Lobby The Jurors Now

February 3, 2007

I’ve nominated Popagandhi for Indiblog of the Year.

Yes, Indiblog of the Year is hardly a huge honour for someone who’s nominated for Best Asian Blog at the Bloggies. Yes, she is Chinese by ethnicity and Singaporean by nationality. And she does not live in India. On the other hand, she’s more Indian than most Indians, and writes better about traveling in India than most Indians I’ve seen.

If she is not nominated to the final list, I will take it as proof of the disgusting racist and homophobic mentality of the jurors. And their hypocrisy too. After all they are the ones who complain on their blogs about Indians being racist and hostile to representation.

It is in your power to prevent this happening. Lobby the jurors and demand that they vote for Popagandhi. Mail Confused and Shivam and ask them if they are ready to put their ballot where their blogposts are. Threaten to burn Patrix’s effigy if he does not push Popagandhi up the lists. Or if you want to go Gandhigiri style and send Neha roses, you can do that too. The important point is that Popagandhi wins.

For great justice!

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Posted by Aadisht

Merit Is A Dirty Word

February 3, 2007

My employer has a ‘Diversity and Inclusion Programme’ underway right now in all the countries it operates in. So now there are new D&I newsletters hitting our inboxen and springing up on the intranet.

The interesting thing is that in other countries, affirmative action is demanded in the name of merit. In the Gulf countries, for example, female employees demand merit-based selection because they’re as good as the men, and it’s social discrimination which prevents their selection to higher posts, or indeed at all.

India seems to be the only place where merit-based selection is seen as anatagonistic to diversity.

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Posted by Aadisht

Chicken and Egg

February 3, 2007

Why Indians shop daily instead of going to a supermarket or hypermarket every weekend and stocking up American style:

  1. They’re used to it
  2. Not enough people have cars with which to lug back one week’s worth of provisions
  3. Everyone has domestic servants who they can send shopping at a minutes notice

What this leads to:

  1. Small pack sizes. The biggest pack of milk and juice is a litre.
  2. Arising out of point 1, there’s not much demand for really big refrigerators. If you’re only storing a day’s worth of milk, you don’t need a 500 litre monster.

This is annoying for me, because shopping on weekdays cuts into time which I’d rather spend at the gym or blogging or studying Chinese or whatnot. But because of the consumer behaviour of the rest of the Indian middle class, I can’t buy a five litre milk carton or juice carton which would last me the week. Bah.

Actually, even if they were available, I couldn’t fit them in my refrigerator. That, however, is because me and my flatmate were too cheap to spring for a decent refrigerator, not because of the middle class at large.

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Posted by Aadisht

We Need More Jokes About Bodily Fluids

February 2, 2007

Q) What did the sperm bank buy when they wanted more stylish equipment?

Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by Aadisht

Blogging From a Moving Vehicle (Again)

January 31, 2007

Except this time, the vehicle in question is a cruise ship. Joy.

Details to follow.

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Posted by Aadisht

Managing Contradictions

January 28, 2007

If there is one thing that has to be said for Indian Communists, it is this: they know how to deal with internal contradictions that would make other peoples’ heads explode.

I’m not taking about ‘privatization is good for Bengal but not for India’. That’s just administration, and is hardly important. Contradictions in that hardly make a difference. No, I’m talking about the important stuff. Ideological contradictions.

Do you remember the APJ Abdul Kalam election? The Communists had opposed Kalam at that time, saying that it would be a bad idea diplomatically to have a President who had run India’s nucear program. Then, with stunning irony-deficiency, they put up their own candidate: Captain Lakshmi Sahgal, formerly of the Indian National Army, a guerilla group which had fought against the British Indian Army alongside the Japanese Army during World War II- which was legally treason and effectively terrorism. Chew on how that would go down diplomatically.

But the stunner is not just in the irony deficiency. It’s that the Communists, who normally shag over China and all its doings, and plea for China to be given a special status are hand-in-glove with the remnants of the All-India Forward Bloc, the remnants of the Indian National Army- the ally of the Japanese army which conducted the Rape of Nanjing, used the Chinese as slaves, and conducted human rights abuses which make the Gujrat riots look like a pleasant day trip. So much so that the Chinese are still using them to whip up nationalistic fervour.

In a rational world, you’d expect the Indian Communists to be at least embarassed about the association with the AIFB. But no, they’ve had them in the Left Front coalition for years now. You have to applaud the way they deal with contradictions.

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Posted by Aadisht

Racial Stereotyping

January 28, 2007

My laptop has a slight problem with the ‘L’ key on the keyboard. For some reason, you have to hit it very precisely to get it to register. My typing style is such that I don’t always do it, which is a problem when it comes to typing ‘also’. It always comes out ‘aso’.

Maybe it was designed in Singapore.

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Posted by Aadisht

HLL is an Evil Corporation

January 27, 2007

I always knew HLL was evil, but I didn’t realise the scale and magnitude until this week. Their assault on dark skin with Fair and Lovely always attracted attention, but a much greater sin has passed out of the spotlight for years now. There is not a single variant of Bru that is not blended with chicory.

The shock! The horror! The utter desecration of the legacy of Baba Budan! For the past fifty years, HLL has been poisoning coffee with this filth! And supposedly this is to drive costs down so that the middle class can afford it. Bullshit. This is just a naked attempt by an irresponsible corporation to market adulterated beverages to the poor. If they truly cared about the middle class they would sell 100% coffee at low cost. It’s their social responsibility after all.

I think we need to file a PIL against HLL. Or anyone else who adulterates coffee with chicory. If the Supreme Court throws it out, we shall follow in the footsteps of theothernilu and burn effigies.

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Posted by Aadisht

Coffee is Like Working Capital

January 27, 2007

You get working capital from an external source like a bank or a moneylender. The external source gives you cash to buy raw materials and process them now. In the future, you sell finishhed goods and return the original cash along with interest.

Coffee works the same way. It gives you wakefulness immediately so that you can do whatever you have to do. Once it wears off, you sleep for all the time you stayed awake instead, plus a little bit extra (which represents the interest).

Not only that, both also keep you running on a daily basis, and are essential to the continuing existence of civilization as we know it.

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Posted by Aadisht

How to be 133t

January 26, 2007

I am in a taxi on the Pune-Mumbai Expressway.

Amit Varma is sitting in the front seat.

And I am blogging and he isn’t.

Bwahahahahahhahaahaha, as Booster Gold would say.

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Posted by Aadisht

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