The Necessary Evil - Celebs Gone Wild

Hi there, I have recently taken a liking for VH1, it’s a cool channel, great music and some cool entertainment shows. It’s just like the Entertainment page of Bombay Times in action. I recently enjoyed watching this show called ‘Young, Hot Hollywood’. It was a complete entertainer, packed with all the antics of young media created American celebrities like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Lindsay Lohan and the likes. The above brigade also have their British counterparts – the WAGS – Wives and Girlfriends of English Footballers (Victoria Beckham leads the pack here), who lead similar lifestyles. The paparazzi would go bankrupt without them. Or maybe the other way round. Methinks this is a chicken-and-egg problem. But never mind that. The show had a liberal sprinkling of the spending sprees each one of these dumb (or extremely smart) people goes on, the dating games they play and most importantly, the money they earn. These people are filthy rich and they earn big bucks. No wonder their spending is proportionate to their earning! I used to think that a whole bunch of them were blowing up their parents’ fortunes (Not Britney Spears though.). Oh! So ignorant about the celebrity culture! Inaugurations, product launches, and disco appearances – everything fetches them big bucks. Add to it their respective designer lines! COOL! So what if you end up on the wrong side of the law every other week. Jail time is a part of life man!

Tragically, these people are emulated the world over and have youth all over the North America, Western Europe and now certain parts of Asia, including India trying to live like them. (No matter if their exorbitant annual expenditure considerably exceeds their annual income!) As more and more people have large incomes, the spending on luxury brands increases. Just click here to see what companies are doing in India. Luxury product companies must be having the time of their lives if sales of designer clothing, accessories, cars, etc. are currently on an upward spiral. This explains to a certain extent the rise in the number of people willing to pursue a MBA in Luxury Brand Management. Big business man!Even though ‘Young, Hot Hollywood’ is important for driving the growth of Luxury brand companies, with the companies themselves admitting their importance, we cannot afford to get obsessed about them, nor give them more importance or print space than necessary. (I’m giving them extra cyber space though!) Trying to live like them is foolhardiness, a definite no-no.

A whole lot of us need to remember that they are spending the money they earn and are not running up hefty debts. None of them has bad credit. No matter how much extra publicity or popularity Paris Hilton earned from her jail term,

Cars + alcohol = Disaster.

Cars + Drugs = Doomsday

The Hilton girl and her comrades have either a rich and famous family or huge fortunes to fall back on. Everyone else doesn’t.

See the original photo here.

Brilliance Personified – Long Live Ekta Kapoor!

A recent conversation with Mom was around the storylines of our Queen of Soap Operas - Ekta Kapoor’s daily shows. I was disgusted at the pairing of Prachi Desai with Ram Kapoor in Kasamh Se. (I don’t watch the shows; get my updates from Mumbai Mirror, Anil Thakraney’s Ouch Potato!). I was wondering about the logic behind creating pairs that have almost a generation gap between themselves! Add to it the plots that can land you an appointment with the psychiatrist. Mom replied, “Throughout her teenage years, she must have been a couch potato, having nothing other to do then watch English soap operas. Later she must have got the idea about adapting those stories in to the Indian context and making daily shows. Thanks to her Dad, she had all the requisite resources available. Now, that explains all the nonsense being broad casted.” On hearing this, I realized for the first time that the stories were actually closer to American and European lives than Indian. Where do you see a person being married twice or thrice? We are deteriorating though! Now this set me of thinking and here is what followed. For quite some time I’ve been wondering what was the finale of a soap opera, Celeste, that used to be aired on Zee TV a long time ago, maybe a decade. It’s quite weird but I used to watch it with Mom and the Zee guys pulled it off abruptly. I never knew the show ended till me Googled it (Yes I did. Morbid curiosity) and found the synopsis on IMDB.com! I even found out that it had a 2^nd season named, "Celeste, siempre Celeste". This is a Spanish soap opera from Argentina. While reading the synopses, I found out, that together, the 2 shows had an uncanny similarity with almost all of Ekta Kapoor’s soaps. They had all the ingredients of run-of-the-mill ‘family’ shows, littered with a generous dose of an extra-marital affairs, infidelity, unknown parentage, secret offspring, wayward son, childless daughter, amnesia, inheritance and property disputes, extra marital pregnancies and parental objection to lovers… You name it, you got it!

