Land of the oppressed, home of the cowardly

It shot to prominence with Rodney king and a burning Los Angeles in the 90s.  Now, we have New Orleans closely following Dallas, and we have black men with military credentials shooting dead white police officers with a very clear motive of fighting back, a not one bit ambiguous reason being how inadequate the USA is in terms of racial equality as far as ground reality is concerned.

The argument against the easy availability of guns has gone deep and long, and those that want the freedom to own guns continue to vouch for how sacred that freedom is, no matter how many die for whatever cause.

But now that black people have started shooting white people, I wonder if some laws may come up for revision.  If a door has to open to limit the use of certain types of firearms, automatic weapons and sniper rifles, it may very well be that the weapons of choice of these black warriors will be the first target of anything close to a ban.  It's the way not the USA, but inequality rolls.

I saw "Ocean's Eleven" somewhat breezily recently.  It dawned on me that in so many cases in the Hollywood projection of the USA, white people committing crime, especially large, sexy looking crime like robbing a fort of gold, a bank, a casino, or blackmailing the government is painted as maverick, rebellious, fun, and even heroic ability!  Taking the law into his own hands, one man stands up against the 'system' for justice!  He is not a bloody criminal!  We want him to win, even when he breaks all laws!  We've seen and heard umpteen stories of this nature - as long as the man is white!

Now we have black people fighting back for justice well outside the purview of most movie stories, well outside anything lawful, but well entrenched deep in the culture of the USA.  It's a moment of deep embarrassment for the USA, because for all the advice on harmony it dishes out to other nations, it has shown up pretty hollow at home!  It cannot stop simple, easily executed terrorism, accessible to any adult.

White people by and large love politically correct terminology, and the powers that be, by whatever measure of sincerity have implemented norms that have by and large influenced pop culture to the point where it is considered extremely rude to call a black man a 'nigger', even though in redneck country that would be considered fairly normal in many conversations.

But now, all that pretending, all that political correctness, all that avoidance of the real issue, that a considerable number of white people are indeed racist and carry open dislike of black people and those of other races, is wearing thin.  If we can constantly ask moderate Islam to voice discontent over the actions of its extreme elements involved in acts like terrorism, I don't see how we should in any measure of honesty, not ask for moderate white people to tell their racists to tone it down, and put up with equality, especially after it is enshrined in the (damn) law.

White people in the USA have privileges.  They should know this.  The people they may choose to be racist against are usually in a position of comparative weakness.  There is no reason for white American cops, who have a black man down on the ground and in no position or disposition to be a threat in any way, to put a bullet into that person.  This is no different from terrorists that walk into a school and spray bullets on children.  

The USA has its own brand of uniquely dumb terrorists, like the idiots who got kicked out of a party in Bakersfield, California, coming back with guns to kill others who were still partying.  The number of incidents in schools is quite staggering and by now, should be quite infamous.  The only differences are that these terrorists aren't organized and that they don't have any religious compulsions to do what they do.

For a person of non-white race, racism isn't hard to spot in the USA.  Maybe most white people feel they have done enough if they don't commit any crime like discriminating on the basis of race, don't use politically incorrect terms, or don't openly avoid people of other denominations.

But in the USA's incredible love of insulation, especially that of white people who live in gated communities, refuse to even once enter the areas of their towns and cities where 'other' people live, don't ever take public transportation, and keep on reinforcing that bubble they live in, in every way, shape or form, and keep on passing that to their children, they will be inviting trouble in some accumulated form.  They don't need to get this.  That's one of their privileges, simply because they can afford it.

If they live in denial that there are many unhealed wounds, that their own people have both inflicted and exacerbated, and simply give only lip service with meaningless nonsense like, "We're all Americans", their extremists will keep on perpetrating those crimes, and negating all the genuine good in many people's hearts, because the collective at some point becomes answerable.

The biggest question is - why should a nation with so many resources and examples of world leading excellence, choose to put up with such lowly behaviour?  The answer may lie in the fact that the USA developed on some sides without entirely resolving issues in others.  Just like we implore muslims to come out of their denial, to accept that Islam does foster violence, we should also implore Americans, to come out of the delusion that they're not a racist society, and accept that white people with guns, whether in uniform or not, are a real danger to peace.

It should be bizarre but quite incredibly, the witness to this incident, found it fit to compare to an incident she could only have seen in a movie!  http://touch.latimes.com/#section/2426/article/p2p-87884690/

This is the USA today.  I'm not sure very many people living in it realize what is real in it anymore.

தமிழ் சினிமாவில் கவனிகக் படாமல் போன நல்ல பல திரைப்படங்களின் தற்போதைய நிலை என்ன?

தமிழில் மட்டுமல்ல, எல்லா மொழிகளிலும் இன்று பல திரைப்படங்கள் வெளியீடு ஆகாமல் தவித்துக்கொண்டிருக்கின்றன.  இவை மட்டுமில்லாமல் பல படங்கள் வெளியீடு ஆனா பிறகும் குறுகிய நாட்களுக்குள் மறைந்து விடுகின்றன.

இந்த நிலைக்கு சில காரணங்கள் உண்டு.  இவற்றில் மிக முக்கியமானது படங்களின் தரம்.  கதை நன்றாகவே இருந்தாலும், திரைக்கதையில் உயிர் இல்லாமல் போகலாம்.  திரைக்கதை நன்றாக இருந்தாலும் இயக்குனர்களிடம் குறைவுகள் இருந்து படத்தை வழங்குவோர் அதாவது டிஸ்ட்ரிப்யூடர்கள் அதன் மீது நம்பிக்கை வைக்க முடியாமல் வாங்காமல் போய்விடலாம்.

அடுத்த காரணம் ஏராளமான படங்கள் தயார் ஆகுவது.  இது தமிழ்நாட்டைப்போல் ஏழு கோடி மக்கள் இருக்கும் மாநிலத்தில் ஒரு வருடத்தில் 450 படங்கள் வந்தால் எப்படி அவை மக்களிடம் கொண்டு சேர்க்கமுடியும்?

மற்றொரு காரணம் அதிக தியேட்டர்கள் இல்லாத நிலைமை. அந்த்ராவில் 1100 தியேட்டர்கள் உள்ளன.  தமிழ்நாட்டில் 800க்கும் குறைவான தியேட்டர்கள் உள்ளன.

தொலைக்காட்சியிலும் கேபுள் மூலமாகவும் ஓர் அளவு பிரபலமான அல்லது நன்றாக அடையாளம் தெரிந்த முகங்கள் இருந்தால் மட்டுமே படங்களை லாபகரமாக வாங்கி விற்பனை செய்ய முடியும் என்று ஒரு கருத்து உள்ளது.  புது முகங்கள் கொண்ட படங்கள் முதலில் வெளியீடு ஆகி தியேட்டர்களில் ஒரு வாரம் ஓடியிருந்தால், அப்படங்களுக்கு இந்த முறையில் மறுவாழ்வு கிடைக்க வாய்ப்பு உண்டு.

குறைவான முதலீடு போட்டு எடுக்கப்பட்ட படங்களின் தயாரிப்பாளர்கள் செய்யும் பெரிய தவறு, அவர்களிடம் விளம்பரத்திற்கும் மார்க்கெட்டிங் செய்வதற்கும் கையில் காசு இல்லாமல் படம் தயாரிப்பது.

தொடர்ந்து புது புது திரைப்படங்கள் வந்துகொண்டே இருக்கும் நிலையில், பழைய படங்களை மறப்பதே மனிதனில் இயல்பாகும்.

எல்லா விஷயங்களும் நன்றாக இருந்தும், ஓர் திரைப்படம் பிரபலம் ஆக ஓர் அளவு அதிர்ஷ்டமும் தேவை படவே செய்கின்றது!

இத்தனை கஷ்டங்களையும் எதிர்த்து பிரச்சனைகளையும் சமாளித்து, சில படங்கள் வெற்றி அடைகின்றன என்பது பாராட்டவேண்டிய விஷயம்.

சென்னையில் உள்ள பிரசாத் லேப்ஸ்ல் மட்டும் விற்காமல் அல்லது மறந்து போன நிலையில் 2500 க்கும் மேலான திரைப்படங்கள் கிடக்கின்றன.  இவைக்கு எந்த விதமான எதிர்காலமும் இல்லை என்பதுதான் என்னுடைய கணிப்பு.

The Snowden Affair and the Superlies!

The world rejoiced when Barack Obama was made president of the USA!  This was a great moment in the history of the most powerful nation on the earth.  A black man was finally sworn in as president!  Only, he is not black, he is of mixed race, with two ethnically different parents, black and white.  But the lie was allowed to circulate and be celebrated - because it did the image of the USA no harm at  all!  No harm done, but he's not a black man, any more than he is a white man.

When he won the Nobel Peace Prize, it surprised a lot of people.   Ostensibly this was given to him, in the hope that he wouldn't spit on it and start another war like his predecessor had done.  I haven't seen any bloody reason why Barack Obama should have won the Nobel Peace Prize, and I actually love the guy, and I think he makes a cool president.  I don't really love Mahatma Gandhi, but I admire him, and I think he is a much more deserving recipient of such an award, but then, we live in duplicitous times, and I don't give a shit about these awards anyway.

It's the hypocrisy that's at high pitch here.

Now, this guy Edward Snowden is running from the law.  He is a criminal according to the laws of the USA, and he committed some sort of anti national act by exposing the secrets of his nation, and the Obama administration is bound to hound him.  It is their duty, and it is totally "legal" to go after him, bring him to "justice" and all that.

Except, in the noise about the man, and his actions that have caused so many ripples in international relations and media, one central question hasn't been asked loudly enough - "How could Snowden possibly have exposed the illegality of the activities of his government, without breaking the law himself?"

Make no mistake.  If his allegations of the widespread spying, snooping, wiretapping, and such activities are true, then the USA is in violation of Article 22 of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to which it is a signatory!

The article clearly states - "The premises of a diplomatic mission, such as an embassy, are inviolate and must not be entered by the host country except by permission of the head of the mission. Furthermore, the host country must protect the mission from intrusion or damage. The host country must never search the premises, nor seize its documents or property."

The nature of the spying, with bugs on crypto-fax machines and on communications cables, clearly breaches the protections enshrined in the convention.

