man’s farts. Ineffectual.

We then considered- are Muslims completely absolved of guilt in the violent changes taking place all around us? A few measured debating points later, we came to the racist conclusion that its not India’s Muslims who are the bad guys in the qaum. Its those Arabs. Drunk on obscene wealth and harems of the unwilling, that are fucked-up in the head. With all that money and with all the work taken care of enterprising Malayalis, they smoke pot and fund private armies who go around spreading terror (or “terra” as the world’s most dangerous moron George W Bush would put it- but that’s a different story). And they get all this money thanks to their oil.

And then one of us articulated (rhetorically)- “But once the oil runs dry…. what’s gonna happen to them then?”

“They’re fucked.” We said together. “Fucked in the ass man. They’ll have nothing else but sand.” And we laughed....

That was in 1999. In 2004, I came to the paranoiac realization that if the oil runs dry, we’re all fucked. And that means you too, and all the ones you love. We’re all fucked. In the ass. Yeah baby.

You wanna know how? Visit The Wolf At The Door.

Bhaisahab ke horror film reviews: Cloverfield

2008-07-30T19:10:00.005+05:30

CLOVERFIELD
Directed by: Matt Reeves
Written by: Drew Goddard

4/5

Co-produced by JJ Abrams of Lost, the mysteriously titled Cloverfield is a first person account of a monster attack in New York. The film starts off like a youth drama - yuppies with love affairs. I was left twiddling my thumbs for the first 20 minutes or so - WTF? But suddenly, without warning, all hell breaks loose.

Cloverfield works because it focuses almost exclusively on the street level chaos that ensues once the attack begins, rather than wasting time rationalizing the monster's presence. And to make it clear we'll be seeing only what the characters are seeing, director Matt Reeves uses the Blair Witch technique of following events through a principal character's handycam. It works, and how! We're as confused as the characters in the film as to what exactly is happening. It serves to heighten the tension admirably, and also elevates Cloverfield above the typical monster flick. In fact, Reeves has claimed that he was not in favour of showing the monster at all, wanting to stick with the terrified denizens of NYC (who looked uncannily like the New Yorkers who stumbled out of the dust on 9/11). But Abrams argued that the audience deserved one good look at the invincible creature. Abrams prevailed, bless him! Because the monster packs a punch, and the climax is truly satisfying.

Bhaisahab ki poetry: The One Hit Wonder

2008-07-30T13:07:00.002+05:30

THE ONE HIT WONDER

Slinging the corpse of his muse like it were a very fashionable guitar
The One Hit Wonder trudges between the sand dunes

He walks through dusty towns
And the camels point their fingers
They whisper to each other
“See, there goes the One Hit Wonder.”
Some come up to size him down
Others to bleat sympathetically
But most to ask how much money his hit made.

He sleeps on the riverbank
And the toads croak the hit chorus
The river gurgles the verse
The stars up in the sky - they call out to the universe
“Look! It’s the One Hit Wonder!”
Frolicking planets and their many moons travel eons to marvel at him
But still his muse lies dead.

He eats black bread and drinks yellow water
He washes his hands with fire and fills his heart with ice
He paces up and down his room and mutters to himself
He never gives sweets to kids and cries for no reason in public
He refuses pity
He denies apathy
He does not pray
His balls don’t dangle perpendicularly
He is a menace to society
He should be chased away
He should be hanged!
Stripped and raped!

He’s a broken soul
Just a One Hit Wonder.

Bhaisahab ke horror film reviews: The Mist

2008-07-29T17:24:00.008+05:30

THE MIST
Directed by: Frank Darabont
Written by: Frank Darabont (based on the novella by Stephen King)

5/5

In Frank Darabont, Stephen King has FINALLY found a director/writer who can successfully translate the world of his stories onto screen. Before this, most directors adapting Big Stevie's stories and books focused solely on the obvious. Either they were unable (or unwilling) to go beyond the surface level horror of the stories. This is true even for ace film directors such as Brain De Palma and Stanley Kubrick. De Palma's Carrie was a poor effort, only surpassed in boredom by Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining, which did no justice whatsoever to a book that is a modern classic on madness.

But Darabont is different. He's willing to explore the multiple layers of emotion and horror in Big Stevie's tales, lurking just beneath the surface. Most of these layers are peopled not by ghosts and monsters, but by us. Darabont showed us twice before that his sensitivities are closer to King's than any director before him - in Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. Yet neither of these is a signature Stevie King story. Darabont's true test could only come with a good old-fashioned Stephen King horror story. It came with The Mist. And Darabont aced it.

