Gulf! Gulf! Wolf!

Saddam has been hanged. A person who had lost his share of tid-bits on prime time is back with a bang! Imagine, a person who could barely cross the borders of his own country is now a more (in)famous imperialist than Hitler himself. The baffled Historians of the 20th century must now be digging around the WTC rubble to bury the Roosevelt-Churchill saga. And Hitler must be turning like a turbine in his grave ruing the absence of George Bush (and CNN) during WWII.

A man condemned by all, not even a popular leader, considered an oil-rich military imperialist at the most is suddenly a mascot of Muslim (ok Sunni!) pride throughout the world. However hard the US media may mock at Islam and its followers, the reality is that they exist, in huge numbers and have sufficient power to influence the world politics, even if we ignore the phenomenon of terrorism. And if the Iraq war was a disaster, Saddam's death would anyday be termed as a catastrophe in United States' attempts to make amends for all its tomfoolery in the Gulf. If the present US thinktank thinks that it can wipe out terrorism from the world, I'd say there is no 'tank' amongst the US foreign policy drivers who can 'think'! Had Saddam or Bin Laden been the leaders of terrorism, terror would have been dead by now. I liken these two to the Loch Ness monster and the Dragon respectively - They are ghoulish and powerful but they exist only as fairytale creatures.

Terrorism is an anti-social expression of a clash between huge many things. Two of these are surely the Oil capitalists and imperial suppression of the Islamic free thinking. The former is an external threat while the latter is an internal malaise of the Islamic world. Hence, if the American media paints it as a clash between the West and the Islam, it is fooling nobody except its popcorn chewing audience for whom Saddam's imperialism evokes only as much fear as a power outage during Everybody Loves Raymond.

Yes sir. Before 9/11 terrorism was just pop corn stuff for audiences in US - No more than a bunch of gun toting maniacs who could be subdued by their very own "Die Hard" Bruce Willis. As long as they had Bruce Willis there was no fear. Instead came George Bush, the senior, as the President. Saddam Hussein, for long funded by CIA and the US oil cartel in his adventures against Iran and the other oil/gas rich anti-american dispositions, suddenly discovered that he himself was the golden goose. So, rather than allowing Americans to take the golden eggs one by one, he decided tear open his own belly to take all the golden eggs - He invaded Kuwait. For West, Saddam was a perfect Trojan horse which had kept countries like Iran at bay. Suddenly, the Trojan horse had turned into a Godzilla. Hence, began the world's maximum ad-revenue generating war, the Gulf war. Godzilla was subdued.

Remember, all this while Mr. Saddam was committing all those crimes culpability for which was used to hang him today! Nobody cared to even slap him. Had justice been meted out to him then and there, he would not have died a martyr for anybody.

Anyway, for the next 8 years Mr. Clinton decided to act more sensibly and played sanction-sanction and oil-for-food with Saddam. While the world had got over Iraq and was thinking more about Y2K and the dotcom bubble, it had forgotten that the Texas ranches had more than one bush. In came the new Bush with Gulf 2000. Iraq was back on the menu. Saddam, then, was no more powerful than H.D. Deve Gowda was in Delhi, still, with US attention he got his prime time back. In the meanwhile 9/11 happened and there was something that US needed to do. For one thing, Bin Laden seemed too insignificant an enemy for CNN to keep chanting about all through the day. Bin Laden, for all his wealth and rhetoric would have seemed a stupid enemy to the US audience. US, with all its Pentagon and NASA would seem fighting a man, riding a donkey in Kabul. In Aesops' fables okay, but for Prime time CNN that would have meant hurting US pride. So, Saddam was taken out of the cupboard, dusted, bathed, brushed and made ready for his role as the most popular doll after Barbie. He was shown unsheathing swords, firing guns in the air and moving around in his military gear once again. And then started the mission impossible to locate the Biological weapons that Mr. Barbie was supposed to have stacked in his loins. Let alone biological weapons they could not even locate his loincloth - He was wearing none. So, what came off it?