If Snowden had been from Venezuela, and wanted to expose some wrongdoings of the Chavez government, the USA would have welcomed him, set up not a refuge, but a sanctuary, and called him a hero!  All the focus would have been on the atrocities committed under a manic dictator who was plotting the downfall of the civilized world, no less!  This hypocrisy is so old, it should be boring now.

If a child escapes from a church where the pastor is raping underaged children, and tells his story to the world, nobody would want to punish him for ruining the reputation of the church.  An abused wife would totally be protected against her abusive husband, and "legally" helped to separate from him, even if she were to be breaking the vows she took in marrying him, wouldn't she?

A grave wrong has been done, not by Snowden, but by the government of the USA, in the first place, and only to expose the fact has Snowden been forced to do something "illegal".  Any conscientious people should be able to honor his actions.

Whistleblowing is nothing new to citizens of the USA.  Many corporations have been forced to accept their illegal deeds and pay the penalty, because of whistleblowers who were clearly violating company policies they signed on to.  Why should the government of the USA be subjected to any less stringent standards, especially when taxpayer dollars have been used to fund many of these programs?

If Snowden is punished in any way, before the law breaking criminals of the USA's intelligence and surveillance spy agencies are made answerable to their despicable actions, then the USA will have proved once again, that it is the indisputable king of hypocrisy, followed by its loyal subjects in the many nations of the world who refuse Snowden asylum!

- BSK

Happy Freaking New Year!

Happy Freaking New Year!

It's always the same thing this time of the year, isn't it?  Of course a New Year has to come by, and of course we must be happy that we survived the last one, but can it ever be Enlightened New Year! or Healthy New Year! or Peaceful New Year!?  After all, there is precious little we can do to be happy if we are not healthy, peaceful and/or enlightened.

It would tax our poor minds to try and be any of this.  But we can be happy, freaking happy, without any risk of mental, physical, or spiritual overheating.  It always comes down to the lowest nonsense we can be sold.  And yes, it is official, it is all about selling us something.  Happiness can be sold.  In ridiculous quantities, just like sadness, but for now I will stick with this disease called happiness that many of us would like to be addicted to.

When I see that svelte model selling me a car with a huge big smile on her face, I want to slap that bitch.  No, not the bitch that is doing the modeling for she needs the money and the uplifting experience of showing up, but the bitch that was conceived in some advertising hero's head that if there is a svelte bitch grinning at me invitingly, I am unlikely to notice the shitty engine, the lousy engineering, the extras that don't come with the base model, and the terrible service, and actually shell down a few lakhs of my hard earned money on a stupid car.  That is the insult I can do without.  Happy freaking New Year.

When I see the troupe of little shits telling me to put my AC at a certain temperature so that my cooling is "sensible", I want to boot those smiling germs out of my sight.  Again, not the pampered upper middle class urban Indian little shits, whose parents are busy shagging every rupee out of their jobs and businesses imagining modeling is some sort of career for their little shits, but the little shits that got approved by the marketing manager of this air conditioner company that believes I can be sold a fucking air conditioner by attaching this cute little bunny train of smiling satans to his stupid product.

Yeah, I'd like to be happy as much as anybody else, and most of the time, I am.  But these times are when I am distinctly disjointed to the "idea" of happiness.  I don't want any symptom of happiness to be ever present and showing itself.  It is fucking fake and I am sick of it.

I really don't want plastic air hostesses smiling at me when I enter a plane.  I have done it many times before and I'm hardly likely to refuse to fly after buying the ticket and going through that harrowing nonsense called check-in and security check, including the statutory rape carried out by the assholes with the metal detectors that have so far not managed to nab a single terrorist, but have indeed allowed many to pass through and hijack planes.  But I can put up with collective dumbness, since that damn airplane is a damn good invention if it can spare me from the piss and shit smelling railway stations and bus stops and get me very quickly to my destination.

I acknowledge I love some air hostesses.  They are just sexy enough to let me remember what to grab if the plane goes into a tumble mid air.  I'm sure God will be very happy to welcome the bastard who remembered to live in the moment, even in his last moment!  Happy Freaking New Year!

After going through the horrors of delays and bad food and terrible in-flight conditions, OR the miracles of on time departures, landings and safe exit from the plane, surely, we can be spared the electronic voice telling us we are welcome at the arrival airport, where we really want to spend the least amount of time!  I cannot understand why it takes us about an hour to fly five hundred kilometres, but it takes our bags one third of that time to get to us from the same plane we came on, to our hands.  But I am happiest in that waiting period at the baggage claim area, because there is a quiet, a calm, nobody selling us anything, and no grinning asshole there handing our bags to us!  The luggage just shows up, with minimal fuss, as the coldest, most impersonal machine keeps all nonsense out of the way.  Thank you very much, dear machine and thank God for the inventor that removed the human element from this one.  I really appreciate this not being one more fucking happy experience to soak up.

Insincerity I can handle - salesmen doing their job, being competitive - I get that.  But why the fuck do they have to sell me something based on THEIR assumption that I am not content?  This is the part that really pisses me off.  It's just hard for me to sympathize with presumptuous assholes who go to business school and "learn" that they can take it upon themselves to "sell" me something, which necessarily means an intrusion into my mind space.  Who the fuck gives these motherfuckers the permission? 

If there is any law that prevents one kind of nuisance, like taking a piss on the wall, why can't there be a law on other kinds of nuisance?  Get off a train at 5 in the morning at Chennai Central, and the TV screens attack you with loud music and dancing chicks gyrating and welcoming you to buy clothes, another bunch of whores asking you to buy spices!  They are all grinning orgasmically. and being really inviting, but at 5 AM, I could really use a peaceful walk to the exit.  End result?  This irritation is what I remember and I have remembered never to buy clothes at those shops and never to buy that brand of masala.  Happy Freaking New Year idiots!

There are a couple of very happy fat bastards on TV that I'd like to really send running into a desert, chased by hounds.  They show up on food programs, and go all over India tasting a variety of foods.  They do a very good job of showing us and teaching us how a variety of food is cooked, but how the fuck are these bastards happy with every fucking thing they eat?  I love food, too, but I don't swoon with every new dish I taste!  I just cannot buy the monkey's expression when it grins to the lens after eating something someone in a totally strange land and culture just made - every fucking time!  Even my dog takes a few seconds to totally sniff out and check out something new I may feed him.  He doesn't fall for it, so why would I, motherfucker?

Now, I can be kind and assume these fat bastards are happy they are getting a lot of food to feed their big guts, but then what about the bitches that are there at the flick of a button, selling me shit to lose weight?  They are giddy whores, grinning their asses off, working out on contraptions that resemble nothing in nature.  Some of them are even torturing others in groups, and I can tell not all of them are happy.  Physical exercise is hard, and the payoff is good health and fitness, and of course the release of endorphins, also called "happy hormones", but endorphins just make one feel stress free and relaxed.  I have had enough number of endorphin hits to know I don't feel like grinning at some unknown asshole.

I don't need a grinning Mr. Universe telling me how good this piece of equipment is.  He just has to tell me with a straight face what the benefits might be.  If I wasn't interested in fitness, would I be listening to his spiel anyway?  So what is he selling me?

How come teachers do not grin when they teach us, say, geometry?  Sex sells.  We know that.  And sex is supposed to deliver us to ... what else?  Freaking Happiness!  So, what if teachers were to turn on sexiness while explaining what happens when one line bisects another?  Are you kidding me?  A lot of people would be up in arms against this kind of teaching.  But we have no problem whoring our kids out to sell other people some shit with their cuteness?  Adults have sex to sell us shit, kids have cuteness.  What's the difference?  Both look pleased as punch!

Why would ANYBODY be happy to sell us insurance policies?  Insurance is always against bad news, like injury, death, disability, illness, and the lot of miseries is it not?  So, why are insurance agents always grinning like their policy will bring us happiness?  It might deliver us out of misery, but it sure as hell won't deliver any happiness.  And why are those little shits put in this game too, and why are they too grinning while doing this shit?  I swear, any kid that ever talks to me about insurance is going to need dental insurance.

We really should groom our children to regulate their happiness quotient.  They should bloody well not be happy all the time.  It can without a doubt affect their emotional growth if they know only giddy happiness and do not know what it means to be reflective, sad, disturbed, anxious, worried, peaceful, euphoric, light, thrilled, giving, emotionally generous, neurotic and even crazy!  There is much subtlety to be lost by prescribing happiness and by subscribing to it like the dumb assholes we are taken for.

I've had enough and more Happy New Years.  This time I hope to have something of substance.  And I wish you a wonderful, substantial New Year!

If you don't care - hey!  Happy Freaking New Year!

- BSK.

Rest in peace, you lucky rascal!

MF Hussain is dead.  He did live bloody long.  Freaking 95 years!  That's a helluva lot longer than most Indians manage.  And, he led a charmed life, doing what he wanted.

For some reason, a lot of people have expressed that he was somehow shortchanged by an intolerant India.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article2091330.ece

A nation has moral dilemmas when it has to chart a course to a new existence, accept a grave mistake, or when it reaches a cathartic moment in its history.  Has MF Hussain contributed to any significant moment of India's history?  Not one that I can remember.

Somehow nobody seems to remember that it was INDIA that produced MF Hussain, and it was INDIA that gave him the platform for him to be himself for 70 odd years.  He was our celebrated artist when he was doing horses.  Nobody understood what all the critics were neighing about, but we accepted that after Raja Ravi Varma and some other great artists that everybody can understand easily was great, here was a modern artist that perhaps normal people could not understand, but everybody had to appreciate.

We DID appreciate his shit for a long time, some out of some artistic sensibility that could tolerate the abstract, and the rest out of respect for an old man.  In India, everybody has the freedom to bullshit everybody else and sell a lot of bullshit too!  Nobody bothered Hussain for his caricatures and his lousy art.  Of course this is just an opinion.  Let us assume for a moment that he was indeed a great artist.  Clearly he is no Picasso.  He is no Van Gogh.  So he is a level below those greats?  Okay, so we still haven't produced any true great so we have this guy MF.  That's fine.  When we have no stallions or horses, a donkey can fill in for the post of Fastest Indian On Hooves!  Since India could not tolerate this great artist, why not look at how well the rest of the world was dying for his awesome talent?  So, how good is this guy?  Considering how much he could sell in an international art exhibition, pretty shit.  So, first and fucking foremost, let's accept this guy wasn't any great shit with his art.  I don't understand Mark Rothko either, but his window pane crap sells for millions.  MF Hussain's crap doesn't do even thousands.  In the world of art, he ain't shit, this MF.

