A nation relieved

Didn’t shave. (For 23 days?)
Did he sit on the pot?
Shaved his head (On first of 23 days?)
Did he handle the toothbrush?
(A blog can’t give you more, over to the newspersons for more details)

Deal done 123 agreement lives on

The photo’s from PTI – survival strategy amid the floods in Midnapore, West Bengal. Me, my other and the tin boat. Or, 1 2 3. The nuclear deal be damned. Sixty years on, that’s India. Be ashamed, very ashamed.
(Logic nehin sikhata, faltu mein pride rakhna)

Raindrops are fallin’ on other heads

I was off yesterday. Yesterday was Thursday, August 2, 2007. A historic day indeed, as we are told by newspapers, courtesy the weather department. It rained 166.6 millimetres. The highest in 24 hours, we are told, since 1961.
I was sleeping through most of yesterday, courtesy an all-night drinking session at a friend’s place the night before. So I missed out on all the trouble, snag and the maze of mess when the city went “under water”, as the headline in Express Newsline said today.
I got an inkling of the problem early in the morning, though, while being driven back home from the friend’s place. The traffic snarls were huge even at that hour. But I liked the drive from south to east Delhi, through the Ring Road if I may add. It was pleasantly pleasant: overcast sky, a breeze that’s just about right, a constant drizzle at a constantly slowish-medium pace… the kind where you can throw your arm out the car window and see the raindrops take the paper off your just-lit cigarette. And before you eject that what-the-heck curse, you realise you have been had, by the drizzle: why in the name of sanity did you roll down the windowpane, stick out your arm, and who asked you to hold the cigarette in the left hand? You laugh off the three questions; there are no answers. You are, a) half-drunk; b) enjoying the drizzle getting set to throw the city out of gear in another hour or two; and c) not expected to groan and moan when under the spell of either a), or b), or both.
The rain, in want of a better expression, was divine (though I am always a few nautical miles west of religion). It was the kind of rain that in semi-parched Delhi you always seek. To give you a Mumbai or Kolkata feeling in this heartless metropolis.
And what happens after you seek it out? You curse it. Not directly, mind you, but by directing your curses and abuses to every one else. In authority or otherwise. From the municipality, government, sweepers, cleaners and politicians to the auto-wallahs, other car-wallahs, and right down to the non-working traffic lights holding up traffic. Wading through water and getting stuck on road? That’s downright downmarket. No one does that in Delhi. We just like it when Mumbai or Kolkata or Kochi does that -- on prime time TV news.
But let me not veer off track: I liked the rain, even though I do not like rain as such (read an earlier blog somewhere down the line here for more on those lines). I liked it possibly because I had no business to throw my comments around for the simple reason that I was on leave. But I still stick my neck out, and say I liked it.
Getting stuck is one of the reasons we are SUPPOSED to like the rain. And, from the super perch post of my balcony on Thursday evening, I liked it. Almost loved it.

(The picture is taken from PTI. It's by Gurinder Osan)

monday mayhem: Even I Worry About Harry

Okay, looks like India is ACTUALLY winning a Test match under Rahul Dravid. Not that it would subtract any bit from my irritation for men who are christened rahul, or surnamed dravid, or dubbed The Wall by fanatic fans, or all of them put together.
And now that I have made my link with Team India (that phrase calls for a toast from the galleria of cricket reporters) clear, I would better push towards newer territories. For, his 70-odd at Nottingham notwithstanding, I still feel Sourav Ganguly has lost the jigar and jasba for a fighting knock. Mistah, pls refer to earlier blog).
Newer territory of course means Harry Potter. No, I haven't become an overnight expert on Harry, or Potter, or JK, or Rowling. So here's a forward from a blog that landed on mailbox sometime late Sunday night; a time Subject was acutely busy getting peekay tight: “I read an article about this couple that will be leaving their wedding reception and going straight to the bookstore to get their copy of Harry Potter. Now, I'm no expert or anything, but I'm pretty sure that this is not what you're supposed to be doing on your wedding night."
Confession time: Saw this woman the other day. Could have fallen in love. Almost did. Right away. Then I saw a thick fat copy of Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows in (under?) her arm. And suddenly, her armpits began smelling, and she seemed a bit too loony to be walking around free for the safety of loonier creatures, and completely dys-political Me began colour-coding: Was she an underground, below-the-belt, illicit communist, tom-tomming a manifesto for the masses?
And just as suddenly I lost interest. So, miss in pink salwar suit carrying Potter copy tight under arms, if you happen to ever travel through and across this station on blogosphere, you know how Harry helps: It (He?) saved you, honey.