Out of all this chasing a tortoise in a Ferrari, came nothing.
Note the twist in the tale: The second Gulf war started on the premise of finding and destroying biological weapons. Nothing was found. So, the correct thing would have been to tender an apology and move out. Instead, they play the drama of democratisation of Iraq and the prosecution of Saddam. One thing, no sane democracy can run in a rabid country like Iraq. They need a dictator! Second, this war was only about the "bio" weapons. Why this sudden urge to prosecute Saddam, when all this while during the past two decades, he was committing all these atrocities right under the american noses? If democracy is the real motive why not try China or Pakistan, which have more power at their disposal to harm this world?
During World War II, Roosevelt had written the script to catapult a reclusive America to the position of the world's leader, Bush has undone it all to lose for America the near-legitimacy it had to work as the unambiguous leader of all the nations. Now, even China will have the gumption to call America, a rogue country. Imagine, this is what has been done to undo the American supremacy!

This incident would go down in the history as the stupidest thing America ever did. They gained nothing and instead made a warrior out of a stupid gun-toting warlord!

Hello, my dear Americans? Where have those Harvard, Yale products gone? Is this the best your imagination can produce? Isnt it a shame that the country which has shaped one full century of the present world's fortunes, has not shown even as good an imagination in shaping its foreign policy as a Horse does in looking for grass?

Where's the fire?

Whats the scariest thing that you've ever had to go through? Unless you were in the basement of the twin towers during you-know-what and got out alive it can't get close to what I experienced a few days back. Alarms are nasty little things in the best of times. They are absolutely deplorable when they go off in the middle of the night. And fire alarms, I've come to realize, are the worst kind.

It had been a rough work week and my only plan for the weekend was to sleep right through it. So there I was snugly settled inside my blanket in deep slumber dreaming of a place where sleep did not obey the clock when something suddenly made me wake up wide eyed and gasping for breath. Somebody had just kicked me violently in the stomach, thrown a pail of ice-cold water, smacked me on the face and then let off this horrible scream that makes every hair on your body stand at end. Atleast thats what my hibernating body told me. Ofcourse none of that had actually happened but I woke up in a fit half expecting to find a werewolf bending over me. Instead there was just an incredibly loud, shrill and repeating noise that was drilling holes in my ear.

My first instinct was to settle it once and for all with my alarm clock. It was one thing waking me up daily at seven and another to go off in the middle of the night on a weekend. I decided I had let this go long enough and turned my wrath on that little monster on the table. A few tonks, jerks and taps against the wall and I was no closer to silence. My ears seemed to suggest that the offending noise came from elsewhere. I put down the clock making a note to take up the issue at a later date. After much plodding around it dawned on me that it was the fire alarm that was the real culprit. I've been through a few fire drills in my time but the real thing is a little different. For one, the noise is a few bels louder. Secondly, real fires flare up when you least expect them to. And then you dont have floor managers in funny hats telling you what to do.

As you might expect, I wasn't in peak form when I reacted to this stimulus. A few seconds were spent in studying the contours of the device and the joy I would get in blowing it to smithereens. Then I wondered about the chances of this being a false alarm. When satisfied that the threat was real I made a mental checklist of stuff that I didn't want going up in flames . Thats when this wave of self-doubt hit me. Had I accidentally set this off? Maybe there was still some popcorn left in the oven. What if the bulb I leave on in the bathroom had burnt down? Or maybe my hairgel just exploded. That is possible. The security guy at the airport told me so. Needless to say I wanted to investigate this angle without waking up the entire hotel. Back to the fire alarm I went. To my dismay, the device didnt have so much as a snooze button on it.The noise was now deafening and I had to get out. So I gingerly stepped out of my room prepared to face the music.

To my surprise and eventual pride I was among the first few to get safely outdoors. I was greeted outside by an oriental gentleman with his fingers half-way in his ears. I took up my position behind a lamp-post where I could observe without being observed. I looked back at the hotel building expecting to find an inferno. It was a sore disappointment. When you are made to stand out on the sidewalk in your boxers on a winter night you want to see some fireworks. It keeps you warm. But everything seemed to be nice and peaceful. Soon more sleepy, tired and disgruntled people stepped out. It dawned on me that it'd taken them that long for they too had checked their ovens and ash-trays before they ventured out. This gave me some confidence and I stepped out from behind the post and joined in the conversation, the contents of which cannot be published here for obvious reasons. Then the fancy pants arrived with flashing lights. The cop was quickly followed by the firemen. Somebody switched on some hip-hop music and soon we had a disco going, lights and all. After about an hour's deliberation they gave us the 'all clear'. It had been a false alarm. Thats what they call a fire drill in the night I suppose.