All art is appreciated by those who like it.  Some can be made to like it with a lot of bullshit marketing around it.  Modern art has no measuring scale.  I can draw a long straight line and a short straight line, and it can be my interpretation of a fighter plane leaving an aircraft carrier or a male orangutan ejaculating.  I am free to do any of that, and if you like it, you can buy it.  For a long time, people did buy MF Hussain's work.  The guy made a living through his art.  Considering how good he became at this, he was more than making a living.  He was making a killing!

Again, this is purely opinion, but since it is established that he is not amongst the best in the world, we can call his work SHIT.  If a cricketer can be cursed as SHIT for not performing as part of our world champion cricket team, surely, a nobody in world standards can be cursed as SHIT.  But a lot of Indian fools bought his rubbish work and paid him a fair bit for it.  Was he grateful?  He probably was, for there is no evidence the old coot was not.

Then came his controversial crap.  For those of you who don't know what that "Shwetambari" fiasco was, he threw open an exhibition of his under this name, with absolutely nothing but plain white canvasses.  Shwetambari is a celebration of white, get it?  I think the crusty bastard had a sense of humour!  Who can't hang plain canvasses?  But it takes a conman SHIT artist like MF Hussain to pull a con like this, and give it a name!  India did tolerate this, even gave him credit for doing something artistic.

I don't have a problem with super liberal, experimental, modern, edgy, controversial artists and their creative exhibitions and expressions, if they are not trying to make money or making a living from it.  As soon as they depend on the world outside for reactions, appreciation and money, they should know that along with appreciation, they might get some brickbats.  Sometimes, the criticism may not be as simple as, "I'm not paying for that SHIT!". 

I am all for freedom too.  But even for playing loud music, which is my freedom, I suppose, there is a limit where my neighbours cannot sleep.  Now, I'm not asking my neighbours to pay for it, so they probably won't get mad at me beyond telling me to keep it down.  This is purely social contract.  It is not my intent either to get them mad at me.  I really have no business offending them. 

What people can be offended by is wide in variety.  However, a person's religion is deeply personal sometimes.  It is hard not to offend someone when you make a statement, however open to interpretation, that runs counter to all perceptions held sacred in that religion.  It's not hard to see why practising Christians could get mad if I say, "Jesus was a pedophile!".  There will be a few who would just say, "You're mad!" and move on, but if I stood in front of a Church and shout, "Jesus was a pedophile!", it is likely to get some pretty strong reactions.  I should be intelligent enough to know when the line from opinion to offense is crossed.

If an 80+ year old man, after living in India for most of it, does not know he will offend people of the Hindu faith by drawing Hindu goddesses nude, and that too with his SHIT quality of art, then he isn't just a fool, he is a distilled moron.  If he should not be jailed for offensive artistic expression leading to religious and social disharmony, he should be contained from being a lunatic causing nuisance.  So, pretty please, if this kind of moron wants to leave the country, we should be very happy to see the average IQ of our nation's residents go up in one shot.  Book the guy on the first flight out!

It was MF Hussain's choice to leave this country, only AFTER the reactions he got to his work.  If an artist is free to express whatever s/he wishes, then the reactions must have the same expressional freedom.  India allowed those reactions too, like a true democracy.  What is everyone complaining about?

And then, which country did he go to?  Did he go to a country that is known for great artistic freedom?  No!  He went to Qatar!  Not a secular country, but a Muslim country!  Is this just a coincidence?  I can understand Qatar must be happy that there is at least one Muslim in the world of contemporary art - kind of like the one cross country skier India had at the Winter Olympics.  Who cares if he is any good?  He's got our flag there!  Make some noise!  Chances are, those Qatari rascals must have perceived some value in a guy who could get all the fundamental Hindus riled up. So, pretty please, Qatar, keep this son of our horse shit and his remains.

I'm all for a guy who had his fun, lived a full life, enjoyed the blessings of the journey, and tried his best to be a good artist.  But if he got into trouble for being stupid, for being insensitive, I don't have a problem if he got dragged down to earth by a bunch of hooligans.  Someone had to do it.  Resentment doesn't wait 70 years in most cases.  India has been mighty patient.   So, enough already about not treasuring this fool.

MF Hussain was a celebrity just because he fulfilled to some extent India's home grown pseudo liberal farts' need for someone to throw hurrahs at.  Most of them wouldn't recognize art from a horse's ass.  Except maybe, that of one of the horses MF did.

- BSK.

Osama, friend of India!

It is official now.  News is out that Osama Bin Laden has been killed by US forces acting on their own inside Pakistan.

Nearly ten years, billions of dollars spent, 600,000 Iraqi lives lost, thousands of Afghani lives lost, all because the USA chose to attack the wrong country, refused to listen to India when India offered its frontline air bases, naval support and fuel to take out terrorist camps in Pakistan AND Afghanistan.  The USA thought India was just needling its neighbour, and indeed supplied Pakistan with plenty of arms and ammunition to ostensibly fight the terrorist networks Pakistan had set up, supported, armed and colluded with over the years!

As it turns out, Pakistan turned all its weapons against India, the ISI sponsored terrorist attacks on Indian soil, and built Osama Bin Laden his own luxurious compound with twenty foot walls and barbed wire and all sorts of comforts inside, no doubt!  Any surprise this place Abottabad is close to the Pakistani Military Academy?

A billionaire can take refuge anywhere, but a billionaire terrorist can find refuge with all luxuries only in this rotten piece of garbage called Pakistan, WITH the active support of the government there.  The USA had been hoodwinked a long time ago, and India said as much.  But for a long time, because this idea was too complicated for the cowboys and Bible belt voters to come to grips with, the USA continued to ignore India and continued to supply its enemy!

Now, an educated half black president comes to power in the White House, totally understands what India has been saying all along, and it doesn't take much to take out that six foot five langur called Osama Bin Laden.  He was always in Pakistan!  Where else could he be?

But unwittingly, this Koran thumping prick and his supporters in the Muslim world have supported India!  Whatever India had said about Pakistan all along, about it being the epicentre of terror has come true!  Well, not exactly "come" true, but proven true.  Without further ado, the USA should finish the job, and take out all the terrorist camps there, and kill anyone who doesn't look too agreeable to "one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century".  Can the USA do that?  Yes.  Will it do that?  Probably not.

Without 9/11, the USA would never have thought of international Islamic terrorism as anything serious.  It could not give a shit about 60,000 Indians losing their lives, could it?  Of course not.  That is chump change for a country that can inflict a lot more in just weeks in some unknown country without even putting its troops on the ground.  Without 9/11, the USA would never have woken up to the reality of international terror networks.  So, thank you OBL!

There is plenty of mistrust between Pakistan and the USA at the moment.  This is great for India's PR, because this is the time for us to be smug and grin from ear to ass as our cunning neighbours come under scrutiny, under heat for  harbouring terrorists like Osama Bin Laden.  We have been saved very complicated and expensive efforts, by Osama Bin Laden choosing Pakistan as his haven.  We just have to point, and the Americans will be ready to bomb!  Told ya so!

Now, finally, the USA will begin to trust India, well, actually, begin to hear India, when we tell them where the Mumbai attack perpetrators are hiding and training, and how one of their drones can kindly kill some more terrorist pigs who might, shit, bomb New York next!  Thank God for another stupid Pakistani called Shahzad trying to do exactly that.  Shit!  These damn Indians are right!  Go, USA, go!

India should build a monument for Osama Bin Laden, right in the middle of a pig sty.  Our greatest friend, in the middle of the friends he most belongs with.  OBL, may your soul rot or rest in peace, as your God pleases, but we're sure glad your soul has been released from that lanky body of yours.  After all, the Americans are bloodthirsty and just want the gratification of seeing your dead body.  They do not want to see a change in ideology, a change in the way the Muslim world views them or other such "infidels", for all that is far too complicated.  For now, all they want is a dead body, and all the "woo hoo"s and "U S A, U S A!" chants that ring out on the streets of the USA is just that bloodthirst quenching itself a little bit.

Chanakya was right.  Our enemy's enemy is a friend!  In this case, our enemy's friend is our friend, because another friend was too stupid to see it early enough, and is currently stupid enough to fight our enemy and his friends FOR us!

OBL, we Indians thank you, for getting the USA to do our dirty work.  That is all they are fit for these days.

But are they paranoid enough to continue doing this "good" work?  It all depends on Al Qaeda and how they can keep the USA on their toes.  Or else, the American public have very short memories and they will be too happy to forget about their "largest democracy in the world" friend who warned them a long time ago, and simply pull out, all in the country's interest of course.  How many military campaigns can the USA sustain, now that OBL is dead?  Congress will ask this question, and Pakistan will be left to continue its nefarious activities again, with a strict warning of course before the last US soldier leaves Pakistan.

Indeed, the USA will be miffed about India choosing the Eurofighter and Rafale for its massive Air Force purchases, and ignoring all US products.  Pakistan will be too happy to buy America's wares to keep big brother happy.  The USA will see it is in its interest to supply Pakistan with all the military hardware it wants to buy, citing India's purchase order that is indeed, distinctly non American.

This shit will continue, as long as the USA continues to slant its foreign policy based not on ideology but on opportunity.  Osama, we thank you for making this clear.  In choosing your place of death, you have unwittingly made this pretty awkward for the Americans, but they're too shameless to get it.

Now, get lost!

- BSK.

The Royal Wedding Bash.

What's so great about two people getting married?

What's so great about two people getting married that attracts the attention of a lot of people?  The pomp?  The kissing style?  The media attention?

What the heck is a duke?  And how does one become a duchess by getting married to the duke who also doesn't have any power over any territory?  What is the bridegroom the duke of?  Nothing.  What is that old hag the queen of?  Nothing.  And what are all the fools, the bridegroom's relatives princes and kings of?  Absolutely nothing.  The UK (God knows why the fuck it is still called a kingdom when the king NEVER had any power!) is a democratic country with elections and haggling and corruption and issues, much like most democracies are.  So why they even keep the queen and her stupid, underachieving, royal family is beyond me.  Maybe that is all that is left of their glorious past? 

