HI Again,

Just last week I had blogged about the exploitation of the William-Kate story by the media (and done a little exploitation of my own, I have to admit)
Today, however, I am a little more concerned.
Has the news media become IRRESPONSIBLE & IRRELEVANT?

Does it fan the flames of discontent?

Take 3 recent examples.

SHILPA SHETTY – RICHARD GERE

In Bombay for an AIDS awareness campaign, Gere and Shetty were giving a talk to a group of truck drivers, the ones who are supposed to be the biggest carriers & spreaders of the virus. Apart from teaching about prevention they were also informing about the stigmas and myths surrounding the disease. In the process and I guess in the attempt at enlivening the proceedings, Gere did a mock waltz with Shetty and then in the end ‘dipped’ her and gave here a couple of pecks on the cheek. Please note: on the cheek not lips.
The crazy Indian “news” media ran the ‘dip & kiss’ a zillion times till the even crazier Hindu Rashtra Army or whatever else they call themselves these days decided to burn effigies of Gere & Shetty denouncing the demeaning of Indian culture. Like I mentioned in one of my previous blogs, the billion odd Indians were all dropped by storks or whatever else it is that drops children from the sky because sex definitely did not have a role in it.
In the subsequent press conference after refusing, quite admirable, to apologize, Shetty gave the press a piece of her mind and ticked them off by telling them that if they had not aired the clip so often in such an exploitative manner the whole fracas would not have happened.

What is NEWS anyway? Does everything that can be ‘shown’ qualify as news?

THE CRAZY CHO KID – VIRGINIA TECH

By now you must have all heard, read about and seen the Virginia Tech college massacre. In the middle of all this, the crazy kid managed to mail a couple of dozen photographs and rambling videos of himself. The networks were all convinced that this was the ‘scoop’ they always look for and ran the pictures and clips again and again. First of all, it must have been excruciatingly traumatizing to the parents of the victims to see pictures of the crazy guy pointing the barrel of the gun at the camera. It must be giving them nightmares of what their children had faced just before they died. This is all apart from the fact that the crazy psychopath was being almost lionized by the media as a kinda anti-hero. He compared himself to Jesus Christ and the constant video replays have allegedly led to 5 copy-cat threats already.

Again, should everything that is ‘available & shocking’ be aired as NEWS?

JHANVI KAPUR- ABHISHEK BACHCHAN

On the day of the Abhiash (I know, I know….) wedding a floozie (and that’s being kind to her) named Jhanvi Kapur tried to cut her wrists and then tried to file a police report saying that Abhishek had married her and then dumped her. The police, thankfully, did not entertain her request to file a report but did book her for attempted suicide. The press however managed to catch the whole drama on tape and then played it ad nauseam even though it was obvious that the crazy bitch was lying, seeking publicity and quite drunk too. Apart from playing into her hands and giving her the publicity that she so desired they did not even stop to think how irresponsible it was to air such garbage on someone’s wedding day.

Every day my colleague complains that he has forbidden his 8 year old son from picking up the newspaper from the front door because gruesome pictures of the dead in Iraq and other places splashed on the front pages has given the poor kid nightmares.

Is NEWS really news anymore or has it turned into the visual version of a tabloid?

Food for thought huh?

HI Again,

By now every person who has access to a TV or the Internet would have heard about the split between HRH Prince William and his girlfriend Kate Middleton.


Without official statements from Clarence House (William’s official residence) or from Kate’s family, I would have classified it as just another tabloid editor trying to sell some extra papers. However Prime Minister Blair has now commented (during one of the chat shows that he is so fond of attending) that the people should “leave the two of them alone, now that they have broken up. But don’t believe the reasons the papers give you,” he added helpfully, “they usually get the reasons all wrong”.
Apart from officially confirming something that was private and not his to confirm, he was wringing his hands and trying to steal the moment for himself.

He had to do all he could to stop himself from eulogizing her and saying “She will never be a future Queen but she will always remain in our hearts as the People’s Princess….. now sadly back with the people..”

The poor girl (and the Prince) is probably just heartbroken as any normal person would be at the end of a relationship but the Press seems to be going overboard trying to find “reasons” for their breakup.

