Wokay!

Archive for April 2009

Voting for WTFness

Posted by: Aadisht on: April 30, 2009

Although India’s mainstream political parties are WTF enough – banning computerisation, resisting improved diplomatic relations with the US, asking if loyalty to the Gandhi family counts for nothing, and thinking that a Ram temple is India’s greatest preoccupation come to mind – for true, diamond-hard, industrial strength WTF-ness you have to look at the fringe [...]

Vot a Big… Castle!

Posted by: Aadisht on: April 30, 2009

This Dealbreaker story is awesome. Citi has very few profitable divisions right now, and the people who run them are demanding massive bonuses to stay on and ensure that they stay profitable. But after all the outrage over the AIG bonuses, Vikram Pandit is pre-emptively going to Obama to ask for permission. The political palatability [...]

How Familiarity Bred Contempt

Posted by: Aadisht on: April 27, 2009

In 1949, Aziz Kashmiri wrote: आज कल की नारीयां आज कल की नारीयां है मुफ़्त की बीमारीयां, बीमारीयां रात दिन मर्दों से लडने की करे तैयारीयां, तैयारीयां काम कुछ करती नहीं, और बांधती है सारीयां   In those simpler bygone times, people used to complain that women would tie saris and not work. It shows [...]

IPL Nomenclature

Posted by: Aadisht on: April 27, 2009

Gideon Haigh has a rant on Cricinfo about Citi Moments of Success and DLF Maximums. (via Udups on Twitter). Rather than just complain I think we as viewers should empower ourselves by giving our own names to boundaries. I propose the following names for fours and sixes for each of the teams: A four hit [...]

Urban Decay Photography

Posted by: Aadisht on: April 22, 2009

A year or two ago, this photo-essay on abandoned school buildings in Detroit was quite popular on the internet. It’s very scary and depressing, while simultaneously being very cool. Then in September or October last year I came across this forum post about half-constructed buildings in Bangkok that were never completed because the East Asian [...]

Now S Gurumurthy Channels Jagadguru

Posted by: Aadisht on: April 22, 2009

The ever-insightful S Gurumurthy writes about black money in the New Indian Express: That is, in just five years, Indian wealth amounting to Rs 6.88 lakh crore has been smuggled out of India. This gives a clue as to how much Indian money would have slipped out of India in the last 62 years, particularly [...]

Chhatisgarh, Not Vidarbha

Posted by: Aadisht on: April 22, 2009

Girish Shahane has a post up about how the Huffington Post is panicking over a mass suicide of 1500 farmers in Chhatisgarh: So, the Belfast Telegraph, which presumably has no correspondents in India, picks up a news item from who knows where, and tacks on a misleading headline. The phrase ‘mass suicide’ gives the impression [...]

The Yuppies Return

Posted by: Aadisht on: April 21, 2009

I am in grave danger of becoming as obsessed about my hippie-yuppie-lala theory as much as Skimpy is about his studs-and-fighters theory. But there’s now a new Madhavan/ Vidya Balan Airtel ad, and considering the original set of ads was one of the original inspirations for the theory, I can’t resist. Especially considering the new ad unleashes [...]

Dilli-6 and Hippie Saturation

Posted by: Aadisht on: April 19, 2009

Remember my post from last year about how there are no yuppies shown in Indian television or blockbuster movies? Any character you come across in them is either a member of a lala business family or does something quirky/ outlandish – hippie, in other words – like being a cartoonist or a supermodel or a [...]

Our Very Own Friedman

Posted by: Aadisht on: April 19, 2009

It is fascinating to read Seriously Sandeep these days. Sandeep’s use – or rather abuse – of metaphors is fast approaching Thomas Friedman levels. Like this: You need to really think from another bodily orifice to impute symmetry between the two. Another bodily orifice? Which bodily orifice do people usually think with? Is this morbid obsession [...]