Their glorious past by the way primarily involves invading other countries, colonizing people, raping their wealth and carrying it home, while creating an atmosphere of progress and change that confused the hell out of other civilizations for long.  It wasn't built on military might, since there was no military might to talk about.  It was built on deceit, on pitting one against the other, playing wicked games of politics and power, and all their ships were not called the UK's ships, they were called Her Majesty's ships!  In other words, all the raping, looting and pillaging went on in HER name!  So, why the fuck are we even celebrating anything that goes on in that thieving family's life?

The UK has not, ever before, since the heady days of the British Empire, or recently, contributed anything to the world in terms of inventions, service to mankind, or anything else worthy of mention.  It is a conniving little shit nation ready to tag along with the US on any misadventure those clowns in the West can conjure up.  The educational institutions of the UK are great, got to give them that.  But what does it serve?  No research has taken place there any time in the last one hundred years that has yielded any wisdom to change anybody's life.

This clown who calls himself the Prince of Wales is the "prince" of a piece of land that is as big as 20,777 square kilometres - roughly one sixth the size of Tamilnadu.  And he doesn't have any power over that tiny piece of land either.  So, why the fuck does he even show up in the news?  ANSWER - That is ALL he does!  Show up and look good!  Charlie boy never had any power, not even over the woman he married and later arranged killed.  Sure enough, this is just an allegation, but what rotten history even with such a lovely Diana involved!  Then, he marries his "long term" friend, who I'm sure played no role in Charlie breaking up with Diana.  Sordid enough?  Not really, and actually fun when you think about an Arab banging the crown princess who is still unhappily married to the clown who thinks he owns that piece of land one sixth the size of Tamilnadu!  May those two murdered lovers rest in peace.

The real story is in how, after so many years since relinquishing all "royal" power, they are still being paid so much attention.  ANSWER - it is ALL the culture the UK ever had!  Their literature was great, but their art sucked when compared to the French.  Their food was abominable, which is why they needed Indian spices in the first place.  Their technology was no big shakes and the rest of the world didn't need any of it the last century.  Their market wasn't big enough for the rest of the world to want to sell anything to them.  Their sports teams aren't dominant in any discipline, their movies cannot compete with American and Indian produce, and nobody ever sees any product "Made in the UK" anymore.  But they still have the fucking flag and their stupid palaces and the dumb royal family!

After all these years, we have another descendant of this useless clan marry a none too flashy girl, who he's been in love with for a while.  So, girl marries boy.  Great.  Anything beyond that?  For the media to attach words like "romance" to an ordinary affair is already a fair stretch.  For the world to be expected to wait for this stupid event like it is a spectacle of their lifetimes is a holler and a hoot.  Who gives a fuck?

Here's the reason we're being asked to give a fuck - White countries, namely the USA, UK and Australia (because of Rupert Murdoch alone), control the popular English language media around the world.  There is very little "white" audience specific programming that is sustainable any more.  This royal wedding is one of the last bastions of events that silly white people still control.  The Olympics have moved on to China in a rank of importance, cricket is owned by India, and in terms of sheer strategic interest - almost all the oil of the world is in the hands of Arabs and non-western powers.  So, how else can the white race still stand up to be counted?  By SHOWING UP!  They are very good at that and they will show up.

It is the same white mentality that never bothered to even nominate Mahatma Gandhi for a Nobel Peace Prize, (while this half white Obama gets it just before agreeing to bomb Libya), and Hitler was Time Magazine's "Man of the Year"!  I am sure thankful Gandhi is not in such lousy company.

The biggest crown joke - the new couple is busy asking the media to give them some "privacy"!  Shit, whoever thought they were public?  They happen to be from a family that knows how to stay in the news.  They are all pompous "used to be"s.  Nothing else.  Let's spare the children, for they probably have some sense, but let's not forget the atrocities of their elders who had their chance to ruin the world and took it eagerly, before being thwarted.  Let's make sure no other "family" gets such notions again.

By the way, isn't there anything going on in the UK that is worth reporting?  Like any of Nehru's legacies coming down the line in the Mountbatten family, perhaps?

- BSK.

Do we really support the Lokpal Bill?

Anna Hazare has made some great noises and started a great process.  The government has buckled under the pressure to offer us the passage of the Lokpal Bill, which, when it comes into law, will allow us to prosecute the corrupt, rather quickly, and effectively, depending upon the final draft that comes into force.

This doesn't mean we will suddenly see corruption go away.  It means, if we want, we can prosecute without the usual hindrances.  It will still take considerable effort to use the Lokpal to put away corrupt individuals.

The urban middle class of India is the most politically inactive but fashionably righteousness conscious demographic of this country.  It is a mindset, indeed, and we are mad about a lot of things, but unwilling to unleash that anger on anything that will get something done.

So, how about including a small clause in the Lokpal bill that makes it a crime to notice a crime and not report it?  After all, corruption, as we call it is a bloody crime.  It is thievery, blackmail, denial of rights to people coming through the fair competition route, and anti-national to the core.  So, let's bring in a healthy dose of the words "crime" and "criminal" into this revolution!  In other words, if you pay a bribe, you're a bloody criminal as much as the pig who takes bribe - for whatever reason!

Unless we, the people of India are under threat of being prosecuted for a criminal offence, we will not report crime like we should.  So, how about making this Lokpal Bill include us and our brothers and sisters across the expanse of this nation of India not just responsible but actually culpable to the crime of corruption?  Should it not be our duty to report crime?  How about enforcing this duty as well?

Blackmail is a crime, and bribery more often than not, is blackmail, when demanded for a legal procedure.  If the procedure is illegal - well, that is already a crime, isn't it?  We seem to treat corruption as some kind of common cold, while murder, rape and other more spectacular deeds are more like heart attacks!  This must change.  If it is illegal, it is a crime against the nation's rightful progress, and a bloody crime against the nation.

Why do we suddenly want more laws?  The Lokpal Bill is just another law coming into effect, isn't it?  We already have plenty of mechanisms that we have eroded, ignored, or abused, like the Vigilance Commission.  Why is the Lokpal going to be any different?  Legislation is not going to solve any problem we face in India.  Enforcement can.  We are not good at this.  The first step to enforcing any law or prevent the escape of those breaking the law is reporting.  We need at the very minimum, a robust reporting mechanism, that should not be reserved for spectacular crimes.

Can we please let the Lokpal drafting committee know that it should be legally incumbent and binding upon the citizenry to report crime?  After all we are, by virtue of half the members of this committee being from civil society, absolutely responsible for making it work, whether the government does its part or not!  Also, when the government would love to prosecute its citizens for not reporting, it would have to acknowledge the crime as having taken place, and will have to prosecute the other side as well!  What a beautifully binding marriage this!

The most spectacular crime, by the sheer scale of practice, that most Indians participate in, is apathy.  If we support the Lokpal Bill's passage, we should have no problem accepting an anti-apathy clause as well.  What do you say, flag wavers?  Ready to do some real work?

- BSK.

IBM, pills and lies.

IBM claims in its advertisement that spurious medicines, which are about 10% of the medicines being sold out there, affect a billion people.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVEPdV_warU  Their tracking technology (which really is a bunch of bar codes and software not that different from what courier companies use) is supposed to solve this problem.

I'm really not that sure this is truthful communication.  First of all, if 10% of the medicines sold worldwide are spurious, and that affects 1 billion people out of the total of the earth's human population of 6.2 billion people, then who is eating the other 90%?  There simply aren't 10 billion people on this planet!

If this is a simplistic reasoning of an advanced, more complex truth, then please let's wager on some complications ourselves!  Let's assume for a moment that this one billion people eat all the medicines in the world.  So, they're the people who are getting the spurious 10% as well.  Sure enough they'd be affected.

IBM's claim of building "a smarter planet" should not be this dumb really - if there are 1 billion sick people, that in itself is a cause for worry, but for a technology company, this is "opportunity".  In other words, they do not want a smarter planet where we would know how to stay healthy and stop eating medicines.  Because if the pharma industry shuts down, IBM would lose business - exactly because of this "smarter planet" they set out to build!

North America consumes nearly half of the world's medicines. That is 330 million people in the USA+111 million folks in Mexico and 30 million in Canada = a sum total of 471 million people or roughly 13% of the world's population.  13% of the world's population is consuming about 46% of the world's medicines?  Clearly the problem is huge!  IBM is a North American company, trying to build "a smarter planet" which is suddenly beginning to look a whole lot dumber now, doesn't it?

Now, let's look at this claim of the one billion people affected by spurious medicines.  If 10% of all medicine sold worldwide is spurious, then 47 million in North America would be affected.  So, where are the other 953 million affected consumers?  Come on!  We all want to be part of this "smarter planet" IBM wants to build, so let's buckle up and do something very risky - thinking.

While we're at it, let's consider the pharma industry - the most corrupt, untruthful, unethical and crooked industry in the world, competing only with the arms industry in many ways.  If most medicines have profit margins between 40%-100% and some go upto 300%, we know this is not an industry here to do any "service" to humanity.  So, why would spurious drugs not invade this space?  If any product is overpriced, cheaper alternatives will come!  It is the way of the free market!

Since the advertisement claims to affect people in India - let's take a look at how easy it is to buy medicines of any sort in India.  Just ask and you will get it, no problem.  If it is spurious, the spurious manufacturer is not only in cahoots with the doctors that prescribe what they sell, they are also in cahoots with the pharmaceutical distributors and shops all over the place.  Think they give a shit about some barcode in the ass of the bottle?  I think not.  Before you start thinking this cannot happen in other parts of the world...

The Food And Drug Administration of the USA is one of the shadiest organizations in the world.  So shady and so adamant, that it refuses to acknowledge that substances other than drugs can also cure people from diseases.  The FDA does not allow anything other than a drug to be sold as a potential cure for any illness.  Homeopathy is not even considered a science in the USA.  Forget about Ayurveda and Naturopathy and a host of other healing methods.  The FDA approves all drugs for sale, and today it takes US$200 million for all clinical trials and formalities for a new drug to be approved.  The company producing it must produce this money as well.

In other words, no company has any incentive to produce any cure that it cannot recover a minimum of US$200 million from.  It is a convenient relationship, and you can bet your bottom dollar, FDA officials are being nicely oiled by pharma companies.  There is just no way corruption cannot exist in such a sweetly inviting environment.  In fact, who can afford to do research costing millions and not having a drug approved?