The Mist is one of my favourite King novellas. I'm crazy about this strange story about terrible beasts and human relationships under tremendous strain. And so I was so relieved that the film stayed true to the original story, except the end (but that only made the film even more special. Believe me when I tell you that it is one of the boldest movie endings I have seen).

The Mist is a scary, bizarre, and terrifyingly real story; and all of these have been successfully put on the screen by Darabont. The story has also been updated to include the political context in today's America. Darabont makes some cutting comments about Bushamerica in the film, for, let's face it - since The Chimp took over in 2001, it's the Republican oligarchs who are the beasts attacking middle class America.

So, to end this unusually long review - as they say, if you watch only one horror film this year, watch The Mist. And I'll look forward to more Frank Darabont adaptations of Stevie King stories!

Bush Art: Inauguration Day 2005

2008-07-29T11:01:00.006+05:30

(Click for larger size)

Ed Stein, Rocky Mountain News, 2005. Sourced from Bartcop.com

Home Minister Outlines Govt's Strategy Against Terrorism

2008-07-28T17:01:00.006+05:30

Two days after serial blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad killed over 50, Home Minister Shivraj Patil responded angrily to charges that he was the most ineffective and wimpy Home Minister ever to hold that portfolio, and this government had no counter-terror strategy worth its name. In a press conference today, Patil robustly defended himself and said the government had a well thought-out counter-terrorism strategy since 2004. "Since I took over as Home Minister in 2004, there have been 16 major terror attacks in India, in which over 500 civilians have been killed. You would have noticed that not one of the perpetrators has been brought to book yet. All investigative leads are cold. This is a deliberate strategy adopted by this government to tire out the terrorists. Let them bomb, we won't react. Let's see how much longer they can take it." According to Patil, the terrorists are already beginning to get frustrated by the lack of any reaction to their attacks. This explains the resort to serial blasts of weak intensity rather than a single high intensity blast.

"Soon," Patil said, "The terrorists will realize even serial blasts have no effect on us. And then, exhausted, they will have to give up. I want to use this platform to tell them that you are welcome to bomb our cities whenever you want. We will do nothing. India has a billion plus population. Sooner or later, fatigue will set in and you will have to go away."

In Home Ministry handouts given to journalists after the press conference, the strategy was referred to as Operation Chill Pill.

Bhaisahab ke horror film reviews: Believers

2008-07-28T15:08:00.005+05:30

BELIEVERS

Directed by Daniel Myrick
Written by Julia Fair, Daniel Myrick

3/5

I picked this Straight-to-DVD film up because it was directed by Daniel Myrick, whose resume includes Blair Witch Project. Believers would have been a pretty ordinary tale of a doomsday suicide cult, disappointingly ordinary considering Myrick's past work. But then, the last sequence of the film elevates the film many notches above the ordinary. It forces you to think - what if even one of those nutjob doomsday cults in America or Japan is right? What if they are not so nutty after all?
The answer is pretty scary.

Bhaisahab ke photos: Kantibhai the painter

2008-07-25T17:35:00.003+05:30

Bhaisahab ke horror film reviews: The Ruins

2008-07-25T14:30:00.008+05:30

THE RUINS
Director: Carter Smith
Script: Scott B Smith (based on his novel by the same name)

3.5/5

Yes. The premise of The Ruins is very campy, cheesy. A group of stereotypical
American tourists are trapped in an ancient Mayan pyramid now populated by man
eating plants. But then most horror film premises sound cheesy if reduced to one line.
The Ruins is good horror cinema because it does what all good horror films do - create uneasy, unsettling, terrifying inter-personal relationships among the humans in the story. Real horror is what humans do to one another. Or to themselves. Amidst the gore and the hungry flora, that's what stands out in the film.
That said, on a technical level - the idea of a sound mimicking plant is truly innovative. That alone goes a long way in overcoming the hurdle of convincing the viewer that the man eating plant is real and not some Roger Corman rubber garden.

Spare a thought for PC Thomas

2008-07-21T09:23:00.004+05:30

PC Thomas, MP from Muvattupuzha constituency in Kerala, must be the most depressed dude in India today. A situation has unfolded in the country that is every honourable MP's dream - his or her vote could well bring down the government. Tomorrow the honourables cast their vote, ostensibly to support or reject Doc Singh's peculiar nuclear deal.