I was earlier an avid viewer of Kyunki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi and Kasautii Zindagii Kay. I stopped watching after the first generation ages ago. To a certain limit, the shows were alright for pass time viewing but later the depression factor started mounting up and I gave up on them for good. For quite some time, I used to agree with a huge bunch of journalists and feminists that Ekta’s shows were retrograde and portrayed women in a bad light. After I read the stories of Celeste, Dynasty, another English soap opera, and the likes, I realized that Ekta’s shows were not retrograde but European and American. It was at that point that I was convinced that Madam Ekta is brilliant. An astute business woman, who managed to mould European lifestyles into an Indian setup and has captivated audiences of all ages by making them relate to the anguish of the protagonists, whom they readily connect with ( coz a lot of people love to make up problems in their heads which have nothing to do with reality). Add to it the sheer extravagance of the sets which show royally furnished homes, which undoubtedly, a huge number of us might fantasize to live in, packed with grand celebrations of everything from marriages to festivals. We have a cocktail that most Indians would die for! Year after year, Ekta’s Balaji Telefilms, the Grand Indian Soap Opera Factory, continues to dish out show after show from its established assembly line. But to her credit, she has managed to revolutionize the Indian television industry. The Empire she has created is something most of us can only dream of. I truly admire her for the excellent business model she developed and continues to improve on it. She was even listed amongst the TIME magazine’s WORLD BEATERS. She truly is one. To quote the lady herself, “A company that makes millionaires is a better company than a company that makes millions”- Koffee with Karan, Star One. No wonder all her actors and actresses are her staunch loyalists. Guess what, according to the article, Making the most of India's soft power, By Shashi Tharoor the shows are even popular in places like Turkey, Afghanistan, Nepal and Pakistan! Look at what the Pakistanis are saying themselves, "All our top-ranking serials are inspired by Ekta Kapoor.!" The Lady is even planning to make shows for the American audiences! Way to go Ekta!

But no matter, how popular her shows are I don’t watch them. Even Madam Kapoor herself says,"(If you) Don't like them (her shows), don't watch them." They are just too depressing and repetitive. I do not agree with her overtly aggressive business ways too, consider the alleged rigging of the final result of Prachi Desai winning on Jhalak Dikhla Jaa and further more the harsh shooting schedules for her shows. Furthermore, actor Pankaj Kapur has once said in an interview that the television industry no longer wants good actors, just good-looking people! Methinks he was referring to the 'K' serials as all of them have the hottest young people in town. Just look at Aamna Shariff – Femina’s 50 Most Beautiful Women! But for now, I’ll keep all that aside. Ekta will remain an eternal favourite of mine. One of the most fantastic Women Entrepreneurs of all time! What do you think? Let me know. Tata!

See original photo here.

Cementing Death

Hello! Want to know the cheapest prescription for rodent death? Simply mix small amounts of sugar, cement and maize flour and place them at suspected rat burrows. It is believed that after rats eat this mixture and drink water subsequent to eating it, they die. The cement hardens in their stomach causing death! Believe it or not, this practice is followed in many Indian villages. Another one of the marvels of Indigenous Knowledge Technologies of India!

Letter to Arjun Singh

Dear Mr. Arjun Singh,

Ever since the Five-year plans came to be used as a guideline to channelize our nation development endeavors, every plan has been treated as just another tome, left to gather dust, with no comprehensive efforts to ensure that the recommendations of the Plan be implemented. Instead what you politicians do is to play along with centuries old problems by aggravating them and not solving them to ensure that you can hold on to your vote banks and have sufficient irrelevant topics for your election campaign speeches. I don’t know what it takes to get you people to realize that proper development efforts in the right sector will help you garner more votes than anything else as the effects of such efforts have a far more widespread impact than anything else. As in your position as the Human Resource Development Minister, you seem to be highly devoted and overtly enthusiastic about projecting yourself as the messiah for the upliftment of the underdeveloped masses of our country. Since you have chosen education as the tool for social upliftment, let me remind you of the education-related monitorable targets of the current five-year plan (2002-03 to 2006-07):

Ø All children in school by 2003; all children to complete 5 years of schooling by 2007

Ø Reduction in gender gaps in literacy and wage rates by at least 50 per cent by 2007

Ø Increase in literacy rate to 75 per cent within the Tenth Plan period

We all know that India is nowhere close to achieving these targets by the end of year 2007. In the face of your recent proposal to introduce 27 per cent reservation for the other backward classes for so called social development, I ask you the following questions:

Ø How about spending the Rs. 8000 crore for accelerating the efforts of the government (if any) in the achievement of these targets?

Ø Is it an unwritten rule that every Five Year Plan has to be a failure?

Ø Are Planning Commission and its formulated five-year development plans only a farce?