Some say that her mother wasn’t really liked by the courtiers. She was apparently too pushy. I don’t know about pushy but she is an ex-stewardess and that can’t have gone down well with the snobs in Buckingham Palace. But didn’t a certain Lady Diana Spencer prove that aristocratic blood alone is no guarantee of happiness.
Just ask HRH Camilla the Duchess of Cornwall.
She is as bourgeois as they come and yet there she is, as Queen Consort in Waiting.

The present Queen, apparently is ‘distraught’ over this. She had, again apparently, really liked Kate and had even gone riding with her. She and Prince Philip feel that in a few years Wills will realize that he let his soul mate go and has lost his true love.

Again I don’t know how much of that is true but if Kate indeed did manage to squeeze and wring some kind of emotion out of Prince Philip then that alone makes her ready and fit to be Queen.
Even his own sons and daughter in law’s could not get some kinda approval from him. Again to be fair look at the crop he has. Cabbage Eared and Sour Charles, Boozy Andrew, Ugggg Ugly Daughter Anne, the Royal Wimp Edward and to top it all the Ever-Preening Diana and Toe Licking Fergie.
Can’t say I blame the man really. I am surprised he didn’t just feed them to the corgis.

AND I can’t blame the tabloids either. Just look at me and my blog. :-)

Just wish them both a lot of luck.

If indeed the break up wasn’t mutual and if Wills did dump her, a royal kiss-and-tell book would be the best way to get even. Are you listening Kate?

Aahh by the way MOVIE NEWS.

I watched PROVOKED.

Sorry all you Ash fans but this movie is not her finest (and I use the word finest very loosely)
It was almost like watching a school play, which is what most Indian-English movies end up sounding like. Somehow actors, who are otherwise perfectly fluent in spoken English in real life, seem fake and put-on once they come on screen.

Thankfully Ash starts of as an Indian bride (Kiranjit Ahluwalia) in England who is “I no speak English” but after a couple of years in the jail with some dodgy East-Enders as friends, she not only manages to speak fluently but seems to pick up a nice upper crust accent as well. I wonder who gave her lessons on that.
And a couple of scenes later when Nandita Das asks her to tell her story, she is again “But I afraid people laugh my English”

People laugh this Movie not your English.

You may ask why I am nit-picking here but the point I am trying to make here is that when you set out to make a ‘serious’ movie you have to get the details and nuances correct.
Its one thing having Salman in a frivolous Salaam-E-Ishq going Raoooool and quite another to have a battered Indian wife stammer in broken English in 1 scene, speak the Queen’s English perfectly in the next and then go back to being coy, saying “You show Busum and you win.” in the third.
(and if you didn’t get it, she meant bosoms and please don’t ask what is the reference of bosoms in the movie)

And after the initial wide-eyed, ‘scared’ & disheveled bit of ‘acting’ dispensed with, Ash quickly got back to being pretty and wide-fluttering-eyed.

I have always maintained that we seem to think any acting involving handicaps or abuse is automatically good.
Just look at Black.
Rani’s character was melodramatic and loud and utterly fake, not to mention too perfectly groomed & color coordinated for a blind girl. But the worst part was that her character was pointless.
She fights, overcomes great hurdles and passes college and does what???
Nothing. Zilch. Zero.
Struggles just for the sake of struggling.
And since I am dissing everyone here let me also say that Amitabh by the end of the movie was equally fake. He is supposed to have Alzheimer’s but seems to display symptoms of Parkinson’s.
It’s like saying, “My head is hurting, please hold my leg.”

If you really want to know how badly they have messed up Provoked then watch the otherwise brilliant Nandita Das. The poor girl is one dimensional and stilted throughout. And because it is an ‘English’ movie, when she meets Ash (who is Punjabi) Nandita says she only understands Punjabi and so replies in English for the benefit of the audience.
Two stupid little girls! It never strikes them to try another common language they’d both understand.
Hindi perhaps?

And once the “Wow! You are great! That’s a brilliant idea!” scene gets over (and believe me there are quite a few of those) she even has to mouth clichés like “Baby, You ain’t seen nothin yet”.

And its not just the Indian actors, the British are equally bad. McFadden playing the detective is as cardboard as they come as is the mandatory prison dyke. The only one actually working for her pay is Miranda Richardson who shows flashes of brilliance but is too mired in the awful script to be able to rise above it.