It's like Market Day in Whore Street out there. An honourable from the Samajwadi Party claimed the other day the Congress was offering him Rs 25 crores to not vote with the NDA. Today, the Indian Express reports that rebel Congress MP Kuldeep Bishnoi claims the party offered him Rs 100 crores to abstain from voting. Since the two honourables disclosed these figures, I guess the NDA offered them much more.

Think of the figures involved here, and it's hard not to feel sorry for poor PC Thomas, who cannot vote tomorrow. As the New India Press helpfully points out, "PC Thomas has no voting right in the Lok Sabha as an election case against him has been pending in the Supreme Court."

So - as his honourable peers reap a windfall of phenomenal proportions, PC Thomas is left licking judicial butt, like he has been doing since 2006.

If I were his friends and family, I'd keep all firearms and daggers away from him.

Bhaisahab ki poetry: ejukashun

2008-03-12T15:24:00.001+05:30

Bush Art - One Dullard

2008-03-04T22:58:00.001+05:30

Source: Discovered in DemocraticUnderground.com

An exercise in flattery

2008-02-26T21:08:00.004+05:30

A couple of years back, Hindustan Times in Delhi organized a writing contest under the topic – “I Love Delhi.” Yeah right. But then, the prize money offered was big. The first three best entries win 40K, 30K, and 25K. Big money for struggling writer types. So I decided to embark on an exercise in flattery. I figured, if I can show I love Delhi as maniacally as the dudes who thought this thing up, I'm in. Thus, this emerged.
And no, I figured nowhere in the winning list. So actually, this post should been titled ‘An exercise in futility.’

I LOVE DELHI

“Love,” my uncle used to say, “is to be taken in small doses - of bitterness and affection.”

Love blooms best in an environment, he would maintain, where sudden surges of cold bitterness are constantly engaged in a wrestling match between equally sudden moments of warm affection. “It’s the sweat from the wrestlers that keeps love nourished,” he used to say.

I guess it’s easy to understand why my uncle never married.

But just because the desert is desiccated does not mean it does not bear life. Likewise, my uncle’s take on love, while on the stupid side of philosophy, had a suspicion of truth to it, an idea that could be tested for its truthiness.

It was thirteen years ago that I made my acquaintance with Delhi. Hardly an auspicious number, one might think, to be testing a theory of love. Nonetheless, I got admitted to that hallowed temple of learning (which was also, as I discovered fairly quickly, the hallowed temple of tobacco addiction) – Delhi University. I remember the excited trip to Fancy Bazaar in Guwahati, where I was to purchase a pair of bell-bottomed jeans. Why? Because I wanted to look cool in the big city; because no one should think I’m just another mofussil idiot. Peculiarly, bell-bottoms were all the rage back then. On the shop counter, I actually splayed the wide ankles of the jeans to the max with my hand and asked the cousin accompanying me if they were cool enough for Delhi.

“It’s OK. But it could have been a little wider.”

So, I came to Delhi as happy as a monkey to a banana grove, my heart barely able to contain the excitement of going to college, and that too in our nation’s capital. I was so excited, it seemed like I was in love with the city even before we were properly introduced.

Delhi being what it is, much of that love got re-moulded over the next three years into a hybrid sculpture of ugly moments and cold comfort, but within which rested the original love of the city – nourished, it seemed, solely by the magnificent insouciance of Delhi University. The one moment that I truly felt blessed to be in Delhi was when I sat with a group of friends and discussed Mamta Kulkarni’s sexiness at the roadside tea stall just off Gwyer Hall. It seemed so perfect, to have such good friends, to sip such strong tea, and talk about matters that confirmed our ascent to manhood. And among the many ugly moments, was one in particular that made me feel scared of Delhi. This was at a deserted lane behind IP College, where I was waiting for a friend. It was dusk, the light was fading fast, and I heard the sound of payal on running feet. I turned to look, and I saw a lady, dressed in a purple salwaar kameez, hair dishevelled and face contorted with fear, running bare feet. She barely registered me. She just ran, her breath making rasping sounds, as if she had been running for quite a distance. What scared me about her? The answer to that was another question – Who was she running from?

