LIAR, LIAR

Manmohan Singh said in his statement in the Indian Parliament:

"the agreement does not in any way affect India's right to undertake future nuclear tests, if it is necessary."

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said :

"The proposed 123 agreement has provisions in it that in an event of a nuclear test by India, then all nuclear cooperation is terminated, as well as there is provision for return of all materials, including reprocessed material covered by the agreement,"

Both of them can't be right. Ergo, one of them is lying. Take your pick.

Song of a Tuneless Nightingale

In the Garden of Verse trills many a nightingale
Of the advent of spring
Fertile, bountiful, pregnant.
Of clouds turgid with the fluid of life,
Of rain, and of lush green meadows,
Of starlit, silvery nights

Silenced are the mutterings
Of those in whose veins courses
The brutal, parched thirst
And ravenous hunger
Of searing summer unquenched.
Their deep, frightening voices
Out of place in Eden.

Autumn permitted to weep
Only in the silent shedding of leaves
And winter mute, frozen
By the chilling demise of the senses.

Here may be sung
Only chaste, bejewelled verse
Set to uplifting metre.
Shut are the doors
To tuneless wolf whistles
Prurient, irreverent, defiant
Yet far more spontaneous and heartfelt...

Sunjay Dutt and John Donne

Sunjay Dutt committed a crime, was caught, tried, and after fourteen long years, was finally found guilty and sent to jail. But this piece is not about him, not about whether he was guilty or innocent, nor about the quantum of his sentence. It's about the high decibel clamour from Bollywood protesting against his sentence. It's about everyone from Dilip Kumar to the newest wannabe shouting from the rooftops about what a saint Sunjay is, about how he was just a victim of the circumstances, about how he has reformed. To a man (and woman) they declaim before the cameras that "poor Sunjay" must be set free. The touching camaraderie almost brought a lump to my throat. The man must be a really lovable type, I thought, for all his colleagues to jump to his defence like this. Dale Carnegie's "How To Win Friends And Influence People" come to life.

Just then, my brain's resident cynical imp woke up, took one look at my train of thought and hooted with derision. "You poor mug, do you really believe that they are all so deeply concerned about Sunjay Dutt? Most of them couldn't care less about what happens to him! My poor innocent, this outrage isn't about Sunjay Dutt at all. What has got them deeply worried is that the invisible wall of immunity they have always taken for granted has been breached."

As usual, the imp was right. These people have played fast and loose with the laws of the land, firm in their conviction that the laws did not apply to them. Up to now they've got away with murder. Money, and the aura of stardom ensured that they were never called to account for their crimes - ranging from drugs to bigamy to tax evasion to posing as farmers to grab agricultural land to mowing down innocent men, women and children while drunk. To be above the law was the birthright of the stars. Sunjay Dutt's case has violated this very birthright. That is what the shrill hysteria is all about. Dutt is simply a cloak for the fear that has taken root in their hearts - the fear that tomorrow the law may call them to account for their crimes. The fear that finally the law may actually implement what was till now a pleasant fiction - that all are equal before the law.

Unbidden, John Donne's lines sprang to mind :

Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

The Bollywood bigwigs have heard the bell tolling - and they don't like the sound one bit!

Yahoo Mail Cleaner

Yahoo e-mail account-holders are familiar with the irritation of losing nearly one-fourth of the width of the browser workspace to advertisements. Grit your teeth and bear with it if you want a free web-mail service was the unspoken message. Now, for Firefox users, there's a way around this. First you need to install the Greasemonkey extension. Greasemonkey is one of the best extensions available for Firefox. It enables the user to customise the way web pages display by installing scripts. Once you've installed Greasemonkey and re-started Firefox, install the Yahoo Mail Cleaner script available here. Re-start Firefox and go to your Yahoo Mail. Abracadabra, hey presto, no ads and a full width message reading experience. Firefox's customisability wins hands down again. If you're still using Internet Explorer, do yourself a favour - get Firefox.

A patch of Paradise

Alone on a far shore
Savouring the limpid turquoise blue of the ocean
The soft, clean golden sand
The solitude, and the heaven-sent silence
Punctuated only by the lullaby of the waves
My own small patch of Paradise
Without the strings attached
An isle of repose, of calm
All the more beautiful for its impermanence
My personal Eden
Sans apple, sans Eve, sans Lucifer...sans God himself
For even He would be a distraction
Let me cherish it while I may
For the world will intrude all too soon...