It is based on the real life story of Kiranjit Ahluwalia who was convicted for the murder of her husband and then subsequently freed using the Battered Wife Syndrome defense. Her husband, in her own words, had a split personality. However in this movie he is painted all black. Just bad. No grey shades at all. In simple, a caricature, like all hindi villains are supposed to be.

The credits at the end inform us that this was a ‘monumental’ case in British legal history. I am sure the correct word they were looking for was ‘landmark’ but what’s one more error in a movie filled with them.

And the “humor’ is provided by various British characters struggling with her name stuttering Aloo… Aloo... Aloo

Provoked! Yes, you will be if you spend money to watch it.

Hiya again,

You must have all heard or 'seen' the Liz Hurley- Arun Nayar wedding recently in India.
Not being a fan of Liz and quite frankly not knowing who Arun Nayar is or was, apart from being Liz’s husband, I couldn’t be blamed if I wasn’t a fan of the wedding. I personally felt it was over the top and decadent but its her money and her choice.
An absolute farce but her choice of farce nevertheless.

As a commentator put it, “The foreigners (sic) are senseless and don’t have the cultural sensibility of the Indians. And sometimes they go crazy”

True! Absolutely true! But what was not mentioned was what happens when the Indians themselves go crazy, well…. That’s when the shit actually hits the fan.

(WWF getting creative)

Some floozy named Vishnu Khandelwal has filed a case in India and his prosecuting lawyer named H M Saraswat has been quoted as saying the following:

“An arrest warrant could be issued for Arun and Liz as soon as the prosecution has made its case. When Arun Nayar and Liz Hurley came to the marriage mandap, Arun left his footwear outside but Liz refused to remove her footwear. We must remove our shoes when we pray to God. Our intention is to prove that the procedures adopted by both the accused for their marriage are against our Hindu rites. We have our own religious beliefs, including that the bride and bridegroom must behave soberly, and in this case, they had both taken drinks. Pictures of them kissing in Hello! magazine are against our culture too. We are using these pictures to prove our case.”

It's not improtant if you have faith and belief in your soul but, Yes, shoes have to be removed. Yeah and we in india do not kiss. Even after marriage. You know the 1 billion of us were dropped by storks.


The case is reported to be based on section 295 A of the Indian Penal code, which deals with the intention to outrage the feelings of Hindus by insulting their religious and ritualistic beliefs.

Narendra Modi is an outrage to Hindus. Try prosecuting him.



It is also alleged that Liz Hurley showed off excess flesh with her choice of attire.


Saraswat added, “In our religion, the bride’s dress must cover her body properly. Liz showed off her body, which is against our culture and beliefs.”
Obviously he has not seen some of the hindu weddings in the cities now a days. The dress Liz wore to the wedding mandap was more covered than most indian brides. And since when did our religion have dress codes mentioned? I dont remember any shasthra or veda mentioning what should and shouldn't be worn.

In an earlier court hearing, Saraswat reportedly accused the couple of “utilizing the Hindu marriage to spread Christianity”. Not a fan of Ms. Gandhi I presume and again, how in heaven's name can a hindu marriage spread christianity? Maybe Mr. Khandelwal should convert to Islam to spread Hinduism.


He told a court in Jodhpur, “This is the first case in India where a married couple has gone through another marriage. The couple has been, through their act, trying to canvass for the spread of Christianity and utilizing the Hindu marriage, they have hurt the people’s sentiments.”



India talks about its famed 9% growth and teeming middle class and 74% population under 35 and how India is Incredible. Yet it just takes one crackpot to sully all that in one stroke of insanity. I know it is just 1 crazy person doing this but Liz’s high profile in the tabloids will ensure that this news is splashed prominently in the newspapers all over the world.

There has to be some kind of law to stop these kind of cuckoo legislations. Not only because it is absolutely ridiculous but also because it wastes the court’s time. And we wonder why millions upon millions of cases are pending in the courts where normal people’s cases are not given a chance to be heard.

Not to mention how India is losing out on the lucrative wedding market.

India Shining? Naa!



Not till lunatics like Khandelwal are locked up in asylums.

Dear Friends,

You must have all got my mail titled BREAKING NEWS informing you about the blog.

Many many of you either called or mailed me to say many different things.