Of course, the bitterness with Delhi really boiled over when I started working in the city. In DU, you’re isolated from the reality of Delhi, where one small comfort required you to make a hundred uncomfortable decisions, and utter many more angry invectives. After only three years of churlish landlords, toe-crushing bus rides, insufferable auto drivers, lecherous uncles, and zombie aggression, I had had enough of Delhi. So, I split. And I swore I won’t ever return.

But I came back. And it was love that brought me back to Delhi. Not love of the city. Far from it. Love as my theorywale uncle meant it to be – between two people. But that is another story, for another day perhaps. Suffice it to say that the move back to Delhi was pockmarked with doubts and trepidation. In my years away from the city, I got news about it from friends stranded there, about how the traffic had become worse, and the parks more unsafe, and the people more aggressive. On nightly news broadcasts, I saw a steady barrage of rapes and murders emanating from Delhi, snarling at me and making me feel glad I was far away from it. But some things are worth sticking your hand into the snakepit for, and love is one of those.
For the first few months back in Delhi, facing the same collage of churlish landlords, zombie aggression, and the rest, I was as desperate to escape the city as Bush is to flee Iraq. The only thing that had changed in Delhi, was my opinion, were the real estate prices and the centres of hipness – from Priya complex to Trans-Yamuna malls. Both seemed to have shifted northwards.

Then one day, beneath the giant staircase leading up to Jeevan Beema Bhavan in CP, I had an epiphany of sorts. A man in a wheelchair was considering the steep flight of steps, wondering how in holy hell was he ever going to cross that stepped hurdle. All of a sudden, four youths coming down the stairs noticed him and sauntered over. They spoke a few words with the guy in the wheelchair, and then all four lifted up the wheelchair and walked up the stairs. Once at the top, they shook hands with the guy and went their own way. It was a hot and muggy day in July, and I was bummed out after an argument with an auto driver, but that scene brought a smile to my face.

These days, I look out for such moments, and I’ve found a great many, in all parts of the city, in all kinds of situations, involving creatures two legged and four, men rich and poor. These are my moments of warm affection for the city, interspersed as they are with the bitterness of Delhi’s boring viciousness. And I’ve started calling Delhi home.

I guess, in that sense, my uncle was right after all. Unfortunately I can’t tell him that, for he’s long dead. But I live, and so do we all, in this great big organism called Delhi – where you will be embraced if only you keep your arms wide open.

Next Up: The World Series of Cricket

2008-02-20T10:45:00.002+05:30

The 'World Series' of baseball features 21 teams vying for an intensely marketed and telecast championship that attracts teams from all corners of... the United States of America.

But still, it's the World Series - Go Giants!

That's kind of like what cricket is going to become in the next decade. A game played exclusively for the entertainment of the people of India and Indian origin. Why? Because the way I read it, the Indian Premier League is the final nail in the coffin of cricket as we know it, a process that had begun during the heydays of Dalmia.

A curious mutant of World Series Baseball and the English Premiere League, IPL is going to eventually buy out all international cricket matches played in a calendar year. Why will New Zealand and South Africa play a bilateral series when their top players stand to win millions of dollars for just pretending to play in IPL games? Sure, in its present avatar the IPL is just a 20-day tournament. But if you think hard nosed businessmen like Ness Wadia are investing hundreds of millions of rupees in mere 20-day jamborees, you must have voted for Bush. Slowly and surely, the IPL is going to have an expanded calendar that will eventually encompass the whole year - with little time left over for international cricket (of which time test cricket is going to get - none). And if you think the BCCI pushes its players hard by drawing up punishing schedules, wait till the corporations get in.

So what may happen in the next ten years is that the ICC is going to split vertically among those who want to control the IPL and those who want to expand it even further. Needless to say, it will be the white nations of Australia, New Zealand, England and South Africa on one side, and the Asian nations on the other. The former group will reconstitute the ICC, excluding the IPL supporters. This group will continue playing cricket the way it used to be played. The others will most likely subsume their national boundaries and allow players to focus exclusively on the IPL, with a token international T20 tournament thrown in. And yes, they'll call it the 'World Series'; provided IPL itself hasn't taken that moniker for itself.

The basic objective behind this diabolical plan - money. That's what it boils down to eventually. After all, it's the Matrix we're talking about here.