Window

I sit by the window looking out
And see myself reflected
Outside the glass looking in
Reality and illusion facing off
Or is the window the only reality
Separating two ghosts
Or perhaps imprisoning just the schizoid singularity
Of a self-absorbed existence?
A Rowlingesque Hogwartian mirror showing
My heart's deepest desire - myself -
A true inheritor
To the mantle of Narcissus

"No, thank you" says Ford

Each time I think the BCCI can't do any worse, they prove me wrong by creating an even bigger cock-up. Graham Ford was well within his rights to turn down the job if he felt that the compensation or the tenure was inadequate. If the dumb clucks in the BCCI chose to go ahead and announce his appointment as the coach of the Indian cricket team without waiting for his official acceptance of their offer, he can hardly be blamed. The BCCI babus suffer from incurable foot-in-the-mouth disease and seem to count each day that they do not appear on the idiot box as wasted. I never thought I'd say this but these buffoons have succeeded in making Dalmia's reign look like a golden era. When he was in power at the BCCI I had no love lost for him and celebrated his exit as a new dawn for Indian cricket. But Dalmia was a hard-core Marwari businessman who at least got things done. Sharad Pawar has made the organisation a standing joke, albeit a very bad one. The BCCI now resembles nothing so much as a Tower of Babel, where each of his lackeys tries to outdo the others in shooting his mouth off without verifying anything. This latest fiasco only reinforces the popular perception of the BCCI as a bunch of arrogant,power-drunk incompetents answerable to no one. Someone got it spot-on a long time ago when he said that the only thing worse than a public sector monopoly is a private sector monopoly.Let's pray for the early birth of Zee's ICL (Indian Cricket League). Surely they can't do any worse than this lot!

Why did the chicken cross the road ?

Children, not to mention many of us adults have been asking one another this question for ages. If you feel "To get to the other side" is too simplistic or too childish an answer, see here for some profoundly philosophical answers.

The Yanks are worried

The Yankees are worried - and it's showing in their cartoons. Have a look at these two from the International Herald Tribune.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1126/525746127_dd25b86969_o.png

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1188/525746131_859b8720d5_o.png

When issues move from ivory tower editorials to newspaper cartoons one can safely say that they've become topics the man in the street talks about. Score one point for us, chaps. They've lectured the world on the virtues of a free market for decades. The shoe's on the other foot now.To use their idiom, they've talked the talk. Now it's time to walk the walk. Without whining that the shoe pinches. (Pardon the mixed, even mangled, metaphors but the temptation to crow a little bit was irresistible))

26 Golden Rules for Writing Well

I found these rules on the internet. They were attributed to Anon. If the copyright belongs to anyone , please let me know and I'll remove them.
Read them and smile. Then go back to what you were writing when you took a break and see how many of these 'rules' you've inadvertently violated. Don't ask me how many I'd broken. I refuse to answer on the grounds that the answer may incriminate me. (See, I read Erle Stanley Gardner too!)

26 Golden Rules for Writing Well

1. Don't abbrev.

2. Check to see if you any words out.

3. Be carefully to use adjectives and adverbs correct.

4. About sentence fragments.

5. When dangling, don't use participles.

6. Don't use no double negatives.

7. Each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.

8. Just between you and I, case is important.

9. Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.

10. Don't use commas, that aren't necessary.

11. Its important to use apostrophe's right.

12. It's better not to unnecessarily split an infinitive.

13. Never leave a transitive verb just lay there without an object.

14. Only Proper Nouns should be capitalized. also a sentence should begin with a capital letter and end with a full stop

15. Use hyphens in compound-words, not just in any two-word phrase.

16. In letters compositions reports and things like that we use commas to keep a string of items apart.

17. Watch out for irregular verbs that have creeped into our language.

18. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.

19. Avoid unnecessary redundancy.

20. A writer mustn't shift your point of view.

21. Don't write a run-on sentence you've got to punctuate it.

22. A preposition isn't a good thing to end a sentence with.

23. Avoid cliches like the plague.

24. 1 final thing is to never start a sentence with a number.