I am better prepared for such eventualities now. I've not only hung all spare blankets around the alarm, I also keep a sledge hammer by my bedside. Next time it makes a noise I'll let it know who's the boss. But it seems to have had a curiious side effect - my alarm clock's gone all silent for some reason!

A Royal Pain

Yesterday I saw the movie of the year, CantSeeNomore Royale. MGM brought home Bollywood for me in Connecticut. For once, Hollywood has a hero who prances around like a shirtless Salman Khan and looks like the handsome Tushar Kapoor, all at the same time! I have never been a big fan of these Ian Fleming flicks but during childhood two things used to draw me to these 007 features; first, its title music, dhan dhan tadaaan and second, its whacky gadgets. Two things, again, are pretty much obvious - I am no more a child and that Mr. Bond had a guilty feeling about being a child’s fantasy. Hence, in an era of evolution, global warming and disasters, a chocolate faced Brosnan has given way to a constipated-cockroach lookalike, Daniel Craig. Oh yes, Mr Craig has a nice body but coming near the long weekend his sinews reminded me more of the thanksgiving turkey, skinned and roasted (in the Bahamas sun, if it pleases you).

This is my first blog on a movie and I want it to be scathing. Not for nothing would I want to spend $19.50 and come out of theatre having sensed a déjà vu of having undergone the Torn-chair-naked-sitting-sling-hitting torture that Mr. Bond had to go through at the hands of an eye-bleeding-banker cum gambler cum idiot! Leave that out and you'll hear me talk about what I saw.

This Bond has no gadgets, although he does perform a self invasive cardiac surgery in the loo break that he gets while playing cards and returns to say: “That thing nearly killed me”. Sorry MGM, I plagiarized that dialogue in front of my wife when I came out of the theatre. Sue me!

This Bond too romances girls; only that the so called “Breathtaking beauties” in this flick could as well have been picked up from the Ms. Nalasopara contestants at Chinchpokli, Mumbai. Moreover, in the scene where Eva Green walks in that “breathtaking” gown into the Poker room, I had a hallucination of having seen the director pay $100 bills to the sidekicks in the room for every stare that they were forced to give at her, in erotic “admiration”. The “Oomph” lady slithers around like a 60 year old python (I don’t know if pythons live that long) and plants a million dollar kiss on Mr. Bond while Mr. Villain cries blood tears and I have a strong urge to puke on the empty seat before me.

Now, the plot: In an era of a security conscious world, terrorist leaders zip from Uganda to Miami to Montenegro to Timbuktu to Teliarganj carrying 7 feet long swords, with seamless ease. Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair, you should know why 9/11 occurred. CIA and MI6 agents were busy playing poker while all terrorists banged planes into buildings or trucks into planes. Never again laugh at Indian intelligence agencies. At least, we have stopped calling them “Intelligence” services since we introduced reservations to decide who should play what poker with the country’s security – We call them RAW, pun unintended, for your information. Let’s go back to the movie. This movie seems to be part of some epic. It’s like watching B.R. Chopra’s Mahabharat, where the director assumes you already know who Ghatotkatch is. The villains in this movie seem to be part of some story which was going beyond and before this movie. They keep giving you knowing looks and make you feel ashamed of not knowing what they are doing in this plot. I had this gut feeling that at the end of the movie instead of the credits, the director will flash a message, “Tell me what this movie was all about and win a 2 day 2 night trip to Bahamas with a special bonanza: The all naked Chair Torture”! How disappointing! Mr. Bond's Nokia 3310 was able to locate Mr. White. The names Baaand, James Baand!

And all this while I thought that only Karan Johar made pathetic movies!

I think the last time I had an urge to write a movie review was when I watched an 8 month pregnant Preity Zinta do a Nadia Comaneci in Salaam Namaste. That her baby, or whatever animal or football that she was carrying inside, did not fall out was a wonder that gave me nightmares for weeks. Atleast, I'll forget most about Casino Royale after this blog. As regards Salaam Namaste, please find me the director. I still want to commit murder - my first non-blog full-fledged movie review.

PANCH% Tantra

Once upon a bad time there was an infamous Rakshasa, Brahmanasur. He and his ilk were a torment to the foremost tribes of those times, the DULLits. The famous dark lord Brahma, you know who, had bequeathed on him the deadliest of all weapons, Brain. Brahmanasur used to unleash numerous Brainstorms to entice the DULLits to commit the lowliest of all sins, Think. Thinking and working hard were acts of sacrilege among the DULLits, as it used to unDULL their characters.