Bhaisahab ke photos: There Should Be A G'N'R Tribute Band called Barbs N Petals

2008-02-18T23:55:00.003+05:30

THERE SHOULD BE A G'N'R TRIBUTE BAND CALLED BARBS N PETALS

2008-02-18T23:22:00.007+05:30

BCCI STRIKES ANOTHER LUCRATIVE DEAL WITH BROADCASTERS
Rs 650 cr deal ensures telecast of at least three balls per over

NEW DELHI. FEBRUARY 10. Ending weeks of bargaining and uncertainty, the BCCI and cricket broadcasters have come to an agreement on the contentious 'minutes per match' issue. The broadcasters have agreed to a formula whereby at least three balls per over (or 2 minutes, whichever is less) will be shown between advertisements during live telecasts. The remaining three balls, plus the mandatory 10 minute changeover time between overs (in all amounting to air time of 15 minutes), can be sold by broadcasters to advertisers, provided the Board receives 35% of this additional revenue. A visibly satisfied BCCI spokesperson told the press that - 'it is a victory for the rights of the paying public. People are now assured of a guaranteed minimum telecast time of 200 minutes per match.' Noted Media Strategist, who has been keenly observing the deal, estimates that this translates into 'a minimum of Rs 500 crore to BCCI over a six month period.'
In March this year, the BCCI had responded to public criticism on the number of advertisements during cricket matches by taking up the matter with broadcasters. The criticism arose especially during the World Cup, where broadcasters had taken to telecasting 'Over Highlights' between advertisements, instead of the live telecast of the full match. Broadcasters refused to entertain public complaints, claiming that that as legal holders of broadcasting rights, they had the right to choose how much and what to broadcast. It was then that the matter was taken up by the BCCI in public interest.
The deal also includes an additional Rs 150 cr agreement between the Board and broadcasters regarding 'Stickie Ads' , i.e. ads that are inserted as graphics during live action. The number of such ads appearing simultaneously on the screen during a cricket match will not exceed 5 from now on, and their duration has been fixed at 20 seconds, each.

Bhaisahab ka art: Come with me

2008-02-16T10:42:00.002+05:30

COME WITH ME

STAIRWAY TO NOWHERE

2008-02-15T11:10:00.004+05:30

Word travels fast in small cities. Even when the city happens to be a roaring tourist hub such as Udaipur, where hordes of European and Israeli tourists give more than enough fodder to the grist mill of word of mouth. So it did not surprise me that a few hours after we checked into the Udai Niwas hotel, a wacky budget hotel in the heart of backpacker bylanes, everybody and their uncle knew a film crew was here from Delhi to shoot a film. What obviously slipped past in this account was the fact that we were there to shoot a documentary in the villages around Udaipur. It so happened that Sanjay Dutt himself was in town for a film shoot, and that raised the static about us in the grape vine. So it wasn’t a surprise when somebody like Deepak knocked on our door one night, when we were reviewing the day’s footage with drinks in one hand and cigarettes in the other.
Deepak, the kid with a fucked-up plan and a little dog named Tuffy.