25. Always check your work for accuracy and completeness.

[ANON.]

BBC, the Queen's English & I

About an hour ago I was watching the news on BBC World. Their reporter was talking about the organ transplant trade in China and about how, in response to international pressure the Chinese government was trying to set up a regulatory framework for organ transplants.

The caption on the lower part of the screen read :

"VOLUNTARY ORGAN TRANSPLANT TO BE MANDATORY"

No, I'm not making this up, you read that right. After listening intently to the report I finally managed to work out what they meant - that consent from the deceased's family would henceforth be an essential prerequisite to the harvesting of human organs. Ah well, the pressures of 24*7 reporting! It's nice to know that the Beeb can goof up like all the rest of us. The next time I make a dog's dinner of the Queen's English I can at least be assured of being in elite company.

"Overselling capitalism"

Browsing the web today, I came across a very insightful and thought-provoking editorial in the 'Los Angeles Times' - "Overselling capitalism" - by Benjamin R. Barber. Capitalists of all hues (And I'm one of the unreconstructed hard-core ones) should read it and introspect. It may explain why the Left is making a return of sorts in some parts of the world. Right v/s Left, capitalism v/s communism/socialism - these are arguments which lend themselves far too easily to pulpit-thumping, chest-beating and hyperbole. Quiet reflection may not be fashionable or easy in this era of 24/7 media cacophony and "always-on" internet but it's necessary. Otherwise by the time we find out how far we have drifted from the goals we had set ourselves it may be too late for a course correction. And the "bad guys" will be back with a vengeance !

The World According To America

I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I saw this.




And the Yanks wonder why they're so unpopular round the globe!

A long way to twilight

It's a long way to twilight
With the day refusing to die
The fiercely beating sun digging his heels in,
Dogged in retreat
The stars and the moon bashfully hidden
Behind the veil of his blazing glare

The sky cloudless, no impediment
To the spears of his incandescent beams
The road, barren, tree-less
Only the shrubbery of razor-sharp pebbles underfoot
Kin to the cacti
Without even the saving grace
Of their greenness

It's a long way to twilight
And the day refuses to die...

What to blog about today?

Somebody once said ( and the rest of the world's been quoting it ad nauseam ever since!) that one picture's worth a thousand words. Here's one I came across on the BLaugh site that takes loquacity to an altogether new level. It certainly made me cringe a bit and I don't even blog every day.

Art Buchwald - R.I.P.

Art Buchwald, arguably America's greatest humorist since Mark Twain, passed away on Wednesday, the 17th of January 2007, aged 81. I've never been very good at writing obituaries. All I can say is 'Thanks, Mr.Buchwald, for many decades of laughter. Your writings enlivened our lives. Your political satires showed up many a windbag for for being exactly that - a bagful of hot air. To a non-American like me, you were my first introduction to Watergate, before I'd ever heard of Woodward and Bernstein.

Rest in peace.

A short on-line biography of Art Buchwald can be read here on Wikipedia.

The pen goes dry

I long for your cooling embrace
After the relentless flames of the world
Give me repose, Mother Ganga, for I come to your arms as ashes
Increasingly irksome was the mortal garb
And the silken ties too tight


The skein has unravelled
And I am one with the sky and the stars
Those symbols of eternity;
Have left behind mortal playmates, fickle emotions...

My pen sobs
And I lack the courage to speak the truth
To let it know
That it has finally run dry, and I, empty
Words fail me, like the 'Brahmastra', at vital moments
Perhaps I, too, carry the curse
Of some Bhargava ?

A free verse translation of my Marathi ghazal.

Manhood

Every morning the headlines flaunt
The rising graph of our hallowed, ancient culture
And provide statistical confirmation
Of the collective manhood
Of a bogey full of passengers;
Of the protectors' unshakeable indolence
Of unabashed justifications, of corrupted lives


Soon, far too soon
The dust settles
The reporters move on
Then is declared the official price
Of outraged modesty
Then stands tall and proud the maze
Of hospitals, police stations,
Blind, deaf, impotent courts
In which are condemned wounds
Never to heal
And the wounded
To endure the curse of life

I click my tongue in empathy
Sipping my steaming cup of tea
Then, turning the page, focus on
The alluring barely-clads of Page Three...