So, the DULLits got together and prayed fervently to their god, DUMBedkar. DUMBedkar appeared before his devotees in his divine form - The lower part of his body had 69% reservation, hence, his bodily appearance was highly awe invoking and spiritual. He carried no Brain as the Rakshasa did. He was 21% hands, 1% face and 9% bald. All in all, he added up to 100% god - the personification of Social Justice in its purest form. Apart from that he was much like the gods of yore - he had a weapon, PERCENTAGE and he rode a tiger (Singh). The name of the Singh was Arjun. Only blip was that this tiger was a bit old, walked with a stick and wore glasses.

Anyway, on hearing the plight of his devotees, DUMBedkar decided to take his second Avtaar. To start with, he drew inspiration from Lord Voldemort and spread himself across the country in the form of Horcruxes (Horcruxes are divine portions of one's soul distributed in different forms). These horcruxes appeared in the form of DUMBedkar statues on almost all road crossings, parliament buildings, slum dwellings, sulabh shauchalayas and other such locations of strategic importance. It was a ploy to keep an eye on what the Rakshasa and his ilk did.

Arjun transformed himself into a minister in the government of the day and unleashed PERCENTAGE on the Rakshasas. 23%, 27%, 50%, 69%, 80% started to rain upon the cruel Rakshasas. Rakshasas invoked their potent satan lady, Merit. But Arjun pounced upon Merit and tore her to pieces. Hah! Merit never knew that even an old emaciated tiger could be more than a match to her.

Rakshasas ran helter skelter and tried to hide. DUMBedkar then blew his conch and chanted the following potent shlokas one after the other-

"You can run but you cannot hide!"
"I'll be back!"
"Somebody somewhere is made for you"
"Its all about loving your parents"
"Daag- The Fire"
"Indian- The love story of a spy"

One after the other the Rakshasas began to fall. All their fortIITs were captured and destroyed. Yet, a few cruel Rakshasas managed to escape to the land of devilry, PATAALamerica. The land of the DULLits was finally cleansed of all Brahmanasurs and other such Rakshasas. DULLits were pleased and overjoyed.

DUMBedkar felt content and relaxed. Infact, one of his horcruxes (statues) in Kanpur heaved such a sigh of relief that its head fell off.

The DULLits then celebrated the purification of their land by coming out on the streets. They made a huge bonfire of public transport buses, shops and public property. And then, they threw stones (they considered plucking and throwing flowers as environmental crime) to pay obeisance to their Lord of the lords - DUMBedkar. And last, but not the least, Arjun Singh straightened his tail, smiled broadly and roared - MEOW!

A Plan

The recent violence in Mumbai and other areas in protest of the desecration of an Ambedkar statue got me thinking on the issue. It seems odd that Babasaheb is the target of all vandals in the country. Ofcourse there are the odd freaks who go after non-entities like Thackeray's dead wife but more often than not it is the scholarly bloke with a book stuffed under his armpit who is pigeoned upon. So much so that newspapers can save on newsprint by just saying "Statue desecrated" and we'd know the rest. Looking at recent trends maybe we can even have a cricket-like scoring sheet for such events. It could go "Statue desecrated 25-200-30-50" to be read as 'Statue desecrated. Twenty five dead, two hundred injured, thirty vehicles stoned and fifty torched". It must be really boring being a reporter and having to write the same stuff over and over again.

Coming back to the issue, I began my analysis of the problem by delving into the roots. Firstly, I wanted to know why Ambedkar was so unpopular among the masses. Strangely, being the father of the infamous reservation system only makes him honourable in our country. He does pop up very frequently in school text books and board exams but that only infuriates the educated. Since awareness is not one of our countrymen's strengths I concluded that his image is not his problem. There must be something in the statues themselves that triggers trouble. Sure, those hollow spectacles are extremely tempting but if that was the problem why don't we see the Mahatma or Bose being vandalized? Actually that points us to the answer.

There aren't too many Gandhi and Bose statues around. You'd probably need a guide to find them. Ambedkar memorabilia on the other hand are everywhere. Every slum, junction, park has one. There are simply too many of them standing around waiting to be meddled with. If an orinary citizen had a sudden urge to pee on a statue, chances are high that he'd be wetting Ambedkar's shoes. It's simply a matter of availability and hence probability. Sounds improbable, but it has to be true. As Holmes says, once we remove the impossible what remains, however improbable, has to be the truth.

