Drawing on Jerry Rao’s funda of Kipling and Rushdie having a Vaishnavite and Saivite view of India, I think it is good and worthwhile to apply this concept across the board. Especially to governance.
Tandava and the Open Society
October 29, 2007
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I Want to be a Young Man in Spats
October 25, 2007Skimpy claims that monsoonal rains follow the Gregorian solar calendar, while post-monsoonal autumn showers follow the Hindu lunar calendar. Thus, there is always rainfall at the time of Dasara, whenever that might be, while the monsoons always show up in June. Every three years, when the leap month is added to bring the lunar year back into sync with the solar year, this manifests itself as a longer and dryer summer.
The reason I bring this up is that due to the Dasara rains, my trousers have been spattered with mud even before I reached office. As is usual after 10 millimetres of rainfall, Magrath Road is now a dirt track, and the traffic passing over it has left my lower right trouser leg looking like a Jackson Pollock painting – if Jackson Pollock would have used brown.
For a banker of repute, having such indignities visited upon his trousers is intolerable. One cannot convince customers of the virtues of zero-cost options unless one’s trousers are spotless, starched, and straight. The cry goes out: what to do, what to do?
Fortunately, we do not need to come up with new solutions that will impose heavy research and testing costs. The answer lies in our past, and we can reach back and grab it. Ladies and gentlemen: spats.
As the Master wrote:
Spatterdashes was, I believe, their full name, and they were made of white cloth and buttoned round the ankles, partly no doubt to protect the socks from getting dashed with spatter but principally because they lent a sort of gay diablerie to the wearer’s appearance. (link
Remarkable, no? My trousers are protected from spatter, my appearance borrows a gay diablerie, and best of all, I promote Edwardian values:
This is pointed out to me every time a new book of mine dealing with the Drones Club of Jeeves and Bertie is published in England. “Edwardian!” the critics hiss at me. (It is not easy to hiss the word Edwardian, containing as it does no sibilant, but they manage it.)
I will now rant about the importance of Edwardian values.
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Congratulations, Amit
October 25, 2007Amit Varma has won the Bastiat prize.
Joyous as this is, I can’t help but wonder if and when someone will come up with a Miss World-style conspiracy theory that an Indian has won only to promote a neoliberal agenda in India.
(The original conspiracy theory was that Indian beauty queens were winning Miss World and Miss Universe titles only because cosmetics companies were trying to push sales in the Indian market. If there’s a country which liberalised cosmetics imports and retail at the same time as India, but didn’t win any beauty pageants, this could actually be tested.)
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The Loins of Punjab
October 22, 2007A government study has discovered that Punjab has the most obese women in India.
I, of course, had blogged about this more than four years ago, in what was the first instance of the phrase ‘two number aloo parathas’ making it to the web:
The average Punjabi believes that the full-fledged, genuine Punjabi peasant girl is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. In this matter I find myself in disagreement with the average Punjabi. The full-fledged, genuine Punjabi peasant girl, after a lifetime of tucking into “two numbers aloo paranthas” and very often even more for breakfast, is the possessor of several cubic metres of backside, and usually has more facial hair than the average Punjabi peasant boy.
Rediff link via BRacket from Chan Da Man. Oh, and all posts from March 2003 are now on WordPress.
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There Ain’t No Such Thing as Free Beer
October 16, 2007You pay for it on the treadmill.
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शिव सेना की agency ले रखी
October 14, 2007Kodhi sends forward not one, but two unmitigated links.
First, the evolution of M&Ms using artificial selection.
Second, an mp3 of a Goregaon-types woman talking to a Goregaon-types guy and contemplating breakup. Please note that it is Not Safe For Work, and it is also in Indhi.
(Some people will point out that the mp3 is about people from Kandivili and not Goregaon. But a Goregaon-type is anyone from Maharashtra who is not from South Bombay.)
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Enhancement
October 13, 2007I have been informed by The Only Authority That Matters that I have a (most) kissworthy mouth.
It is always good to have a kissworthy anything. If it is a mouth, so much the better. However, to put forth a Ronald Bailey-esque full disclosure, I must confess that this is not my original mouth.
From 2000 to 2003, my mouth was under the care and supervision of one Dr. Jaina of Connaught Place. Dr Jaina (who was also my father’s orthodontist) took X-rays, locally anaesthetised my mouth, made casts of my mouth, and finally fitted braces to it with dental glue (which I still maintain is the most awesome psychotropic substance in the world). The net effect of all this was that over the next three years, the gap in my teeth was closed off, my chin was pulled in, and my mouth contracted.
Now, uptil now, my only reaction to all this orthodontistry was to complain about how Dr. Jaina had deprived me of my family heritage by pulling my chin back. The family chin is truly prodigious. It juts out from our faces like India into the Indian Ocean, or Utility Building into the Bangalore skyline. This is especially useful when we have to stick our chins out stubbornly (and stubbornness pretty much runs in the family).
So having the chin pulled back and curtailed from its original magnificence was a source of much annoyance. Especially because Bhavya used to keep bragging about his own, untouched chin. Tragic, I tell you. Tragic.
But anyway. I went off, and forgot all about my brief spell with braces until the topic of my kissworthy mouth was raised. Now, this has raised ethical and moral questions. To wit, can my mouth be considered kissworthy considering it is not in its original and pristine state, but has been modified with modern technology? Is it even a real mouth?
The deepest and most haunting question of all, of course, is this: am I now to mouths what Pamela Anderson is to breasts?
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The Yellow Peril
September 15, 2007Bwahahahaha. This is brilliant:
Link via Popagandhi.
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I Am Tam
September 14, 2007It’s official. My loyal readers no longer make any distinction between me and other Tam stalwarts like Chandru, Chenthil, Anti, or Ammani.
Forward the New Chozha Empire!
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Reckless Stereotyping
September 13, 2007Marwaris become wholesale traders. Of steel. Or generic pharmaceuticals or cement or pretty much any commodity. Send their kids to a local Maadoo school and then a local Maadoo B. Com. college. The sons join the family business. The daughters are married off. The family’s black money goes as dowry and becomes an unsecured loan to the son-in-law’s family business. Which also trades the same commodity.
Punjabis set up garment export units. Send the sons to do a BBA in Australia. Send the daughters to NIFT. Both come back and run the family business. Then the daughter gets married and sets up her own business with her sister-in-law. The daughter’s family provides more seed capital than the sister-in-law’s.
So it goes.
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