A free translation of my Marathi poem 'Purushaarth'.

"Can I help you, Sir?" or How I purchased a DVD player and lived to tell the tale.

It had been over a year since my DVD player went on strike. It was an old model, a Pioneer DV626 I'd purchased around 1998. How ancient, even antiquated, it was can be gauged from the fact that it couldn't play mp3s! No DVD player could, in those Dark Ages.But it was absolutely wonderful at its job, with top-notch audio and video reproduction. But in early 2005 it started acting up and by mid-2005, whatever disc I inserted into it, DVD, VCD,audio CD, scratched, in good condition or virginal, fresh from the box,it would, with total disinterest, display "NO DISC".Extending Adam Smith's "laissez faire" philosophy to consumer electronics, I ignored both it and the family's howls of protest, in the belief that it would heal itself.

A full year of electronic (and fiscal) conservatism down the line, the sleeping dog (in this case, DVD player) continued its impersonation of Rip van Winkle.My better half, and our teen-aged collaboration no longer howled but subsided into regular nagging. It was when the wife threatened to supplement the nagging with denial of privileges ( Stop snigerring, it was food I meant.) that I decided to take a more activist approach. Picking up the old, unco-operative box ( Cool down,ladies. I said box, not hag.) I took it to a Sales & Service Centre. "Can I help you, Sir?", a young shop assistant said in a tone of voice which clearly belied the words. Having been forced to suspend his tête-a-tête with sweet young co-worker to attend to me hadn't done his mood much good. "Could you repair this DVD player, please?", I asked. Learning that I only needed my player repaired and wasn't interested in purchasing anything did nothing to cheer him up. I left my player with him and he promised to ring me up in a couple of days. To his credit he kept his word. Two days later he called me up to inform me that the estimate for repairs was Rs.3500/-. Considering that new players were available on the market from Rs.1800/- onwards, this seemed to me to be a bit steep and I told him so. Not surprisingly, he agreed with me and promptly started his sales pitch. I went back to the shop, took my player back to my bosom, looked at the few models they had for sale, and left. The family lost no time in moving in for the kill. "Enough is enough" was the refrain. I was given a deadline by which a replacement had to be purchased. Or else!
The next day I set out on my quest. I walked into a nearby consumer electronics store. "Can I help you, Sir?" a PYT asked in dulcet tones. Inwardly cursing myself for having worn my holiday worst, I put on my best smile and said that I was interested in purchasing a DVD player. She beckoned to an underling and said, "Show Uncle the DVD section." I came down to earth with a thud. "These are the DVD players, Sir", the assistant said, gesturing vaguely towards the rear of the store. "Could you show me,please? And I'd like some details, some specifications." "The prices are mentioned on each player", he replied. I gestured towards the nearest one."Tell me something about this one." Pat came the reply,"It plays DVDs, Sir." "Wow, and I thought it makes coffee and vacuums the room!" I nearly said but restrained myself. "Does it play anything else?" "DVDs, VCDs, MP3, everything.", he recited like a waiter in an Udipi restaurant. "Which DVD formats does it support?", I asked. A simple enough question to someone trying to sell DVD players, you'd think. It turned out not to be so.The bored and supercilious expression on his face faded, to be replaced by a puzzled look that clearly spelled "Duh". "Formats", I repeated, continuing my attack. "It plays MP3s, Sir", he finally replied with a determined, "Put that in your pipe and smoke it!" look on his face. It was a challenge I was unequal to and, thanking him with as much politeness as I could muster, I left. The story repeated itself with minor variations at the second, third and fourth shops I visited.At the fifth a tie-bedecked pip-squeak condescendingly informed me that they only sold Home Theatre systems and not stand-alone DVD players. He then proceeded to look at me from head to toe with undisguised contempt and his face said clearly what he didn't put into words - that his shop was not for cheapskates like me. At that stage I was on the point of throwing in the towel. Only the thought of the fate which awaited me at home if I returned empty-handed kept me going. The next shop proved itself a shade better. "Formats"? was confidently met with Dolby Digital, DTS, MP3,WMA,Divx, DVD, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW. He'd mixed up hardware, software and encoding but I'd at least got the information I was looking for. Heaving a sigh of relief I brought out my next question - "Does it have optical output or co-axial or both?" Pat came the answer,"You've to connect it to your amplifier, Sir." I clenched my teeth, slowly counted to ten and asked,"Yes, but with what?". "With a wire, Sir", he said with the air of a long-suffering teacher trying to drill something into the head of a particularly obtuse student. Chastened,I moved on to shop number seven with somewhat better results.The salesman there seemed to understand. "Just a minute, Sir, I'll check." He then proceeded to turn the display piece around and peered at the connections at the rear. Co-axial was the answer. Final question ( As a matter of fact,I'd listed many more but decided not to press my luck too far.): Is it region-free? A correct answer here and my travails were over. 'Twas not to be. "Compatible with HDTV? Region-free? Er..What's that?" Evidently I hadn't quite finished paying for my past sins.The fates weren't done with me yet. It was at shop number thirteen that I finally attained moksha (salvation). All the earlier questions were answered. Some confidently, some after consultations, hesitantly, but they were answered. "HDMI?" "Of course." Region-free?" "It's region-coded, Sir, but we'll unlock it for you before delivery.In fact we can do it for you right away. Would you like to buy it, Sir?" Sir would. He brought up a boxed piece for me, opened and connected it, and used the remote control to make it region-free. I asked for the code in case it got region locked again by accident, a very real possibility in a household with a remote-happy teenager. "Sorry, Sir, we can't tell you that. It's confidential." I got the impression that I was asking for the keys to the Treasury! "But what if it locks up again?", I pleaded with him. To no avail. He was unmoved, unbending only enough to say,"Call us if that ever happens.We'll unlock it for you again." Weary in spirit and body, I bought it, came home, Googled for the hack and found it in three minutes. I've now connected the player, slipped in one of my favourite movies, fixed myself a long, strong drink, kicked off my slippers, and put my sore, aching feet up. Please do not disturb!