One called me all the way from Bangalore to say that i am resorting to more and more innovative ways to grab eyeballs for my blogsite. However i am not sure if that was meant as a compliant or a compliment. And being an employee of IBM he, without pausing to ask if i knew the meaning, proceeded to tell me that "to grab eyeballs" is a technical way of saying blah blah blah. Thank you.

Someone else mailed me from Delhi to say that she doesn't have internet. No Internet in 2007. Yeah and i am Santa Claus.

The Grandmother from the mail called to say that her fave name is not Govinda Shumshere anymore it has changed to Rajni Shumshere.

A lot of others mailed me saying that when they read BREAKING NEWS they had thought of many other different things. Everything but the baby.

I guess its fair enough because the said baby wasn't due till the end of April but what surprised me was the different things they 'guessed' was the NEWS.

Some thought i'd been nominated for a Pulitzer or the Booker Award.

Some thought i had won a million dollars.

And some thought i'd become a father.

The first two i can understand (ahem) but the third???

Unless it was the second coming of Jesus, i am not sure of having miraculously fathered any tiny tots.

(Would be great fun to have chairs like this at home for guests)

If any other readers of the blog want to 'publish' or 'inform' of any events in their lives please feel free to send me an email at vishal.subba@adnoc-dist.ae or vishalsubba@hotmail.com and put BLOG in the subject so i will not send it to junk mail. Pictures will be most welcome too.

You must again be wondering and scratching your head thinking,

"Why is this fellow doing this? Why does he blog so much? And such utter nonsense too. Fun, but nonsense nevertheless"

Well..... to paraphrase what a popular pair of RJ's in UAE say

"Hum insaan nahi, insane hai"

Till next time.

Ciao

BREAKING NEWS

(This is not their baby. No baby pic as yet)

A dear couple friend of mine has just been blessed with a baby boy. He was supposed to make his grand entrance sometime towards the last week of April but after constant disturbances (the smart ones among you can figure it out) he decided to pop out early. He arrived on 31 March 2007 at a hospital in Kathmandu.

The naming ceremony has not been done as yet and till then they have decided to call him Gogol.

Naa Just joking.

I am not exactly sure but they are vacillating between a couple of names.

Govinda Shumshere (the grandmother’s favourite),

Hrithik Shumshere (the aunt Sanjok’s choice), and Hash Shumshere (the uncle Peggy’s fave). The mother Shraddha wants him to represent the times and name him Prajatantra Shumshere (an oxymoron if ever there was one. Prajatantra means People’s Democracy and Shumshere is a synonym for Feudal Dictatorship). The father wants to call him Siirpech Shumshere (Siirpech being the royal Nepalese crown which my dear friend has his eye on).

My personal suggestion is quite simple. Stick to Nepali tradition and since he was born on a Saturday name him Shani-kumar Shumshere.

Anyway Dear Shraddha,

From all of your friends and well wishers and numerous others who only know you through the blog, a hearty CONGRATULATIONS.

You must be feeling joy, elation and god damm relief. We heard that it was a C-Sec so I guess you were spared the agony of dilating your V-Sec to push the little guy out.

Hope you gave the father some taste of what the experience was like.

I am sure you will make a great mother but wait a couple of years before you imbibe in him the teachings of Chairman Mao.

Congrats once again.

Dear HRH Prabir,

Congrats. You are a Padrē now.

Just make sure you always weigh more than the baby does.

My regards to the whole family too.
-------------------------------------------*-------------------------------------------

On a completely different note I was watching the Zee Cine Awards yesterday evening. It began at 6pm local time and dragged on and on till it finally came to an end at a quarter to 12 midnight. The worst thing about it was that it was so bad, sooooo bad that you could not switch off the TV and put an end to it. I know that is confusing but try and think of it as a bad bad train crash happening in slow motion over 6 excruciating hours. You cant do anything to stop it but at the same time you cannot take your eyes off it either.

(talk of unintentional comedy)

To start off, Katrina Kaif (as pretty as she is, God bless her) did a stick dance. Actually it was a proper dance but she was so stiff that the audience was fooled. It was only when Salman joined her and did his jig (dance would be too strong a word for it) that things looked a little up. And I do mean little.
Then there was a 10-year-10-song-10-star ‘tribute’. The songs were ok (after all you cant mess up recordings) but the 10 stars were anything but stars. Riya Sen (of the MMS fame) was the biggest of the 10 stars so you can imagine who the others were.