If the North Americans weren't such big consumers of drugs, it wouldn't have any sense to have such a big drug industry either!  The Europeans are not much behind, but that is their choice.  It wouldn't cost Obama so much effort to keep healthcare in priority, and it would sure as hell keep the USA a lot more productive if people didn't buy into this crap idea that eating medicines can keep them healthy.  It simply cannot!

And IBM wants to tell us proudly that they are part of this dumb thought process?

Think about the wastage caused by unhealthy habits that lead to illness and sickness and the fattening of the legendary pharma industry.  Making medicines, packing medicines, tracking medicines, storing medicines, shipping medicines, selling medicines - none of this shit needs to happen if we know how to stay healthy.  THAT would be the smarter planet.  Not this dumb IBM slavery shit.

For those of you who still doubt IBM's ugliness in its very existence - consider this - IBM was responsible for the speed and efficiency of Hitler's holocaust.  IBM managed to collect and make efficient the flow of data that the third Reich needed to single out and persecute jews with great speed.  IBM did that as a service to Hitler - for profit.  You would like to read more?  http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com

- BSK.

Kill the bloody losers!

A billion of us drooled over the Oscars last year and didn't give a shit this time.

Slumdog Millionaire came and went.  It also dropped a few Oscars on Indians.  Resul Pookkutty and Rahman brought something to India that had been brought before, but with much more fanfare this time.  Nobody remembered that Bhanu Athaiya won the Oscar years earlier for her work in Gandhi.  The young media junkies ran amok with Rahman winning not one but two Oscars.

But that was all last year.  By the time the Oscars came around this year, Slumdog Millionaire was an official dud at the box office in India, did nothing to inspire anyone, and didn't even leave enough of a buzz for the same director's next film, "127 Hours" to stay longer than a week in the theatres here.

Nobody cared to watch it for Danny Boyle or for A R Rahman who scored for his English master once again.  Nobody even noticed the film came and went.

Moreover, what kind of moron would watch the Oscars when India is playing a match in the cricket world cup, especially on home turf?  The hype of last year to recruit one billion Indians to the Oscar show viewership was palpable.  The lack of it was curious this year.  Nobody wins against cricket in India.  And judging by yesterdays' game, nobody wins against India either!

But today, The Hindu reported that AR Rahman failed to win an Oscar.  http://www.thehindu.com/arts/cinema/article1497148.ece    "Failed"? Yes, according to the Press Trust Of India, this is lost ground!  It is competition, it is "losing" and "winning", and it is another notch on the great Indian achievement pole when one of us brown skinned guys gets something from some white skinned judge.  The bloody Oscar is a target.  And Rahman missed it.

In fact, The PTI on The Hindu thinks Rahman returned "empty handed", just like Danny Boyle's movie "127 Hours", despite having a handful of nominations.  So that is what we are without actually winning - empty handed.  We're impoverished, useless.  This is bad, bad, bad.

While all this is going on, this whole Oscar business is such a ho-hum for India, that it has even less buzz than one of our lasses strutting her butt trying to win Miss World.  This is all in the "been there and done that" territory for new age India.  No longer that interesting.  But we recognize the "decline" if one of our dogs on any course doesn't come absolutely Number Fucking One!

Even though we were not watching the Oscar show, we had to check on our investment.  We've called Rahman the "Mozart of Madras", even though his Oscar winning song from Slumdog was composed for a Hindi movie and thrown out by the producer of that film!  As long as whitey is willing to clap, we are willing to encourage one of us to get more claps!  That's all we care about.  Our phallic feeling of "India rising".

We Indians are grooming all our children to get to thousands of targets.  We don't give a shit about them being artists, or statesmen and stateswomen, or even being human anymore.  We just want them to fucking win.  Or else they might return "empty handed" like all the other useless nominees.  Please fucking watch out for our monsters going on the rampage.

The cricket world cup is a much bigger prize than a stupid Oscar, and our boys on the cricket field win a whole lot more internationally than our clowns in cinema.  So, why would we even give a shit about anything except cricket?  Because there is so much shit to be WON!  Because there is so much to gloat over.  Not because we love the arts, or sport, or true human merit.  But because we want to trample over everything and fucking get shit. 

Now, do you get it?

- BSK.

Not good enough, Jim Carrey!

Even being an Indian, living in independent India, I have never agreed with Mahatma Gandhi's principles.  It is one thing to be non-violent, quite another to be inactive, and I am beginning to know the difference, but for some reason, in the perception of India and its values and beliefs, the line between the two begins to blur.

Even for someone not vested in the either the nation state concept or the concept of religion, it is sometimes irritating.

An actor by the name of Jim Carrey has angered a lot of Hindus by his portrayal of Lord Ganesh in a sexual act on NBC's Saturday Night Live.  http://www.indianexpress.com/news/hindus-upset-with-jim-carrey-nbc-for-mocking-lord-ganesh/738479/

Apparently, NBC is a fairly popular and wide television network, reaching a sizable audience.  Whether this means it is a responsible broadcaster, I do not know.  However, it would seem incumbent upon any large corporation to take some care before broadcasting any content that is clearly not in good taste.

Lord Ganesh, the revered elephant God, is invoked by his believers, at all auspicious occasions, whether it is a festival, or the opening of a school.  He is loved by children, worshipped by billions, and is a lot more than a deity with the head of an elephant.  He is wisdom, he is patience, he is the remover of obstacles, and an adored non-controversial, ever present, celebrated child in every altar he finds a place in.

To a huge number of people all over the world - Ganesh brings peace and calm.  He is adorable and beautiful.  And he is the child of Shiva and Parvati, no less.  So, this is no vagabond sculpture that started a cult following either!  And Ganesh isn't going to lose his immense calmness because some fool tried to mock him.  He won't mind that.  But he will be disappointed that so little of his wisdom percolated down to an actor who took it upon him to impersonate him!

NBC does not need to know any of this.  Nor does this fellow Jim Carrey.  But what they should know in these tough economic times, is to not piss off a billion plus people.  There is going to be no fatwa.  No Hindu is going to make up his mind to kill Jim Carrey, but what will happen is this - Indian film distributors will come to know that this guy Jim Carrey is not good news.  A couple of Hindu organizations will call the Distributors Council and tell them they won't allow this idiot's films to be released anywhere in India.  So, they won't buy any of his films.  Let Hollywood decide if Carrey's market value goes up or down because of this achievement.

It is not as if India is dying without Hollywood product.  Hollywood films collect less than 5% of India's box office revenues.  But it is a billion plus market.  Ask the accounts department if that can be ignored.

Nobody in NBC may lose a job over this incident.  Hollywood may not really care if a Jim Carrey movie tanks at the box office.  The industry should however, really think about what Jittu Krishnamurthy, whom actress Janeane Garofalo has read a lot of, said - "In lieu of creativity, there is sexuality".

>>In a skit on NBC’s SNL (January eight) titled “The Wrath of Ganesh”, Jim Carrey (as erotic shaman Lee Licious) and Kenan Thomson (as Grady Wilson) demonstrate a sexual technique, mocking Lord Ganesh and his trunk in the process. Grady has traveled the world to find new sexual techniques to spice up the bedroom, the tagline of the episode (1587) “Grady Wilson's Tantric N'Tasty” says. <<

What?  You Americans mastered the Kamasutra in just 200 years?  Now you want new challenges?  Maybe the elephant is closer to your body shape these days that the Kamasutra is no longer a practical guide?

It was not that long ago that Hillary Clinton said of Mahatma Gandhi - "He ran a gas station down in St. Louis.".  No matter how she corrected herself, after a few morons in St. Louis thought it was funny, it shows some kind of residual stupidity in even grown up Americans.  If she had said Ahmedinajad's dad was a barber in Kansas City, the Muslim world would have issued a fatwa and she would have invited all sorts of condemnation, not for being a moron with a poor sense of humour, but for putting American lives at risk!

The USA almost has the patent on irreverence.  Reverence itself may be overrated, but many beautiful things come out of it.  One of them might be a unified Asian currency.  I can't wait for that to be unleashed upon the world, and I can't wait for oil to be pegged against it, instead of the US Dollar or the Euro.  The biggest consumer rules, doesn't he?

Dear "Americans", your idiots can mock other countries, religions, cultures, icons, and things they don't understand all they want, but for all the trumpet blowing about even your greatest achievement, democracy, think about this - At the end of the last parliamentary elections in India, an Italian Roman Catholic Christian lady headed the winning coalition, and she nominated a Sikh Prime Minister who took his oath before a Muslim president, in a country that is 83% Hindu.

Really, USA, you need to get over your puberty some time.  The world is fast losing its patience.  Your place in it is no longer a matter of what you can get away with.  It is clearly a challenge now, of what you can come up with.

Since some of you are probably so curious about this sort of thing -



Why watch Jim Carrey?

Happy New What?

Remember that big lie that came out in 2000?  That the new millennium was being born on January 1st?  How easily the world bought this nonsense, even though the truth was that the millennium was actually born one year later on January 1st, 2001!

How does the world lose its senses on New Years Eve?

How is a New Year Day any more important or worth celebrating than any other day?  Why should January 1st mark the New Year?  If a "year" marks a full revolution of the earth around the sun, why can't the universal New Year begin on one of the solstice days, when the earth's axis begins a new angle of tilt?  Would that not be precise and natural?  Now we not only have various people celebrating various New Year Days, but also idiots that want to, in the same calendar, change it from one to the other, based on some whim, like they have tried to do in Tamilnadu and failed.

More importantly to me, what is the celebration all about?  It is not like 1st January 2011 is going to be any better in ANY way compared to 31st December 2010!  In fact, it is going to be much worse, since a lot of people will be drunk, inefficient, driving badly and slow in thinking.  The most unproductive of days in the year has to be the 1st of January.  How can the rest of the year be any good if we get to such bad starts?

We have several different calendars in India, and indeed, several different New Years.  So, if Sundays are the beginning of weeks, why not have a New Week Day every Sunday?  In any case, we're pretty slow on Mondays, and also have the most number of heart attacks on Mondays!  So, why not celebrate a little bit before taking on the danger of the dreaded Monday?

Anything different we can do this time?

Enough of resolutions we cannot honour, promises we cannot keep, and beginnings to new ideas that go nowhere.

Our lives must be really boring if we have to wait for a date on a calendar to celebrate, party, have a good time for whatever reason.  Still, New Years is really NO reason to celebrate.  Especially if we are leading such dull dreary lives that the mere arrival of a date should get us all excited.