Manmohan Singh throws off his mask

The mask is off.Officially. Manmohan Singh has now gone public with what had so far only been suspected by many of us Indians. I quote,

"They (Muslims) must have the first claim on resources."

We Hindus are back to being second-class citizens in our own country, The minorities (read Muslims) have priority in everything - the country's resources, education, wealth, opportunities - everything. If any of us had dared to say this aloud before yesterday, the pseudo-secularists would have shouted him down. There would have been howls of protests from the Left and the Congress and the person who said it would have been labelled immediately as a "rabid Hindu, fascist, fanatic, communalist, obscurantist, etc. etc." And these are only the printable names he would have been called. But the cat is now out of the bag. The Prime Minister of India, no less, the Honourable Manmohan Singh,has declared in a public speech that the minorities take priority. Period.At one stroke fifty-nine years of independence have come to nought and we Hindus are back to being what we were for a thousand years before 1947 - inconsequential slaves about whom the rulers do not care two hoots. We are back to the days of Aurangzeb and the hated 'jizia' tax. Once again, to be born a Hindu in India is a crime.


Yet again, it is our own fault. We elected a government where the power behind the throne is a Catholic foreigner, the figurehead Prime Minister is a Sikh and the President, a Muslim. We were gullible enough to believe that this was a symbol of our 'tolerance', our 'secularism', our 'assimilative culture'. We proved that we have learnt nothing from the multiple Muslim invasions of our land, from centuries of Muslim and British rule, from Mir Jaffar and Plassey. We continued to bury our heads in the sand. Like the Bourbons, we have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.We continued to be our own worst enemies, to fiddle while our hard-won independence was undermined. It is our somnolence, our refusal to stand up for our rights, our pusillanimity that has emboldened Mr.Manmohan Singh to go public with his government's so far hidden anti-majority agenda.
The response to this most outrageous of statements by the Prime Minister has been even more shocking. The television news channels, otherwise always on the hunt for 'Breaking news', have barely mentioned it in passing, devoting far more time to the latest film gossip. The newspaper I read,DNA, had a front page headline and article about how the corporate world is unable to find good CEOs. Manmohan's missile was hidden away on page 7. Blink and you'll miss it.The channels have no time for serious issues and are slaves to TRPs.The print media is in the hands of Leftists and government toadies.The internet and the blogosphere is probably our last chance. Let us at least raise our voices of protest here. Before they are silenced forever.