Let me tell you that India’s development targets in the tenth five-year plan are far more ambitious than the Millennium Development Programme of the UN Development Programme. It is high time that we (government and the people of India) take our Plans seriously and work towards making them a grand success so as to ensure the enhancement of the standard of living of the Indian people. The Human Development Index rank of India is 126 on the Human Development Report, 2007. 177 nations were surveyed in all. Shouldn't we be aiming for a more respectable position, as even nations like Saint Lucia, Namibia, Vietnam, Cape Verde, Guyana and even the Occupied Palestinian Territories have better ranks? As a proud citizen of India, who had the privilege of having great scholars like Dr. Abdul Kalam and Dr. ManMohan Singh as President and Prime Minister of my nation respectively, I hope that you will resort to real knowledge based development programmes at the grass root levels to ensure social justice and development and understand the fallacies of the hike in reservation which won’t lead to any major social gain.

Yours truly,

N. Hule

(A CITIZEN WHO BELONGS TO AN OBC CASTE BUT REFUSES TO USE THE RESERVATION FACILITY AS I HAVE A DOCTOR FOR A FATHER AND A LAWYER FOR MOTHER. I WOULD NEVER LIKE MYSELF TO BE CALLED BACKWARD IN ANY MANNER.)

Hindutva in India

As a person who been brought up in a Hindu family and more importantly in India that has a predominant Hindu population, I seriously wonder whether there are any true Hindus in this country.The incidents such as the ones mentioned below force me to think in this manner.v . An estimated 5-lakh female fetuses destroyed every year to avoid the ‘brunt’ of a daughter’s upbringing. That means 10 lakh people (5 lakh mothers and 5 lakh fathers) Hindu or otherwise do not follow any religion. This figure stands for one year and has been and is multiplying with each passing year. I shudder to think how many sinners this country has to sustain for the crime of female infanticide and foeticide. Add to this number the unscrupulous gynecologists executing these crimes. Diabolic. All of them.

“ A person who silently suffers from injustice is a bigger sinner than the one who inflicts injustice” – Bhagvad Gita. Yet we come across countless women who unflinchingly suffer from domestic abuse at the hands of their husbands for years, decades. Why do they do so? Just to keep their honour (?????) intact. Just to show the society that their marriage is strong. To what lengths can people go to preserve a farce? Thus, we come to the conclusion that all these women and their husbands cannot be Hindu or of any religion. Add the in-laws, if involved. Such shameless hypocrites!v All criminals – rapists, thieves, murderers, smugglers, etc. do not belong to any religion. They just know selfishness. You know, in case of rapists, even the rape victims should be treated as sinners if they don’t fight for justice. I mean, how can a victim be quiet about it? There are so many cases of rape that go unreported especially the ones involving assaults by friends or family members. I know it is easier said than done but Goddess Durga isn’t worshipped for time pass, is she? Rapists should be ideally burnt alive but no, the society simply doesn’t seem to understand this.

All corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, policemen, and people giving bribes have no regard for ethics, humanity and totally lack a sense of justice. The question of being religious does not arise. I wonder whether these guys plan to take all the money to their graves. Paisa kha kha ke kitna khaoge bhai? These people have seriously thick skulls, considering that all the black money can be invested in improving public health care infrastructure. But no, but these idiots solemnly swear that they lack all conscience whatsoever. To hell with the country to which they are in great position to provide service!

People with no regard for punctuality are sinners. All religions place high importance on timeliness. Thus, all those following the IST – Indian Stretchable Time, do not really follow any religion.

Everything works according to their convenience.Krishna preaches in the Bhagvad Gita that caste is not hereditary. It is based on the person’s choice of occupation. Throughout the history of civilization, men have taken up the professions of their fathers due to high-level exposure to that kind of work during their childhood. There are many exceptions to the above case. Those are the individualists who opted for a profession of their own choices. This shows that caste is not inherited but decided by the chosen occupation of the individual. So pray, tell me why is the society divided into so many illogical sections such as SC, ST, NT, OBC OPEN and other blah, blah, blah. Our ancestors committed the sins of discriminating against ‘lower’ castes by terming them untouchable and treating them inhumanly. Why? Because most of the lower castes, especially the ‘shudras’ were engaged in menial jobs like keeping the villages clean. Such morons! Will the village/town remain clean without people to look after cleanliness and sanitation? No. Yet our highly educated Brahmins and Kshatriyas preferred to act like demons and propagated caste based discrimination in society. Result. Caste based hatred and discrimination till this date. No wonder the quota-related reservation fracas! Someone, please tell the men and women running our country to start concentrating on producing employable graduates from our universities!!!! However, that brings me to my conclusion that all those believing in the caste system being hereditary and not profession-based are not Hindus as they are not obeying Lord Krishna himself. That makes all people claiming to be ‘Hindu’ but saying that they belong to so and so caste are downright hypocrites. So much for the country holding the world’s largest Hindu population! These statements just don’t apply to Hindus but to people across all religions.