If we were to bring some quality to our lives, we'd be doing whatever it takes to make our lives worthwhile every second we are alive, grateful for the opportunity each moment brings to us, and we'd lead healthy lives, without stress, going into a sound sleep every night, waking up without the pressure of routine life, enjoying clean air, great food, great friends, and have plenty of energy for a lot of activity.  We would not have any negative thoughts and no unclean emotions.  We'd be excited about every moment of our lives yet to unfold, and we'd be fulfilled in every way.

Instead, most of us choose rather stupidly, to be sold on the rigour of ordinary life, sacrificing quality of life to improve our standard of living, and when we do get to a higher standard of living, remain so scared of lowering it that we never get to a better quality of life.

So, how about, this NEW YEAR, since we are so adamant about celebrating this great celestial event that doesn't even fall on the same day for all humans, do something to improve our lives, individually and collectively?  How about taking the whole day off thinking about "what" it is that can actually make each of our lives better, and doing that not just today but for the rest of our lives?  After all, if the world might end in 2012, the least we can do is spend some time with our "selves".

Welcome 2011!

Cheers.

Are we a Two Notion Nation?

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh returned from Cancun having taken his due part in a relatively successful international climate conference.  Now some of us want to gut him for "compromising" India's position by accepting binding conditions that will force us to pollute less!  Truth is, he did not.  He played his hand professionally, making progress where it matters most in his ministry - at the global level.

Mr. Ramesh is thankfully, intelligent enough to know we as a nation have fought anything binding for a long time, and he therefore presented a "nuanced" stance that allowed for some progress to be made - something a lot many climate summits before this could not claim.  So, what's up with us?  Why these reactions now, going far enough to call his deeds a "U-Turn" in the media?  How do we send a representative to a global summit, to stand up for this "billion strong" mass of humanity that we are so proud of, without knowing exactly what he is going to do there?

Strangely, while we never make any news of preparing anything other than our cricket team before a big event, we are very happy to beat every other piece of information into a controversy, raking up every opportunity for a confrontation.  We must either like something or hate it!  We're angry against Australia for a few Indians getting beaten up in rough neighbourhoods, angry against the USA for them calling us "self appointed front runners" for new permanent seats on the UN Security Council, and yet extremely weak when one of our airliners gets hijacked by terrorists.  We're proud about the silliest achievements like putting a toy on the moon, and get very miserable when we are told we are #147 on the Human Development Index.

Are we as a nation, either arrogant or apologetic, and very little else, in between or beyond?  How about stoic, pragmatic, nuanced, intelligent, innovative, mature, clairvoyant, sophisticated, assertive, visionary, evolved, shrewd, or just plain cool?  Aren't these options available to us as a people?  The danger of subscribing to an over simplistic range of attitudes is that we will not be able to succeed as much as we would like to.  We may just not have the negotiating tools with which to garner advantages in this global world.

Every single one of our institutions, cultural or governmental, administrative or social, are dangerously cloaked in this rather simplistic and archaic construct of right and wrong.  Why do we have to reduce Mr. Jairam Ramesh's stance at Cancun to anything other than his own description of "nuanced"?  Why do we have to enter debates leading to a legislation about gay sex being simply, criminal or not criminal?  Why does the debate not go into our very understanding of the word "criminal"?  Clearly, that is where we should go to understand ourselves!

As long as we have this "right" or "wrong" black and white perspective about everything we do in a complex world, we will desist from understanding anything of even a mildly complex nature.  Opinions we have so many of, but very few world changing perspectives.  This should be very strange for a culture heavily influenced by Hinduism's inclusive fundamentals, for we know that in order to embrace Krishna, I should not have to give up on Christ.  For a culture that has hardly been instructed about anything mutually exclusive, sexual poses in temple carvings included, are we in danger of becoming, in the age of the internet and the information revolution, a rather unsophisticated nation of people not willing to consider anything long enough or leave some things inconclusive in judgement?

Why is it that we have to stoop to define our laws based on "legal" or "illegal" for instance?  It is no secret that policemen frequently gun down extremely hardened criminals, who have not been deterred by the consequences of the judicial system.  If someone is unruly enough to not worry about a jail term, and if he has scant respect for other people's lives, chances are, it will take some stern action to throw him in jail.  If that doesn't work and the threat looms large again, chances are, some policeman or any other individual will take action to neutralize this threat.  Now, we have a Human Rights Commission to investigate these incidences of "encounter deaths", and God bless them for the work they do, and we have armed policemen who actually deal with dangerous criminals - at loggerheads with each other, while both are working towards the same goal - keep society clean!

By putting down a set of laws, do we automatically assume that all situations can be judged by this set of principles we have all sworn to adhere by?  Aren't we limiting ourselves?  Or do we want to avoid complex debates just so life moves along, and hence, we're willing to sacrifice some clarity for some expediency?  Either way, I'd like to see a judge declare someone "guilty according to this trial", but "not guilty" because of some other moral consideration.  Will we be able to handle that?

Something along these lines came up with the Babri Masjid land issue.  The Court decided on a three way split, never going into the verdict of the title at all!  This "extra legal" handling of the matter was a bit of a news for the nation, and as a country, we were appreciated for not losing control.  No riots?  Thank you very much, folks!  But, in hindsight, it was a sophisticated turn of the court system, who did us a favour by not sticking to the book and declaring who the land belongs to.  Clearly, if there was a title dispute, the same land which had never been split before could not have belonged to all three parties in contention?  And yet, this was a sophisticated solution that has gone down rather well.  Perhaps this is the way in the future.

Specific to the environment, Mr. Jairam Ramesh's department, we will eventually have to deal with extremely complicated equations, because we cannot apply our laws to fishermen in Bolivia who will lose a fair bit of their catch if we burn coal to melt iron.  Humanity was never designed to be split into nation states, even though this sort of splitting has ensured we have many different experiments in the way we want to do things collectively.  We will have to ensure, however, that we grow up as a race, that we try and understand and apply ourselves well beyond the limitations of black and white constructs, and slowly make ourselves capable of handling many unique challenges.

As people of India, as a very culturally, socially and intellectually diverse collective, we have a better chance than most people in the world, of training ourselves for multifaceted solution finding, conflict resolution, and visionary, inclusive leadership.  I hope this will not be lost upon us.  Let's give Mr. Jairam Ramesh a fair hearing, and let's not jump to any conclusion.  How about this for a start?

BSK.

Wikileaks! Bring it on baby!

Wikileaks is going to drop some bombshells upon us.

The fact that the US State Department is going far enough to warn us about the impending leaks means that it is guaranteed to embarrass us, the USA, and is guaranteed to damage our relationship with them.  I couldn't wait!  I could not wait for our worshippers of white skin to be told in no uncertain terms that the USA's decision makers think of us as scumbags!  I could not wait indeed for the clandestine bastards in the US State and other departments to tell us what we should always have known but have avoided thinking about - The USA's foreign policy has always been based on opportunity, never on principle.

All this Obama's rushing to India to lick some of our economic ass notwithstanding, India and the USA differ in one fundamental way.  India takes a long time to give up its principles, collectively, in the international arena.  The USA has none, except on paper.  Does that make me proud as an Indian?  Most certainly not!  Simply because the USA is not my fucking gold standard!  No country is.  My conscience should suffice and I have never seen my country live up to the standards my conscience has let me set.

Now, Wikileaks is causing serious worry on many fronts.  The Pakistanis are worried, New Delhi is making fussy noises about what might come out, going on record stating we would like to "work this out" with the USA since we value that freaking relationship!  How the fuck can we value this relationship if it clearly cannot be built on mutual trust?  We can if we are honest.  For example, if Manmohan Singh were to say to Obama, "Barack, you're a good guy and I like you, but you filthy bastards in Washington have always treated us like shit, never took us seriously, and continue to fund Pakistan while they train their arms against us.  So, we're going to wait and watch, for we'd really like to see how you behave when China calls in your enormous debt to them.  Till then, let me focus on building MY country please".

It would even work if Obama were to see beyond his eloquent prose and say, "Please don't put me in with the whores in Washington.  I really mean to do some good work here, okay?  Please give me a chance to look good!"  That would be fair enough.

Our leaders are not beyond cutting shady deals with US companies.  All that is going to come out in these leaks, one hopes.  Clearly we will see some high handed attitude from US officials, that will show us truly what they think of our leaders.  We have some cheap bastards in politics, and the US communications will make no bones about treating them as such. We have to know who can be bought and at what price.  It is the way effective lobbying is carried out.   It is the way countries move to positions of strength, even before negotiations begin on any front.

American politicians are also equally capable of corruption, cronyism, and outright thievery.  But we do not make the efforts to know them that well.  It won't take much to find out things about US politicians.  But our politicians are probably too overwhelmed by the thought of spying on white people running a powerful country.  Our slave mentality will come to the fore through this expose.  I cannot wait.

This is going to be super embarrassing most for the USA, because their hypocrisy is bound to come out brilliantly.  If they are already making noises about how these "leaks" can hurt their relationships with countries, it means their ally building exercises are all mired in lies.  It means to the simplest of minds that the USA is not capable of true friendship, and to the complex minds, it means that the USA does not mind taking others for a ride if the circumstances justify that sort of game.  The USA does not give a shit!  But now, it is being forced to eat its own shit.

As always, the people who have the most to hide will look the ugliest when the shit hits the fan.  This is fun!  Let the games begin!

 www.wikileaks.org

- BSK.

Less Indian More Human.

This is in response to a message I received, pointing out a major problem with India: criminals in politics:

I have long since moved beyond the concepts of "nation state" and "country" in my heart, mind and spirit.  To me, we are a species on this planet, and that's it.  Every equation we have with every other member of this species in my view, therefore, should not be tainted by our perceptions of identity based on invisible or visible lines drawn to separate us into various collectives.  Even more fundamentally, I tend to question the need for a sense of ownership, entitlement, and belonging.  And when did any of us agree to belong to any of these collectives?

I do take note however, that some of these collectives have flourished while others have failed, and I recognize that this collective called "India" is an idea just like the others. Some of us may have an exaggerated sense of belonging with this idea, and some of us may not.  I, personally, look upon it as an accident that I am "Indian", and hence, for reasons I have no interest in fighting against, I accept that fact.  It should suffice that I am a human with a name to boot, and apparently fingerprints and DNA that can identify me incredibly well, but for some reason, I am loaded with all these other definitions.  Whatever.

