The Prestidigitator

Not that The Daily Show isn’t hilarious, but it gets a lot funnier when Aasif Mandvi shows up.  Here he is gloating about how India got tech support from NASA and the USGS on the Chandrayaan mission.

For every Bobby Jindal, there’s one Aasif Mandvi.

Where would we be without self-deprecation?

There’s a series of brilliant articles on CNN IBN about being gay in India.

• Coming out, not a gay and glad experience
• Gay and Indian
• Law and Behold
• Six part video

Just so you know, the Indian equivalent of Proposition 8 in America is Section 377.

“The land of Mahatma Gandhi has been bloodied by terrorists whom we shall not spare; Terrorists are waging a war against India. We should be prepared for a long battle against terrorism.”

- Narendra Modi in response to the recent Bangalore and Ahmedabad blasts

If there’s one breed of vermin that deserves zero respect/sympathy/empathy, it’s the one that comments without abandon on sites like YouTube and Redditt. Going through some of the comments on YouTube (as entertaining as some of them are) is pretty much all the proof we need for dysgenics. For the average internet junkie, sitting in the confines of his/her room is all the empowerment he/she needs to air his/her retarded views onto an unsuspecting world. Most of the time they end up being just plain ridiculous and sometimes marginally offensive.

(Click to view)

There is a comment that shows up beneath an article on Wired,

I want to destroy young generation of India Delhi is the best place to do bomb blast in SouthDelhi mainly in Mohammad Pur, Nehru place buildings, Vasant vihar flats, RK Puram Lodhi Road, Sarojani Nagar are the best place to do the bomb blast and do lot of casualties. Lot of Colleges are are also the best place to do bomb blast if anyone will do bomb blast here then there are maximum casuilties done and ISI will become happy. I want to Tell that if anyone want to carry bomb laptop leather bag is very good for this.
Put the bomb in the leather bag.

Include punctuations where necessary to make sense of what you just read. How exactly do you react to something like this?

Additional Links:

• An interesting read by Andrew Chen
• What You Tube comments really mean

Every time an Indian with a Y chromosome delivers a tirade fueled by patriotism, he is bound to tell you that the Indian culture stands tall amongst all else because of it’s unrivaled respect for women, for the female form, for the working woman, the daughter, the sister, the mother. He will tell you how fortunate a woman in India is for she is not subjected to the evils of an amoral western society. He is the epitome of hypocrisy.

• Guwahati men strip, beat up women protesters: Local men strip and molest protesting tribal women in broad daylight while the police watch. What is most bothersome is that journalists managed to click photos whilst the atrocity was in progress. Are we so passive? The government feels that a 1 Lakh compensation will make up for the emotional and physical torture these women were put through.
• An Infosys employee in the US pushes his 23 year old wife out of a moving car for being unable to come up with enough dowry. Apparently, you don’t have to be uneducated to be an imbecile. The news came to light thanks to a Pakistani doctor.
• 26 year old Ashwini Mohite from Pune gets raped and murdered on her way back from work.

Add to that, a 300% increase in violence against women in Kerala, Taslima Nasreen being harassed for her views and reports that suggest violence against women is at an all time high in Asia.

The blame for these lie not with the victims, like most claim but with a judicial system that unabashedly sides the insecure ego maniacs who perpetrate such acts and let them go away with punishments hardly befitting the crimes. Isn’t it sickening when the moral brigade sticks it’s head out to uphold the culture and tradition of the country while doing nothing to check violence against the fairer sex? Isn’t it high time to stop making lame excuses by blaming films and the media? Is not every woman someone else’s daughter, wife or mother?

(Picture sourced from The Hindu: Online Edition)

If you’ve been following the news lately, you’re probably aware of the uproar over the Sethusamudram Project and the subsequent fallout. For the uninitiated, the project aims to create a shipping canal between India and Srilanka through the island chain called Rama’s Bridge (Adam’s Bridge to the angrezis). Dig canal-connect countries. Fairly simple isn’t it? Afraid not.

According to the Hindu scriptures, the bridge was built by Rama’s allies which enabled him to rescue his abducted wife Sita from Ravana (this guy). The canal apparently serves political interests as well and when myth (er…religion) mixes with politics, the combination rarely proves to be fruitful. First the Supreme Court of India had to retract (when the BJP created a stir) it’s ruling which stated that there was no substantial scientific evidence the said bridge was built by Lord Ram. I wonder whose job it was to actually *search* for the evidence in the first place. Fine, the trident waving ”Ram Sevaks” backed off.

Then, Mr M ”too old to think coherently” Karunanidhi goes on to say that Ram was a myth. He has a career spanning 60 years in politics but sadly, this bloke with the shades hasn’t learned a thing. Chaos ensued. Buses burnt. Homes attacked. People dead. Bonus points for God.

Why are we as a country so dense? Didn’t we start out on the right foot? Aren’t we the same people whose hearts fill with pride every time we hear those oft repeated lines?

…when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance …. We end today a period of ill fortune, and India discovers herself again.

What happened to secularism and tolerance? What happened to reason?

Friedrich Nietzche’s treatise, Thus Spoke Zarathushtra speaks of the Persian sage, Zorastar who descends from his solitude in the hills and declares, ”God is dead” and goes on to argue the meaning of existence and power of the human life force.

If Zorastar descended from the Himalayas today with the same message, he’d be running back.

Recently, I happened to attend one of those social situations where a lot of Non Resident Indians (mostly students) gather to feign love for their country, speak in put on Australian accents and dress up in clothes one just can’t wear on the street in Melbourne. As if jumping to loud thumping Bhangra music wasn’t bad enough, I was forced to sit through what I’ll probably remember for the rest of my life as one of the most torturous experiences ever. They screened Dhoom 2 to a cheering audience of around 500 proud Indian youth.

Now, before I’m misunderstood as one of those guys who go around trashing Indian films, let me state that I love Cinema; no matter what language. They don’t have to be realistic or art house films. They don’t have to be entirely believable. I am all for suspension of disbelief and such stuff and I totally understand what popcorn/time pass enetertainment means.

This is not that.

Dhoom 2 is an assault on the intelligence of the average Indian. The director assumes that no matter how non existent the plot, no matter how plastic the characters, no matter how inane the dialogues, the average Indian would be won over by the sheer loudness of the film. The film is so over the top that it gets beyond bad after the first five minutes. The melodrama is cringe inducing and the characters border on plain idiocy. Women seem happy wearing shockingly less and being treated like nothing more than eye candy and the men (who morally and ethically ambiguous as they are) have even less personality than the Transformers.

What boggles my mind is that in spite of the pile of crap that is Dhoom 2, it did amazingly good business and won numerous awards(!!!). Makes you wonder where the country is headed.

I urge you to see the film however. Some things have to be seen to be believed.

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/politics/06_2007/pratibha-patil-congs-best-candidate-last-option-42930.html

Apparently, Pratibha Patil is touted to be the next Indian President. I’ve been away from Indian news for little over a week and out of nowhere comes a new candidate.

I agree it’s a nice change from listening to people go on about how Kalam was a great president and how he should return and all, but face it, its isn’t going to happen. Also, this is the first time I’ve heard of Ms Patil. Who exactly is she? All I know is that she’s an ardent fan of the Gandhi clan. But then again, I doubt visiting schools and giving speeches is going to require any experience.

Maybe by next year, Hillary and Pratibha can be best friends.

You’ll be damned to pining through the windowpanes,
You know you’d trade your life for any ordinary Joe’s,
Well do it now or grow old.
Your nightmares only need a year or two to unfold.

                                   -Australia, The Shins