I could go on and describe the rest but I will spare you the academic version of the train crash.

If the ‘performances’ were a joke the ‘awards’ made a mockery of the whole event.

If you don’t get what I mean check out this list.

Shah Rukh Khan
Sanjay Dutt
Hrithik Roshan
Kajol
Ayesha Takia
Gul Panag
Saif Ali Khan
Abhishek Bachchan
Arshad Warsi
Kangana Ranaut
Upen Patel
Konkana Sen Sharma


And NO it isn’t a list of the nominees. It is a list of the winners. Everybody and I do mean EVERYBODY and their fathers, were given awards.

Rekha was given the Forever Diva of Divas award. And as silly as that is, it was probably the only deserving one of the evening. Looking gorgeous and immaculately dressed she was equal parts seductive, coy and playful. Truly, they don’t make stars like her anymore.

Then it went all downhill from there. Subash Ghai got an award for opening a film school (don’t ask) and from a laundry list of really B & C grade star presenters one F grade one named Sharad Kapur (don’t try to jog your memory, only film historians remember him anyway) even decided to use the platform to thank some people. I will just tell you what he said.

“I would like to take the opportunity to thank Mahesh Bhatt, Mukesh Bhatt, Vikram Bhatt etc etc for helping me 10 years ago when I joined the industry.”

Poor guy, apart from the fact that the thanks came just a little bit late, it didn’t help him that people were reminded about how long he has been out of work.

There also were many emcees.

Urmila trying to speak English with an god-knows-what accent. Frankly girl, master the language before you try on accents. Is that so difficult to do? I mean just look at Salman, he probably speaks more ‘British’ than his girlfriend Katrina who was born and raised there.

Shilpa who along with her mother, has decided that she is going to milk the 15 minutes of the Big Brother fame for atleast 15 more years. Though to be fair she was looking HOT. Then she began to make faces and opened her mouth and all the magic left the building.

Saif Ali Khan. Looking bored and just waiting for his check probably.

And finally K Jo, who is becoming a bigger drama queen as every day goes by. At one stage he even had on a Tiara (again dont ask)

And finally to hammer home the last nail in the coffin on this 'dead'-ful day, Hrithik was named best actor.

In a year which saw performances like Aamir (RDB), Ajay (Omkara), Siddarth (RDB), Saif (Omkara), Sanjay (Munnabhai), Anupam (Khosla ka..) etc........... Hrithik (who is otherwise a good actor) gets it for Kkrish.

Only when Oscars get handed out to Ben Affleck for Daredevil or Tobey Maguire for Spiderman , can we probably say that Bollywood has finally ‘conquered’ Hollywood.

Till then….

A woman wakes up on a cold freezing and bleak New York morning. She has just moved here from Calcutta after marrying a man in an arranged marriage who, as she says, was the “best of the lot”. After shyly waving him goodbye through the window she rummages in the cupboard and finds some cornflakes. A pure Bengali, born and bred, she pours some of it in a bowl and then, as only a Bengali can do, proceeds to add some chilly powder and some nuts to make a quick fix meal of ‘jhal-muri’.

Such subtle insights are what make The Namesake a truly wonderful movie experience. At its very core it is also a very emotional story with 3 very natural and pitch-perfect performances as its anchor.

When I first read The Namesake, I was sure that, as beautiful as it was it wasn’t a ‘filmable’ movie. There were lots of passages in the book which were just ‘feelings’ and ‘emotions’. As fond as I am of Ms. Nair, I was not sure of how she would film the silences. The other book I felt this way about was Kiran Desai’s “The Inheritance of Loss”. Ms. Nair has done such a wonderful job of filming this movie and I can’t wait for someone else to film the Desai novel.

Tabu, Irfan and Kal Penn are all wonderfully human and perform with utmost conviction. Kal Penn in particular is a revelation, especially since the only film I’ve seen of his is the goofy “Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle”

There is also a small character role of Ms. Moushami Majumdar who is initially a geeky snob who says things like “I detest American television” but grows up to be quite a seductive vamp and its played to perfection by a fabulous Zuleikha Robinson. She not only looks hot, but spouts bits of French and like the French she also manages to have an extra marital affair. In short she has about 10 mins of screen time but she blazes the screen with her presence including a remixed cabaret-cum-striptease rendition of the old classic “Yeh Mera Dewanapan Hai” on her wedding night.