Okay, as for now I think I better stop here. I need to spend some more time thinking up of other ways in which people can be termed religion less. In the meanwhile, if you think of some other ways in which we can claim that people call themselves of a certain religion just for convenience, then please let me know. Till then, bye!

INDIA

Formidable natural barriers protect the land of India. The Himalayas guard the north and northeastern frontiers; the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal protect the Indian peninsula. Before the Partition, we literally had the Indus forming the northwest boundary of India. Amongst these marvellous guardians of the Indian sub-continent, the Indus was the most pervious. Here starts the story of our great nation’s name.

The early Aryans (probably coming from central Asia) who settled in India named the river the Sindhu, meaning ocean, a large sheet of water. Naturally, the land around and beyond the Sindhu came to be called the Sindh, the people inhabiting it were Sindhi and their language was Sindhi. The Persians pronounce the letter ‘S’ as ‘H’. Later on, when the Persians or the Iranians conquered India, the river came to be called the Hindu (better than calling it Hindhu!), the land became Hind, its people and language were now Hindi. Thus, everything related to this land was Hindi, but I wonder how the word Hindu came fit on people of a certain religion instead of all people living in the land. Maybe because other religions came to this land much later.

When the Muslim conquerors came to India, the place automatically became Hindustan – the sthan or place of the river Hindu/Sindhu. Its people were now Hindustani. The British probably pronounced the word Hindus as Indus, half eating up the letter ‘h’. Thus, the river was renamed Indus, its land was now India, and people and their culture came to be called Indian.

It is very sad that most of us have forgotten this and we continue to describe others and ourselves with unnecessary adjectives relating to stupid things like caste, religion, state of origin and in extreme cases even the districts where we came from! Irrespective of whether we have even visited our native places! No wonder this nation often finds being torn apart on account of macabre incidents taking place in the name of religion and caste. No wonder inter-caste and inter-religion marriages still face opposition in the society.

Our Preamble describes our nation as being a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC. Let us all remember how the name of our great country originated. I think this will resolve all the unnecessary social conflicts in this country and help us to build a peaceful and progressive society. Let us honor the name of our nation and live up to it. We are Indians first and Indians last. No need for anything in between.

JAI HIND!

Morbid curiosity

“Never blindly accept what your teacher teaches you. Confirm it yourself by testing it and only then accept or reject it according to your findings.”

- Gautam Buddha

As humans, we are all born inquisitive. There exists an immense, almost inexhaustible drive to learn more about our surroundings and all daily happenings. Scientific temper is an inborn character, it not something to be learnt. Recollect how toddlers in the age group 2 to 4 years drive the parents down the bend by asking reasons for everything and anything around. This is the basic foundation of learning, to seek out for knowledge. True education of an individual starts here. However, the as we grow up this trait of ours is weakened every day either because our elders don’t have answers for our question or because they are simply not patient enough to explain everything. Then come the school years, where everything is only to be crammed irrespective of comprehension and only the ones with the best memories (read: rote power) are considered good enough. Good enough for what? I don’t know.
As student I’ve always had seemingly weird but logical queries. None of my teachers or parents answered them. They were either laughed at or I had to put up with hypothetical and even philosophical chatter. Here are some of my questions which never got answers:

1. I had once read that the rat fleas that live on rats spread plague. Now snakes prey on rodents including rats. If a snake consumes a rat, it will also consume the fleas living on the rats. Does this food chain cause plague in snakes? This was a serious question that bothered me in class 9. My teacher looked at me point blank and smiled saying it has got nothing to do with the portion! Incredible!

2. Mosquitoes spread the malaria causing protozoan parasites of genus plasmodium to humans and have caused unprecedented losses of human lives throughout history. Now a simple doubt, why don’t mosquitoes die of malaria themselves? I asked my parents and the response was like this, nature has its own control mechanisms for the human population. This is one of those. Cool! I later on found out that the Plasmodium protozoa feeds on red blood cells. The mosquitoes do not have any of their own, so they just carry they parasite without any harm to them (mosquitoes). This was in class 9 again.

3. The housefly is an insect vector for Hepatitis A. Why doesn’t the housefly die of Hepatitis A itself? Again no answers for this one. Even my zoology professor was perplexed. This man is a qualified doctor who took up teaching for the love of it. Spent few minutes pondering over it and I found the answer. You see, Hepatitis comes from Hepat – Liver and itis – inflammation. Inflammation of the liver. Now a housefly doesn’t have a liver, forget an inflammation of the liver.