Now that we have our root cause identified, we only have to find a solution for it. Before I get to the long term solution, there are a couple of things we need to fix quickly. Firstly, we need to make our buses fire-proof and stone-proof. Atleast five local buses burn everytime a group of ten or more disturbed individuals get together. While that may be a reassuring statistic for manufacturers, to us tax payers it is absolutely apalling. Maybe buses could be bulit out of materials that stink like a skunk as they burn or some similar variant could be employed. Secondly, stones should not be left lying on roads. All those reports on stone pelting left me wondering where all the stones came from. We're talking about riots in cities and not on the lunar surface. Its time corporations got their act together and rid the streets of these potential projectiles.

As for a long term strategy, we have many options. We could have more Gandhi statues installed in every city. But then we'd run the risk of increased satyagrahas and dharnas. Another option would be to build a protective mesh around Ambedkar statues but that would make him look like a jailbird. He might deserve it for what he has started off but something tells me that it won't be terribly popular. So my proposal is this - let us collect all his statues from around the country and dump them in the Indian ocean. That will definitely put an end to the descration saga. With any luck, we'll see the pied piper effect with many of his devotees taking to the water after him. The downside to it is that the level of the ocean might rise by a few inches (we are talking about all Ambedkar statues here) but necessary adjustments can be made. The resulting space in public areas could be taken up by busts of lesser known people like freedom fighters, martyrs and men of wisdom. Sounds like a plan, doesnt it?

The Beginning of beginning!

21286875616473 years ago, Blopduplop (‘Earth’ as we know it today) was like a ball of water. Humans had not named it thus. First, there was no such thing as Land then. Second, there was only water. And third, you know how difficult it is for humans to speak under water. It was actually done by a group of renegade Grrrbowow planet inhabitants who happened to stop by the solar system during one of their drunken drives through the intergalactical highway, G-63. It would not require einsteinish intuition to guess that the highways then were no better than they do exist in Arizona today – right, it was difficult to find a rest area for millions of light years and more so, it was not at all safe to pee by the roadside (or the empty space, in this case). Oh no, not because of fear of any highway police but because of a phenomenon of nuclear fission in empty space which converted uric acid to highly fissile Plutonium-235, ensuring that the one who did it never did it again (!) – The most ancient scientific phenomenon known to the Universe’s creatures which ensures that even today our astronauts do not take liquid food when they are out there!
So there it was; the Grrrbowowscions stopped by a huge big asteroid and eased up on its surface. While they eased themselves, they whiled their time by throwing pebbles (meteorites) on a nearby planetary water body – the first pebble touched the surface of water and drowned with the sound - Blop…. Dup…. lop! And hence, they called the water body as even our forefathers never knew - Blopduplop! That was the first time any alien creature had put eyes upon Earth – A historic event that had since gone unrecorded!
Actually, one of the reasons this name wasn’t recorded in the annals of history was because it didn’t last long enough. While the GBWscions were at it, the asteroid lost its balance and plunged through the atmosphere of the Blopduplop with a shattering sound and splashed into the ocean – ERRRRRR……THHHHHHHHHHHHH! The creatures of Blopduplop had never heard a sound like that in the placid waters that surrounded them. For them, this accident was an audible as well as a historical revelation. They identified that asteroid with the sound it made – ERRRTHHH, which was later abridged and edited to EARTH to include the “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” which the GBWscions had shreaked while falling through the atmosphere and losing their memory, in that devastating accident. Yes, the GBWscions had lost their memory. They had forgotten almost everything about themselves and even the name that they had given to this planet minutes ago – Blopduplop. When the Blopduplop(not relevant any more)ians came up and asked the GBWscions who they were, they tucked their tails behind and said – Grrrr…. Bow… Wow!!! Hence, began the story of the GBWscions on the planet earth. The water inhabitants came to inhabit the Asteroid (‘Land’, as we call it now) and treated the GBWscions with great love and patronage. But unfortunately, they could not bring their memory back.

The GBWscions are still amongst us. They still run around roads and streets and highways (not intergalactical anymore) and look for fire hydrants and electric poles to do what their forefathers had done before landing upon Earth – as a token of respect to them. And even now when you go near them, they duck down and proudly tell you about the planet of their origin – Grrrr…. Bow… Wow! Present day humans know them by their various names on this planet – Dogs, canines, Scooby Doo etc.