In praise of the Lord in a lost ring

It's sad. But it looks truer with every passing inning: Sourav Ganguly's days as a top-flight cricketer are over. From a man who loves the big occasion and the spotlight on every move he makes, Sourav is playing more like a belly dancer attempting jazz or kathak. Result: little foot movement. And even little jazz in the way he wields the willow. Bowled for 36 in first outing. Caught doing nothing with his front leg in the second, on 40.
The big-natch, big-occasion, big-century player fighting for fifties.
And don't give me the claptrap about pressure or tension. Sourav is one man born to fight it. You only have to recall Lord's 1996. Or the recent South Africa series, his third comeback (sorry, no inclination to remember inane statistics). He was sure-footed, even cocky then. He is pussy-footing, even rocky now.
Strange how the likes of Gavaskar and co-commentators think he's playing well, even in a gritty sorta way. Really? Roobish, as Boycott would have said about any player other than his 'prince'. Chancy, streaky shots punctuated with some gems on the off-side. That's Ganguly for you. Circa 2007.
It's been a decade and a year more, Dada. And Lord's of those innings is looking more like the sepia-tinted image from the album of bell-bottomed youth that granddads look at. For the first time in a decade, I feel it is time...

Break-in news: Tai is Prez. Break-out news: Amma, Didi, Auntie follow

They are going to count it today, eight or nine-odd lakh votes, and give us our next president. The question not bothering the TV channel panels is: Does the president represent only elected MPs and MLAs? Or is she (if projections about Pratibha-tai is to be taken on face value) President of the Republic of India?
Then why the people (note: I checked with Barkha Dutt about copyright for the phrase) have no role to play in electing her? Just because a coterie of Left/Congress/other netas thought tai is the best face for the Republic?
Without getting into positives, negatives and split infinitives of presidential elections, Subject here has a better suggestion: Make the office a yearly musical chair. Tai can stay for a year, and then make way for Sheila Dikshit, Mamata Banerjee, Jayalalithaa, and Jaya Bachchan.
Here's why:
1.We would be too bored with tai's inane/stupid/irritating/slanderous/libelous nonsenses in a year flat.
2. If we have a vice-president from the “minority community” there would be little need for tai, who got the nod, to believe Prakash Karat and comrades, primarily for her “secular credentials”.

3.There would be little novelty value attached to, or with, her pallu after a while.

SHEILA DIKSHIT
There's no possible way – either this-wordly or that-worldly – she can draw an ace and be the Delhi CM again. If not BJP, Congress's own Ram Babu Guptas, Jagdish Tytlers, Sajjan Kumars and Ajay Makens would trump her anyway.
* Delhiites, too, would get relief from Sheila brand of politics. As for the media, no need to write headlines on successive days: “Bluelines would be phased out”; “Bluelines are definitely going to be phased out”; “Bluelines have to go”. C'mon auntie, rephrasing till only a certain point can be labelled political chicanery. beyond that, there's a word for its: 24-carat nonsense. So shut up, and bore us with better ones: presidential speeches.

MAMATA BANERJEE
Ratan Tata apart, the comrades would give their vote for her. And given the complexity of UPA politics she would be, as The Telegraph ad slogan goes in Calcutta, “unputdownable”.
The Rashtrapati Bhavan would liven up after Pratibha tai and Sheila auntie. Antics, after all, have their own value in the boredom of politics (for the uninitiated: check with Kalam's hair stylist).

JAYALALITHAA
Everything will come closer home. Any debates over, say, Indo-US nuclear deals, Mission Mars, friendly ties with Papua New Guinea and Peru, and you can be sure who to blame: Karunanidhi. Ab Chennai dur nehin (now say that in Tamil.)
On second thoughts, she may re-christen Rashtrapati Bhavan the MGR Estate, which may not augur well for successors. In that case, I withdraw her from my list. Anyone else interested?

JAYA BACHCHAN
“Amit-ji” will be seen accompanying Mrs on foreign trips. What this means is simple: less Amitabh films (now say ya-hoo in a baritone).

And, I rest my case. Hello tai!

good journalism = bad business = worse discussion (IS EXPRESS LISTENING?)

okay, indian express has just released its list of award winners for "excellence" in journalism. I have no comments on the entries, winners or the award as such// Of course, we all wonder how come so many of them winners are express or loksatta staffers, but that's for another rainy day. (It's sultry nights, and sultrier morns, in Dilli at present, so we rest those questions for some other time).
But here's the joke of the 'ceremony' (all awards are ceremonies, right?): a panel discussion on “Is good journalism bad business”. Hello, haven't I heard that one before (and I am not talking about Express having run it, or something along similar lines, after last year's awards). The idea (if it can still be called one) is so cliched that I wish they had arranged cocktail alongside (hey, if they could organise the damn thing at the Taj they might as well have spent some money on things other than coffee). All for the poor patients (sorry journalists) who were unlucky enough to be present.
I mean, how can u listen to the likes of rajdeep sardesai, shekhar gupta, barkha dutt, n ram, and so forth hold forth on such inanities in life? Arent there better things to do in life? Aren't there better ways to kill time?
I suggest a special award be given to all those who survived the whole discussion.
Is good journalism bad business. Jeez, aren't good journalists supposed to say “shit” when they see human excreta coming out of anyplace other than the posterior any more?