These are only some of the questions I had asked in school, much to the irritation of my teachers (they always unskillfully tried to hide it). It’s the same tale in college. I am still the Mrs. DOUBTfire in class. Even have to tolerate the worst of abuses from the unintelligible members of the batch. (Yes, that’s the price I have to pay for being morbidly curious!) They say I waste time in lecture! But the dumb asses simply don’t understand that half of what we learn is when we tumble upon some other information while looking for something else! That’s exactly what happens when we ask questions. Learning is so much more exiting and enriching when we question what we learn and try to reason it out. Go ahead and ask. No matter how much someone gets irritated. Ask questions and just see how better off you will be!

Self-imposed underemployment!

I met a bus-conductor on the regular 8 am bus to college. This man was blowing his whistle hard at the bus driver to take a proper reverse. I was in for a little fun as usual. I blew my whistle at him and threw my fake snake at him. A few laughs later, he was talking to me, telling me about his academics and inquiring about mine. I was shocked to know that he holds a B.Sc. in electronics from Nashik University. Moreover, he had also cleared the prelims of M.P.S.C. exam twice and that of the U.P.S.C exam once! He couldn’t clear the mains in both cases. Astonished, I was, at his present choice of occupation and I asked him why he was working as a bus conductor. Pointing at his forehead, he blamed it on his destiny. This shows the lackadaisical attitude that exists in our country towards employment. I mean, surely, this person can definitely find some better occupation. The problem of unemployment amongst the educated youth seems to be more of a lack of street-smartness and common-sense than that of insufficient jobs!

For the Love of Studying Abroad!

My favorite pastimes are Yahoo! Answers and reading. I can’t decide which one I prefer the most. I am addicted to books and Yahoo! The whole thing is that I love answering questions, even more than I love thinking up weird questions. I am sort of a braggadocio really! I like to show off what I know. A bit immodest but I can’t help it! The thing is Yahoo! Answers give me the most wonderful platform to be extremely useful and at the same time get an ego boost! I love it when people from across the globe tell me that what I told them was extremely helpful. I am the top answerer for Yahoo! India in the Studying abroad section and I feel good about the fact that I can tell people the right thing to do and simplify certain things for them. Making an investment to move to an alien land just for better education and life, in the processing altering the A-Z about your world view and lifestyle is not a joke and no can afford to go wrong. Even worse, is to be duped or mislead by some selfish crook out to swindle your money in the promise of admission to some ‘phoren’ university! The most popular foreign education destinations have their own education portals to assist international students and only they should be contacted. You got to be safe man! In case if you ever plan to study abroad, contact the following sites and their offices in your nation:

• Germany: http://www.campus-germany.org
• France: http://www.campusfrance.org/en
• UK: http://www.britishcouncil.org
• USA: http://www.fulbright-india.org, http://www.princetonreview.com
• Australia: http://www.idp.com
• Canada: http://www.aucc.ca
• Netherlands: http://www.nuffic.nl

• Erasmus Mundus Programs:

http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/education/programmes/mundus/projects/index_en.html

Now these are not the official websites but should prove useful:

• New Zealand: http://www.geebeeworld.com

• Spain: http://www.spainexchange.com

All the best for your erudition in a foreign nation!

TOBBACCO HELPS SAVE LIVES.

Crop plant lives that is.

Here is what I found when I was reading my Bible of Agriculture, the Handbook of Agriculture, published by the Indian Council of Agriculture. Indigenous Technical Knowledge shows the use of tobacco to save crop lives or to put it properly, to control pests.

• A lethal tobacco decoction used to control larvae of Helicoverpa armigera in soybean. Here is the brew. 1.5-2 kg of green leaves of tobacco are boiled in 5-6 litres of water till the solution becomes dark brown. After filtration and cooling for 6-7 hours, 4-5 litres of the decoction are blended with 70-80 litres of water. The affected crop is sprayed with it every 6 days. Thus tobacco i.e. nicotine sounds the death knell for Helicoverpa armigera in soybean! Soybean saved! Long live soybean!
  

• Murderous sticks! Farmers slot in sticks and rootlets of tobacco into the land by employing disc harrows. The Termites get nicotine kicks that toss them out of the gene pool!

• 1 kg tobacco + 5 kg sand + 250 ml water = Tobacco poison for pests in maize. The mixture is slowly added to the crown of the crops, 20 days after the sowing of the crop. Stem borer insect infestation in 1 hectare is satisfactorily controlled with 6 kg of this mixture. 40^thday after sowing sees the same treatment being repeated. It’s quite cheap too. Rs. 25 per hectare!
  

Go ahead let your plants consume tobacco.