Vijay, my cinematographer, first ran into Deepak in a shop selling clothes. Deepak was a sales-boy in the shop, and upon learning that Vijay is a part of the film crew at Udai Niwas, literally fell on his feet requesting an audience. He wanted to be a star, he said, and he would do anything to learn how to go about it. Could we please guide him? The idea that somebody would ask documentary film makers how to become a star was the stupidest idea since America (s)elected Bush, but as noted, Deepak was a kid with a fucked-up plan. Vijay affably told him to meet us some time after 8.
And that was how Deepak knocked on our door that night, right on time. The first thing I noticed about him was that he came in with a bundle of luxuriant brown fur clutched in his hand, pressed close to his heart. The fur had shiny black eyes, and a long pink tongue hung out of it. The way the tongue wagged – with a sharp and thirsty quiver – confirmed the fur belonged to a live little dog, whose legs were shorter than its tail and whose face was as black as its fur was brown. Deepak himself could not have been more than 17, wearing a tight white shirt and white pants. With a fair, spotless, and suitably blank face, it was no wonder he considered himself good looking enough to be on TV. He proceeded to tell us what he wanted –
“Sir, I want to be a hero. I think I have the talent to be a hero. I want to move up in life, I want to earn lots of money and fame. I want to bring glory to Udaipur.”
We asked him about his family. He lived with this parents and an elder sister. “And Tuffy,” he added, petting his dog. So what do they think of his plans? “There’s too much tension,” was all he said, indicating his parents thought he was a damn fool to be dreaming of stardom and such like. Does he have friends, girlfriends? “I just don’t have time to make girlfriends. Besides, I like my own company.” Was he educated? “I dropped out after Class XI. Education is not everything. So many successful people are uneducated,” he shrugged. He probably flunked his Class XII and just never got along with books, I thought. Like all good citizens who know what is good for the country, we – me, Vijay, and our sound engineer Shivdas – tried to convince him that education is indeed everything. But Deepak had had to face purani jeans like us many times. “What’ll I get by studying? I’ll become a doctor or an engineer, right? But I want to earn money, lots of it, and fame, lots of that too. That way I will never make it.”
But could he act? We asked him to show us his acting skills. “Here’s the scene – the villain has just burnt down your house, and you are confronting him angrily. Go!” Deepak stood up, put Tuffy on the floor, looked intensly at the wall for a moment, and put on a very, very pathetic performance, the high point of which was him screwing up his face and saying – “Tell me why you burnt down my house? Please.” I don’t know about you, but when the hero starts saying please to the villain, its time to change the channel. We gave him a few other scenes to do, and he was really bad at them all, till the whole exercise was more about us having fun than him showing his talent.
One man’s funny is another man’s tragedy. And Deepak’s tragedy is that he’s banking on snake oil to become a petroleum sheikh. The kid has nothing to offer to the world of mass entertainment (which is ironic, since mass entertainment itself has nothing to offer to us), but is fiercely convinced that he has all the trappings of the next big superstar. That’s what makes his plan fucked-up. The silver lining is the fact that the kid is young and we are all pretty much messed-up in the heads when we are young. With a little luck, Deepak will pull back before it is too late. With what I hoped sounded sage advice – don’t neglect your education, join an acting course, take good care of Tuffy – we bid adieu to the kid.

Deepak was my first encounter with the rumoured hunger among small town kids to make it (think the Dhoni story or Bunty aur Bubbly), to kick ass and make the nation fall in love with you while earning millions and coming back triumphant to your home town, taunting it like it taunted them. Who your daddy now?

It would make for a very interesting film. Dhoni came back to Jamshedpur with SUVs and dream bikes, what will Deepak come back to Udaipur with? That is, if he gets out of there in the first place.

2008-02-14T16:54:00.004+05:30

ANGRY HUSBAND WOULD LIKE TO PUNCH SHAH RUKH KHAN

MUMBAI, FEB. 2.
Dadar resident Anuj Kulkarni today told this correspondent that he would like to punch Shah Rukh Khan “right on his fuckin’ nose.” When asked the reason for his barely controlled fury, Kulkarni claimed that the popular actor’s chest baring in the film Om Shanti Om had made him quarrel with his wife just as he was about to leave for work. Accotding to Kulkarni, his wife had been badgering him for over a week about “getting six packs” like Khan’s. “This morning I could not take it anymore. So I snapped back at her, and now she won’t talk to me.”
Taking a thinly concealed dig at Shah Rukh Khan, he said “As if Salman Khan was not enough! Most people show brains, those who have none show off the shell.”
His comments touched a cord among the gathered sympathizers and passers by, and this correspondent saw several heads nod assent.

Bhaisahab ki poetry: Spine

2007-04-05T10:19:00.000+05:30

SPINE
Once
When I was falling from the tree tops
A baboon grabbed my leg with his tail
inches above the ground

Grateful, I said to him
“Ask for anything baboon
You saved my life”

That cunning simian said
“Give me your spine”

Bhaisahab ke photos: Manimal

2007-03-30T21:25:00.000+05:30

MANIMAL

(Versova Beach, Bombay 2007)

Baat Cheet - The Discussion

2007-03-30T21:00:00.000+05:30

EXT - BOMBAY TAXI WAITING ON CROWDED PEDDAR ROAD, BOMBAY, WAITING FOR THE SIGNAL TO CHANGE.

TAXI CONTAINS THE TAXI DRIVER - VINOD KUMAR MISHRA, KNOWN TO FRIENDS AS BABBEY, AND ONE PASSENGER.

BABBEY LOOKS AT THE SWARM OF CARS AND BUSES ALL AROUND HIM, FEELING THE BOMBAY HEAT UNDER HIS COLLAR. HE LOOKS INTO THE REARVIEW MIRROR TO CONSIDER THE PASSENGER - A LONG HAIRED MAN WHO WAS SMOKING A CIGARETTE, LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW. BABBEY STARTS A CONVERSATION, SPEAKING IN A RASPING, TOO-MANY-BEEDIS KIND OF A VOICE.