For most of us raised on a diet of Bollywood movies which are loud and dramatic with heightened emotions and music score to match (which by the way is not meant as a negative) this movie might seem a little ‘slow’. But bear with it for the first 15 min and you will be richly rewarded.

For all of us, who think of ourselves as wonderfully modern and independent, this movie makes us go back and appreciate our parents all over again. And that is its greatest strength.

As the film’s tagline goes….

“Sometimes The Greatest Journeys Are Those That Bring You Home”

Welcome Home!

Hiya,

All of you, Nepali or otherwise, must be aware of all the ‘changes’ happening in Nepal.

One of the saddest ones was turning Nepal into a Secular country.
It was after all the only Hindu kingdom in the world.
And then there was none….

I am not a religious fanatic like Narendra Modi or even a fanatic in a liberal garb like L K Advani but I am just feel that this was not necessary.
Who were we trying to appease? The 1.2 % Muslims in Nepal? They were not even asking for it and neither were they being discriminated against. Now after this, communal lines have begun to appear in the society and the country is getting divided along those very lines.

As some wise ass said If it Aint Broke Why Fix It?

Anyway even if we get over that, the other thing that needles me is that the King & Queen have been removed as Head & Patron of the Pashupati Temple Trust. This is now under the stewardship of the Prime Minister’s office.

I am not a fan of HM Gyanendra and am not defending him either so all you Maoist sympathizers, please, get off your pseudo moral high horses now.
By the way I wonder if the ‘supporters’ of the Maoists actually understand the teachings and doctrines of Mao or are they just mice being led along to a precipice by Pied Piper Prachanda?
Someone please tell them that when the Maoists come to power, land and houses in Nepal will not be ‘distributed’ to them free of cost. The rich will remain rich, the ones willing and able to work will go abroad and the poor & stupid will remain just that. Poor & Stupid. The land of Mao itself is turning capitalist and the fools here dream on.

My arguments are for another reason altogether. Its religious not political!

Whenever you read of Saudi King Abdullah in any Newspaper printed or published out of a Muslim country he is referred to as King of Saudi Arabia and Custodian of the Two Holy Sites. It is an official title and the Muslims are very particular and proud of the fact. Apart from all the oil money, a lot of his influence in the Arab /Muslim world comes from that. It is a deeply religious thing for them.

Nepal’s kings and their heirs (whether deposed no not) will all be Hindu’s.

In secular Nepal, however, you cannot stop a non-Hindu or even an atheist (as all Maoists should be) from becoming Prime Minister.
And before any of you claim otherwise, let me clarify that I have no objections to a non Hindu becoming PM.
Its just that I don’t relish the thought of a non-Hindu being the Patron of one of the holiest sites in Hinduism.

I am not a religious extremist because that would mean being intolerant of the others. I am not.
However I am proud of being a Hindu. That’s not fanatic is it?

Give it some thought.

I do benefits for all religions.

I'd hate to blow the hereafter on a technicality.

- Bob Hope

On the occasion of FRIENDSHIP DAY let me wish all of you a very warm, blessed and friend filled year ahead

Like Marriage, Friendships (true ones atleast) are a constant challenge and need to be worked on everyday. Some days it gets easier and some days … well we just gotta be more … ahem….ahem… what’s the word…. Aaa… Tolerant.

Let me tell you a true story to better illustrate this point. Even though I am one of the characters in it, I shall, for the purpose of fairness, recount it in the third person.

The other character is my best friend of almost 2 ½ decades HRH Prabir SJB Rana.

OK here goes.

The Place : The huge school grounds in my Alma Mater, St. Joseph’s School. Darjeeling.
The Scene: The preliminary heats are being conducted for the school sports day.
The Year : 1984 (so they were both in Std IV)

-----*-----

Vish & Rana sat bored on the grass banks as they crushed and then mixed a packet of Wai Wai instant noodles. It was the last batch from the tucks they had got from home and the next batch was still a month away so they both shared a solitary packet and each warily measured the handful that the other was taking lest someone sneak out too much of the dry instant noodles.