We have been conditioned to imagine that it is somehow important that we care for this country, or any country.  I simply ask "why"?  I mean, what in the essence of a human being makes us care for one country more than say, another one?  Why this divide amongst us?  Why this unquestioning signing up to belong to just ONE country?  Why do we need borders and divisions that no other species seems to need, and then argue for "open" borders that augment more co-operation between countries?  That sounds crazy to me.

In fact, by agreeing mutely to this bizarre alienation, and the ensuing sense of competition, we have all but forgotten everything about confluence and coexistence, and now, we have a direct interest in other countries being less well off than ours!  How much in tune can this possibly be with the journey of the human soul and our most natural existence as humans within humanity?  We are out of tune, and the enemy is patriotism which really is another word for separatism.  To hell with all the other 194 countries, I will wave ONLY my flag!

The result is that on many occasions, we have under the influence of an imagined need to belong to some country, and even worse, under the heady umbrella of patriotism, sworn to be proud of even what should be questioned, condemned, punished and put to shame for millions of reasons.  The problem with these fractionalized collectives is that our standards of performance, excellence and indeed development are limited by the best that we can do "within" this collective.  However, our perceptions need not be.

I don't think it is natural for us to care about an artificial concept.  "Country" is most definitely an artificial concept, brought upon by fear, the need to control, and the need to intimidate and deceive.  The time for all this may soon pass.  There are things we care about instinctively as human beings, and we genuinely care about the welfare of our species, so that we may survive within it and help proliferate it.  We can be in love with anyone, and would rush to help another human in distress regardless of what nationality that person is.  That is the essential nature of being a human.  This essential nature deserves a canvas much much bigger in scope than what a nation possibly can provide.

So, what does this "nation" provide?  If something threatens our survival, we will naturally defend ourselves.  But for the nation, we have the armed forces.  But within this artificially imposed border called India, we have no natural, instinctive, honest response to the decay of this collective from any other perspective.  We do not have to feel ashamed of this.  In the true sense, we are all the more human for not caring up until the point where our survival may be threatened.

This is where I see the biggest dichotomy.  Some human beings, namely, our ancestors, "chose" to define what is now called "India".  But many of us that are Indians today did not choose to be Indians.  So, why would we automatically want to belong to this club and work for its well being?  From a culture that has been around for thousands of years, somewhere, perhaps in our infinite wisdom, we choose not to take this artificial collective so seriously!  We have God to protect us from all the ills of the "world", which in many cases are the ills of just this very country!  But why is it suddenly God's job, when we proudly proclaim on the Vidhana Soudha, that "Government Work is God's Work!"?  So, it must be God doing a really bad job!

Jokes apart, our crisis within this collective is right now, is not one of having too few people to do good - we have millions of them, but one of having next to nobody to question and strongly fight all that is wrong.  Because when it comes to fighting wrong, our survival might be in jeopardy.  Evil has a way of hitting back in unpleasant ways when threatened!  We believe nonsense like "Satyameva Jayate" even when truth doesn't win!  But believing in it completely absolves us of the responsibility of having to fight against evil.

We are bombarded with lies, day in and day out.  But we accept some of these lies, purely because it takes too much effort to yell back, "Hey, that's a bunch of sh**!".  Evolution is essentially a search for truth, and all the truth that I have so far found is that we, as Indians, are all running from it all the time, sometimes just to stay sane!  The greatness of any society as I see it, is the ability of its members to live closest to the truths that guide them.  To this end, I dare say, we in India collectively live the most unspiritual, cowardly, selfish lives, and we have every justification for doing so, no doubt.  How else could we ruin so much in a mere 63 years?

We have also been fed this nonsense that we are a great country, but if only we stopped to understand that a great country doesn't automatically translate to a great nation, we would not have all these murderers and rapists and crooks and other shenanigans in Parliament!  Above them all still stands a meticulously maintained engraving screaming "Satyameva Jayate" isn't there?  What could be a bigger insult to our collective?  And for those of us who care - what are we going to do about it?  Can we atleast now, in all honesty, agree to change that to "Jhootameva Jayate" or whatever stands for "Untruth alone triumphs"?

I don't fall for any of the jingoistic feel good nonsense that people spew out on a daily basis either.  Like - "We stand in solidarity with the victims of this terrorist attack!".  What exactly does that mean?  The next time, we will jump in the line of fire and take the bullets?  Why're we so afraid to really say what goes on in our minds, like "Thank God that wasn't me!"?  This "feel good" nonsense is actually up to "no good".  This is not grace under pressure, it is lying under pressure to say something good, even if it is not true.  Our patriotism and the need to belong to this imagined collective force us to ugly places like this.

By subscribing to this incomplete and flawed idea of Country, we may also have voluntarily surrendered to this escapist notion that we in India live in a "beautiful chaos" that miraculously survives as a country, ably aided by the power of God.  This is the romantic notion that is pushed upon us, and many of us, including the dubious "Bollywood" film industry help promote it.  We're actually proud of this.

And then, despite having a government working under the Indian flag, consisting mostly of crooks with nothing but looting and pillaging on their minds, look at the number of flag waving ads. shamelessly promoting something as stupid as motorcycle sales!  Dhak Dhak Go!  India Go!  Go where?  To #143 on the Human Development Index?  That's where we are, and there aren't 10,000 countries on that list either.

I do not have hope in this idea called India.  I have some optimism for some elements of what constitutes India, but that is miniscule.  The search for reasons, and the blame game only serves to exacerbate the pain of existing on this land mass defined by the boundaries we have in our mind for this "nation" and "notion" called India.

Each time we invest ourselves in this idea called India or just about any other "nation", we limit ourselves and we limit the power of our potential.

However, I think some of us can apply ourselves to the uplifting of humanity as a whole, and hopefully, no nation will be left out.

I personally simply don't have to be less human to be more Indian.

BSK

Goodwill Monkeys.

DO NOT DRINK COLD WATER AFTER A MEAL - YOU COULD DIE OF CANCER!

This was the message of an e mail I got earlier today, for the second time in six months or so.  Apparently "A Cardiologist" concurs with this pearl of wisdom, too.  Indeed, he wouldn't be courageous enough to reveal his name, for he would be soundly thrashed in the realms of reality and truth.

I am inclined to believe the internet has now reached millions of people with too much time on their hands, and many of them simply want to reach out.  If they wrote to us that they were bored and just wanted to say hello, it might be hard to get this kind of mileage, so they come up with some utter crap, cloaked as a gem of knowledge, that can "save lives"!  Notice how many of these messages do not have the author owning up to it!?

There are some genuine gems out there, for sure, but those are few and far between.  I wonder why a lot of people fall for this kind of pop culture "good will" that needs to for some reason be shared now, but wasn't worth our time before we got our broadband connections.  It's because the internet doesn't spew back.  It doesn't ask us the questions normal humans would ask, usually starting with "And who the *^@k are you?".  If you are a fat slob sending out an e mail on how to stay healthy by drinking tea with a spot of yak urine, nobody really gets super annoyed, but if you showed up in real life, that would be a hoot, wouldn't it?  You freaking wouldn't dare.

A couple of months ago I got this stupid message extolling the virtues of letting one's hair down, eating that tasty piece of chocolate, ignoring an extra round of flab, not exercising, and sleeping longer.  How much guilt should you carry before you need to justify any of this to yourself?  What a pathetic pop culture parasite must have come up with this nonsense!  And what mindless broadcasting of this shit is carried out by millions of "good" people who want to spread the goodwill and score brownie points with their friends.  Sorry fools, it irks some of us.

I don't want to hear how nice it is to finally be lazy, sloppy and uncaring.  It doesn't apply to me so I don't want to read this.  But it arrived in my inbox from a trusted friend, so now I am forced to.  Seconly, I don't know you, the bloody original author of this shit, so I don't give a shit what makes you feel nice either.  That's not to say I wish you bad.  Clearly you are fully capable of doing that to yourself with your love of slob.  But I just don't give a shit about ANY lazy slob.  You eat your freaking ice cream, don't shower, sleep, fart, booze, that's all your freaking business, not mine.  That's all there is to it.

Now, what about the fools who spread this shit?  What makes them do it?  If something brought a smile to your face, you want to share it - THIS I get.  But would every single person on your mailing list get the same smile reading the same shit?  Some of us get frowns, duh!

I have lived long enough and travelled far enough to know there is no magic pill that can keep us healthy and happy.  We need to invest in being healthy and happy, and then we can reap the benefits of that investment.  Eating properly, getting exercise, learning stuff, being productive - these are things we should do and do every day.  None of this is a luxury, and some of us have to work harder than others, since we're not created equal, no matter what you hear to the contrary.  If you think everybody is equal, why the fuck are you not able to run as fast as Usain Bolt?  Even if the whole world had EQUAL opportunity, EQUAL motivation, EQUAL everything, there would still be only ONE fastest runner.  That's just the way it is.

The internet, unfortunately provides a mirage of equality.  I can spew as much as anybody else.  Fools can show up as much as intelligent people, liars as much as truth seekers, quacks as much as doctors, and saints cannot be any holier than pedophiles in this whacky space.  We're all freaking "equal" somehow.  While some of us have had normal lives and know our places, the internet is to some of our monkeys, the ONLY space where they can be fully expressive, scratch their asses in full public view, and get really creative!

To a monkey, anything that can kill boredom is creative.  Sending out these freaking "goodwill" messages makes the lazy feel like they are doing something good, the empty ones probably feel like their lives are actually worth something, and the dumb ones even have a chance of feeling intelligent by getting appreciation for messages they had nothing to do with in the first place.

So, all you goodwill monkeys out there, do the rest of us a big favour.  The next time you get one of these freaking "good" saving the world messages, ask yourselves if you would print out the message, put that in an envelope and stick a stamp and mail it to a dear friend.  If you wouldn't do that, the message is either not important, or you wouldn't take the pains for your friend.  THAT is the measure of your character and your judgment.  Please don't hit "forward".  If you would indeed do all this for a friend, great!  Connect that printer and get to work.  It would be nice to get some real mail too.  Heck, it might even get read!

BSK.

The joy of winning, without losing any of it!

For a while I have been watching the IPL, edition 3, enjoying quite a bit of it, annoyed with some parts, disgusted with some parts, amused by some, and plain irritated with shit like the fucking MRF Blimp.