BABBEY
Yahaan par flyover ban jaata toh kitna achcha hota. Par yeh Lata Mangeshkar ne nahi banney diya.

PASSENGER (mildly intrigued)
Achcha?

BABBEY
Haan. Agar yahaan ban jaata, toh kitna gaadi ka tel bach jaata, kitna time bach jaata apna. Nahi?

PASSENGER
Bilkul

A PAUSE

Toh ab kya kabhi nahi banega flyover?

BABBEY
Banega na. Jab woh mar jayegi toh banega.

PASSENGER
Ha ha. Sahi baat hai.

THE LIGHT CHANGES, BABBEY TAKES THE CAR FORWARD GINGERLY. BUT HE IS TOO WELL VERSED WITH STREET RULES IN BOMBAY TO LET A GOOD CONVERSATION DIE JUST BECAUSE OF TRAFFIC.

BABBEY
Uska awaaz mast hai lekin.

PASSENGER
Haan

BABBEY
Kya khaati hogi woh?

PASSENGER (shrugs)
Bhai meat toh nahi khaati hogi. Shakahari khaati hogi

BABBEY
Haan. Jaise gobi hua, daal hua, dahi khaati hogi. Tabhi toh uska awaaz itna achcha hai...

PASSENGER
Bilkul

A PAUSE AS BABBEY NEGOTIATES THROUGH A TRICKY SITUATION INVOLVING BUSES ON BOTH SIDES OF HIS TAXI. ONCE CLEAR, HE CONTINUES.

BABBEY
Apun bhi woich sab cheez khaata hai. Par apna awaaz toh saala thakela hai.

PASSENGER
Ha ha!

Vinod Kumar Mishra, also known as Babbey

Kurt Cobain will have his revenge on us all

2007-03-28T10:23:00.001+05:30

When I was seventeen, I became a convert to Kurt Cobain's brand of narcissism.

Old Kurt got his kicks by searing his soul with self-criticism, a round the clock "I’m a scumbag, a sorry little scumbag" spiel, a state of mind in which nothing about him was likeable. And he did not want to change for the better either. For Kurt, there was no such thing as self esteem, or self improvement. Only self pity and self destruction.

He once wrote a song called “I hate myself and want to die.” Can’t get more direct than that.

And that was the fountain from whence sprang those growling tunes that made goose pimples pop all over my skin.

Overall though. Kurt Cobain was a fine person, and a bloody good poet.

It’s really sad all the good people kill themselves, while the bad ones kill everyone else.

KURT COBAIN 1967-1994
A GOOD MAN

Aila. Tendulkar?

2007-03-24T16:36:00.000+05:30

Sachin Tendulkar - he could have retired as gracefully, as grandly, and as wisely as Stevie Waugh.

But no, he had to go like this. Kicking and screaming into retirement, enduring the indignity of fast bowling nobodies firing deliveries that crash into his helmet.

Having the entire fanbase cringe at the horrible shot selection that gets him out.

Having that look of perplexity on his face, a god puzzled by the sudden disappearance of his halo, as he walks back after another pathetic display of batting.

Fact is, he has the exact same look on his face these days that Abdul Qadir once had seventeen years ago in Faislabad, when a teenager from India hammered him for three sixes in an over, and smiled apologetically at the bowler each time.

These days, I suspect we spend more time watching Tendulkar in advertisements than on the pitch. Instead of batting like a buccaneer with Einsteinian intelligence at the Gabba or Lords, he's peddling biscuits and carbonated drinks to our kids.

I don’t mean to bring down other people's icons, but you have to wonder at how similar a fate has befallen the two greatest icons of independent India - Tendulkar and Amitabh Bachchan. Both ruled the hearts and minds of Indians, one during the heyday of India Past, and the other at the cusp of the neo-liberal tsunami that led to the installation of the matrix in this country.

Today, Tendulkar and Bachchan, despite their enormous talent, are nothing but salesmen for lotions and portions, and even polishitians.

That's what the matrix does to you - you start loving money more than what you do.

Sachin Tendulkar loses his leg stump to Dilhara Fernando, India v Sri Lanka, Group B, Trinidad, March 23, 2007
AFP/Cricinfo