The 800 meters heats were just beginning and a loud cheer went up from the boisterous crowd of boys assembled in groups of various sizes all along the grassy knolls surrounding the huge field.

“I don’t run as often as I used to do” said Rana as he tilted his head back and shoved a handful of wai wais into his mouth.
“I wasn’t aware you ran at all” replied Vish licking his fingers clean of the masala.
“Don’t you remember me in the marathon,” said Rana, almost choking on the dry noodles “I ran all the way to Lebong from school”
He was bewildered that his friend had forgotten this feat of his, even as he himself conveniently forgot to remember that he had been one of the last to finish the race and that too after taking a short cut.
“Anyway,” he added “if I can remember, you were on the back of a padre’s motorcycle with a sprained ankle as you crossed the line” he said emphasizing the word sprained.

The two little boys (little quite literally as not only were they in Std IV but also boarding school thin) sat munching their wai wai’s in silence as they both contemplated what had just been said. On any other day they would have probably laughed the whole matter off as they both accepted the fact that as talented as they were and as much tennis they played or as much as they swam, track & field was not really their area of expertise.

On this fateful day however, with the evening sun glinting off the fence in the distance something inside the little boys awoke and before the words could be taken back they were both standing in front of the Coach enlisting for the heats of the next event.

It happened to be the 2000 meters.

Two friends stood at the starting line suddenly turned into competitive beasts. As the gun went off so too did the motley crew of little pre adolescents. Each eager for a place in the evening sun.

The 2000 mtrs in this ground was usually about 8 circles of the huge field. Halfway into the first circle it was clear that the two little boys were being left way back. Still they huffed and puffed their way along the track trying, around the far corners, to cut a few meters as they ran outside the line of the inner track.
It was somewhere during the 3rd circle that they realized that there were some people behind them who were slowly beginning to catch up.
Filled with a sudden rush of adrenalin they increased what little they could of their speed but still the ones from the back began inching closer and closer as they finally overtook the two little boys.
It was only as they overtook, that the 2 boys realized that those were in fact the leaders of the race who were overtaking them by a full circle.
They were still last and second last.
Still they trudged on. Each willing the other to drop out but too proud to be the first to do so.
The boys on the banks sat like bored hyenas waiting to find a weak prey to pounce on and two crazy struggling boys was exactly what this boring evening required.
They began to cheer.
“Go Rana” screamed one side as the other side immediately overcome by the competitive streak usually present in school boys instinctively shouted “Go Vish Go”

Two friends were suddenly lifted and could almost see glory at the end of the line. The line was still almost 4 circles away but that did not deter the 2 fired up athletes.
They began to race each other.
However they had both long been fed on a diet of wai wai’s and stale biscuits and stolen sugar cubes (don’t ask) and were an equal match for each other.
Rana went ahead by a leg but a few paces later Vish was ahead again and so it went.

The rest of the spectators smelling blood cheered wildly from the side. Suddenly this routine prelims was beginning to look interesting. Hearing the cheers more and more boys from other areas in the school began filing towards the ground.

And then it happened.

Amidst all the noise and hoopla it wasn’t clear who began it but suddenly the two began to pull at each other. The more they pulled the more the crowd cheered. Even as they ran they now began to claw at each others shirts. Already exhausted after almost 4 rounds they two boys could not even hold on to each other’s shirts but still they ran on.

For the first time in the school’s illustrious 100 year history the race to be second last was suddenly worth it. Or so they thought.

Their latent friendship would still not allow them to physically punch at each other but they did everything else they could. They grabbed at each other’s hair, Rana tripped Vish but in the jumble he also fell.

Shirts in disarray, hair awry, scraped shins and bleeding knees they ran on and now even began to taunt each other.

And as suddenly as it had begun it all ended.

Did I mention here that both boys also suffered from a strange affliction that made them collapse in a fit of giggles at the most inopportune moments. Many years later when they would go to visit an aunt of Rana’s to offer condolences on her mother’s passing this fit would come again but that’s another story for another day.

Now on the field, bruised and bleeding they began to laugh uncontrollably. Their already slow progress became even slower and the fickle crowd began to jeer.

The Coach, Mr. Wangden Lama (a stern a man as any) was watching all the while from the sidelines and he now decided that enough was enough and marched in and dragged the struggling little boys off the field.