Watching my team CSK win the final yesterday was great.  CSK aren't my team because I live in Chennai, and since I don't, why would I pick them over the other teams?  They just seem like a relaxed, happy bunch that doesn't play for anything other than the fun of the game itself.  The Rajasthan Royals I like for a similar reason - they play well when they really don't have a chance, and especially when they don't have a chance.

I don't understand why some teams get so much more attention than the others, like the bloody Kolkata Knight Riders.  I believe they were the "most watched" team.  As if that counts for something, other than TV ratings.  How can a bunch of losers be the most watched bunch?  Are their supporters so big in number?  Statistically impossible.  Shah Rukh Khan is a draw but simply seeing him in the stands and occasionally humping a Shoaib Akhtar in a presentation cannot be reason enough to watch a disgruntled bunch of losers turn it off game after game.  There is artificial juicing up of KKR games, and it comes from television - like an invisible hand pushing them to be prominent, spoken about, written about, and even win if possible.

Could it be Lalit Modi's proxy stakes in KKR doing their stink job?  So what?  That's to be expected, but the way the asshole took the microphone and started addressing "the world" during the post match presentation took something away from the joy of Chennai Super Kings winning the trophy.  Somehow, if Mumbai had won it, the people who had cheered for Mumbai all along would not have left those lovely stands empty, and Modi's emotional address would have seemed absurd at such a happy time.  But, the badly delivered address from Modi, clearly written by his ghost writer, served to reinforce how nobody really seemed to care that much about CSK's win.  Shit, they're not KKR!

CSK seem to mind their own business.  Nobody even saw their owner in public until they had won the trophy, and his wife didn't run out and get her ass grabbed by the players either.  And yet, they not only won the trophy, they also won the "Fairplay Award" with a perfect score - which means, good natured guys with no negative attitude to show can also win, and win handsomely.  Not once during the whole season did CSK put on grim faces, show disrespect, or play the blame game when they lost.  And lose they did, quite a few.  They had won only 2 out of their first 7 games!  But Dhoni and his boys did exactly what was needed WHEN it was needed.  And they didn't make a fuss out of it either.  They gave their supporters a lot of joy.  Not one negative vibe.  Dhoni did catch Tendulkar and Tendulkar didn't walk when the umpire missed that one.  Dhoni didn't lose his cool, or the cup.  Sachin didn't lose his temper that much, but under pressure, he captained Mumbai like a moron - scared to death and making amateurish mistakes.

It just looked like one side was playing to win, and the other was playing to not lose.  Nightmares do come true, and never mind the dreams.  This is what happens to those that are groomed for greatness and those that know how to steal it and seal it when the opportunity comes.  Sachin was magnanimous in his praise for CSK and I'm sure Dhoni would have been no less had his side been humbled.  But the entire Mumbai Indians show was prepared for one thing - a Mumbai Indians victory, not a great cricket match!  That's why it became a Bollywood type of flop show for most people who came to watch Mumbai Indians win.  The CSK victory was not even an option in their fairytale run to the cup.  Alas, Dhoni doesn't court fairies.  He lets them run after  his mighty heart.

It would be one thing to simply be happy that CSK won, but I rather prefer to give the middle finger to the miserable losers who left the field without waiting for the presentation to be done with.  It had the Under 23 success of the tournament to be declared, it had the Purple Cap, the Orange Cap, and so many wonderful awards to be dispensed.  But none of that was good enough for the Mumbai crowd.  They just wanted to see Mumbai Indians win the IPL.  Many started leaving when there were four balls and 27 to get.  Sachin's team may have a few winners in it, but his staunch Mumbai supporters are all bloody sore losers.  They're not cricket fans, they're just bloodthirsty for one result.  But, it takes more than blowing horns and wearing blue to make your team win.  Your team needs to have the brains to get close and the balls to grab it when the opportunity comes.  Too bad your team had neither, fools!  Sachin's a great player no doubt, but he is no match for Dhoni tactically.  Mukesh Ambani might buy all the big names with big money, but Meiyappan's boys know how to make the merry charge to the top of the hill.  So fuck you unhappy bastards.

And what was all that Bollywood shit all about during the closing ceremony?  It was so foolishly uncreative and uninspiring, we could have been watching the Teleshopping network trying to sell us used cinema set furniture.  That big incredibly tall batsman was a great entrant, but he didn't do shit!  He just stood, while all the Bollywood fools did their shit and pushed the match into a late start.  How tardy.  It is clear A R Rahman doesn't have anything to offer, for if he did, and if any of the other pricks behind this pathetic non show had any ideas, we wouldn't have meaningless numbers, stupid actors cavorting and Rahman's horrible rendition of Vande Mataram for the n+10th time in his uniquely boring and sincerely empty way.  Fuck you Bollywood - stay out of our faces for a while, please.

A few words for Royal Challengers Bangalore, the other grim faced bums in red that made a pretense of a lot of shit before they got blown away.  You assholes look like you swallowed a can of decaying worms no matter how things are going on the field.  This IPL is supposed to be entertainment, and that means, happiness.  If Mallya and Kingfisher stand for "good times", you bastards stand for something like a plague outbreak.  I mean, what the fuck is up with your non smiling fuckfaces?  Kumble, you son of a constipated bitch, keep your team this unhappy and I wish you taxation and torture on your way to hell.  How dare you even mention you lost a game because Kallis batted slow?  Kallis was the one pillar you built your limited success on.  If he batted slow, it was your business to send him a message to get on with it!  How many fucking dot balls do you have to see before you can tell he is batting slow?  Thirty seven?  And what's up with showing so much anger towards your younger players.  We know how miserable you were as a fielder while playing for India, so what's up with this attitude?

And what's up with all that "go green" shit you thought we'd swallow?  Your owner flies in his own jet, and we're supposed to believe you are all going green, because of that piece of green pantyhose on your shoulders and pouring water on some plants in the stadium.  What do you take us for?  Your only job is to bloody entertain, fools, and you're miserable at it.  Now, fuck off.  Learn how to be happy.  Show some appreciation for the life that lets you play a game and make a good living out of it.  Show some appreciation for all the hard work people put in to pay for the tickets to come watch you play.  Winning is fun, but it must be fun to watch you play as well.  You don't have to be grim all the time and you certainly don't have to act professional when you're not good enough to win with your method.

This is just a game, and it's called cricket.  No matter how much science comes to it, and no matter how much management comes to help you focus on winning, it is still fundamentally a contest that should bring its own joy.  What's the worst you're going to face if you lose?  Certainly not a shooting squad!  So, what's your problem, assholes?  The least you can do is carry yourselves with some dignity and some lightness of being.  Ravi Shankar too lives in your town.  Consult him on how to relieve your constant constipation.  Heck, he might even tell you how to go green without being so flimsy about it.  Wouldn't hurt to get a chant a little better than R C B, a drummer who can actually beat a few rhythms and not look like he just cut loose after getting half a hair cut three years ago.  Get your police force to find those who planted bombs in your stadium, especially if they say it was the "betting mafia".  Looks like they know each other rather intimately.  Oh, yeah, we know you were trying hard to avoid playing Mumbai in the semi finals!  A fat lot that helped.

Now, you fucking Mumbai Indians, just in case you thought I'd let you go - why are you blaming your strategic errors so much for losing to CSK?  Why can't you just accept that you just couldn't beat Dhoni and his team?  If Pollard had come in earlier, for instance, Dhoni might have had him in knots with his spin trio and made him lose his timing.  In any case, saw how he shut him down with his clever field placing?  No fine leg, no third man, one deep mid off, one long off, and what does Pollard do?  Drill straight to Hayden at deep mid off!  It wasn't just Dhoni celebrating.  This was brains celebrating and stupidity disintegrating.  So, please accept that on this given night, CSK got it right, and your guys didn't.  It is as simple as that.

I'd be called a sore loser if CSK had not won even though I'd stand by everything I said so far.  But it's nice to be a winner and see how sore some losers can actually be.  Pretty sore by the look of it.  Deccan Chargers, you guys aren't sore at all, and I totally understand you just weren't mentally in it in the 3rd place playoff.  Thanks for the entertainment - what a magnificent charge you guys made!  I heard Ray Jennings say true winners are those who come back after being defeated.  No thanks, fool.  I think true winners are those who take the cup and run with joy, all the way.

Also, if you heard Matthew Hayden's interview, about how strong a tradition they are proud to represent, of Tamilnadu, both in cricket and culturally, and how it was a privilege and an honour to win this for their fans - it wasn't about tactics, strategy or competition.  It was bigger than the cricket, all right, and truly acknowledging some very real, well grounded facts about some very real people.  If this game had been played in Chennai, and CSK lost, the stadium would not have emptied out before the entire cerermony was over.  Saurabh Tiwary would have been cheered as much as any under 23 success of the league should have been, and Sachin would have been celebrated along with Dhoni, and the entire show would have been packed off with plenty of positive energy for the World T20.

You lousy Mumbaikars showed your disgust at your own team - a team that had entertained you for so long and topped the table, no less - you left them at the moment of reckoning - something Chennai would never do.  If winning is all important to you, how come you motherfuckers lost?  It's because you have small hearts, you bastards.  It's because you couldn't embrace your team and love them all the way, no matter what.  You wanted them to "deliver" something to you, because you "paid" for it.  Fuck you bloodsuckers and that damned attitude.  Life isn't a fucking formula, fools.  Now, stop analyzing all things MI did wrong that led to the defeat.  Mukesh Ambani can pump in a lot of money, but he can't guarantee victory against a side like the CSK that is just too happy to show up exactly when it matters.  Learn to respect that sort of positive energy.

CSK, you made the whole thing worth it, and if I may add - as always!  I have many wonderful memories - Vijay's sparkling century, Bollinger's fantastic bowling, and then holding his scalp so Raina wouldn't pull his hair a second time when he got a wicket, Dhoni clubbing Pathan, and Raina's screaming, free flowing strokes.  Oh yes, our catching was brilliant, including the one Jakati had to hop after taking clean as a whistle.

Thank you for so many lovely moments, your brand of cricket, your spirit of being, and for smiling so much, for playing so fair, and making us cricket fans all truly happy!  Now Mahi, time to get Team India to play like this in the Caribbean, and make even more of us very, very happy.

BSK.