The two never raced again.

Many times in the years that followed they would hark back to that day and every time, without fail, it would bring a smile and always those memories ended in a hearty chuckle.

By the way they still haven’t decided who was in the ‘lead’ when they were unceremoniously yanked out.

Sometimes even adversities can be an excuse to smile.

Time indeed heals everything.

Happy Friendship Day!

Happy Women’s Day.

Hiya,

A big shout out to all the Ladies on international Women’s Day.
By the way is there a Men’s Day as well?
Never heard of it till now.

I dont know if this ad is appropriate for Women's Day
but what's a woman without a sense of humour

A friend of mine from my college days in Bangalore called me a few days back and proceeded to interview me for a paper he was preparing for his thesis on LOVE. I didn't know that one could write doctorate papers on such esoteric topics, else i'd be a Dr. many times over.

Anyway during the course of the conversation we got around to talking about what LOVE really is?
After thinking and discussing we finally came to the conclusion that there is nothing called love.

Come to think of it, Love is A.I.D.S. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

Love is the same. Just like HIV destroys your immune system little by little, so does love. Love also chips away at your natural defenses.

Mistrust leads to Trust, Solitude to Companionship, Anxiety to Relief…..

and slowly you ‘fall in love’.

What do you think? I know its kinda weird equating it to a disease but I think its precisely that. A disease in the best sense of the word.

Am I A Genius? or Am I A Genius?

Anyway Comments will be welcome on this.

And all you Laaadies, Have a Wonderful Women’s Day.

What do you do on these days anyway??

Ciao

Vish

Hiya Again,

This is my delayed OSCAR blog.

OSCARS are quite a tradition with me and i have been taking the day off and setting my alarm for 2:30 am every year for the past 5 years. This year was no different but a little boring. Some of the choices were not up to the mark and frankly Ellen was a lousy host. Vacumming near the stars???? Well lady (if you can call her that) you said one should aim low and you did. You really did.

The winners.

Forest Whitaker : Okey Dokey. Peter O'Toole deserved it more. If any of you get a chance to catch Venus on DVD don't miss it. Just before the oscars he was on a chat show and when he was asked if he could imagine himself with a 18 year old girl, like in the movie, he said he could do more than imagine it. And when he was asked if he was doing something like it presently, he deserved an oscar for just the way he deflected the question with some offer of jujubes. I guess you had to see it to believe it but for 3 whole minutes he made a whole act of a simple box of jujubes. Masterful.

Helen Mirren: Her performence seems to improve with every viewing of The Queen. If i were Her Majesty, i would honour her right away for making the royal family sympathetic again. Maybe the royals in Nepal can learn a lesson or two from this.

Alan Arkin: Thank god Eddie Murphy did not win. He huffed and puffed and left as soon as he lost. Sore losers dont deserve to win. But Mark Wahlberg deserved it more.

Jennifer Hudson: Political Correctness is going to far. Ask yourself this: Would she have won if she weren't black? Can you compare her with Cate Blanchett and say she is better? See the injustice now?

Martin Scorcese: About time and quite a great gesture when 3 other great directors came out to present him the award. Lucas, Cuppolla, Speilberg & Scorcese on stage together. That is power.

Nicole Kidman looked great and is going from strength to strength. Tom on the other hand seems to be ripe for beginning a cult. Come to think of it, hasn't he already?

Staying on Hollywood, Can some one please bury Anna Nicole Smith?

WOW, i had heard of media power but nothing prepars you for how well the media have turned the death of a former surgically enhanced stripper cum gold digger into a 24 hour circus. Wow!

Great AD for Hard Rock Hotel

(look closely at the tummy)

By the way after yesterday's post my dear friend Sanjok, complained that the post made it seem like she wasn't having enough sex unlike her senior in-laws. To clarify this issue let me say that Peggy is a quiet and sweet guy but as Phoebe from FRIENDS would say, when he does have a go at it, he can rattle the headboards like a sailor on leave.

When I was on a holiday with them in Thailand a couple of years ago, they managed to rattle the headboards almost thrice a day every day for 25 consequitive days.

How do i know this? Sanjok kindly volunteered this information during dinner and with her in laws present too.

Didn't i say she was a simple naive girl?

Till next time

Ciao from Me