| Get your word's worth | 21-NOV-09 |
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| In the beginning was the Word. Then the species became needlessly talkative and new words had to be invented and added to the lexicon. This went on happening for thousands of years until one day it seemed that the process was set to reverse itself, with Internet chat-sites and SMS jargon encouraging the abbreviation of existing words into near-unrecognisable forms (“gr8 2 c u!”). Surely dictionaries will become passé now, we thought. |
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| Monsters in the closet | 07-NOV-09 |
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| During a visit to publishers’ offices in Germany earlier this year, I was impressed by the variety of literature available to young readers. Also noteworthy was the darkness of content — a reminder that this was the land of the Brothers Grimm — and the willingness to matter-of-factly deal with the realities of life. (The protagonist of one popular series was a child of divorced parents, his mother frequently referring to his absentee dad as a “monster” — a word that can have literal and metaphorical meaning in children’s writing. |
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| Boy in a bubble | 24-OCT-09 |
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| When a family reports that their six-year-old son has accidentally floated away in a homemade helium balloon, the result is frenzied media coverage and nationwide sympathy for the stricken parents, accompanied by copious church-going (in addition to a small number of harassed papas and mamas mulling the possibility of constructing similar dirigibles for their own little Damians). When it turns out that there was no one in the vagrant balloon and that the kid was munching biscuits in the attic all the while, there is relief, along with puzzlement. But when it later transpires that the publicity-hungry parents had concocted the whole story just to get their own reality TV show, the reactions really heat up. |
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| Art and the man | 10-OCT-09 |
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| Roman Polanski is one of my favourite directors; I’ve never met a movie of his that I’ve found less than interesting, and at least four of them — Repulsion, Macbeth, Rosemary’s Baby and The Fearless Vampire Killers — are among my all-time favourites. This isn’t a film column, but I heartily recommend them to anyone reading it. |
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| A for effort, Z for intent | 26-SEP-09 |
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| A ncient Indians discovered the Zero, but modern, cyber-savvy Indians everywhere are discovering the Zed. That’s Rajan Zed, a Nevada-based Indo-American statesman who modestly refers to himself as an “acclaimed Hindu spokesperson” in an endless series of press releases that are slowing down the Internet, or at least my home connection. |
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| Bye bye, brand name | 12-SEP-09 |
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| Self-deprecating humour isn’t something one sees too much of in this country (where making fun of others is held a nobler pursuit than laughing at one’s own foibles), so I’m always pleased to read Saad Akhtar’s webcomic Fly, You Fools! (People are Mindless Cattle), a good-natured, witty take on some of the things we read about in the newspapers every day. It isn’t brilliantly written or drawn (in fact, it mostly uses photos and mixed media rather than fresh illustrations) but it’s goofy and perceptive, casting fresh light on (among other things) security checks at mall entrances (http://tinyurl.com/5s25pe), rich kids mowing down pavement-dwellers in their Mercs (http://tinyurl.com/mhpwep), and loud honking at traffic signals as a substitute for sexual inadequacy (http://tinyurl.com/kl7knc). |
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| All that Jas | 29-AUG-09 |
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| More than anything else, I’m surprised by how much underwear talk has come out of the Jaswant-Jinnah imbroglio. |
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| Pearls before swine | 15-AUG-09 |
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| They said the day a black man became president of the United States, pigs would fly. Well, lo and behold, Obama was sworn in and one hundred days later... |
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| Don't get mad, get musical | 01-AUG-09 |
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| What does a Taylor guitar worth $3,500 have in common with a pornographic comic-strip Indian bhabhi? The curves, sure, but they both also have songs protesting their mistreatment. In the process, they’ve got the Net buzzing. |
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| A crane in the neck | 18-JUL-09 |
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| For several months, construction work for the Saket metro station has been going on just outside the block of flats we live in, and the sight of a giant crane hovering over the tops of neighbouring houses makes for a grand view, especially after dark. In every other respect our enclosed colony park is quiet as a village green, but here’s an enormous, brightly lit mechanical pulley moving back and forth in a portion of the sky. It makes us feel like characters in John Wyndham novels set in quiet British towns where nothing much was ever expected to happen. |
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| The Farrah and MJ show | 04-JUL-09 |
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| Poor Farrah Fawcett. At the peak of her stardom in the late 1970s as the most conventionally sexy of the Charlie’s Angels, her pin-ups helped a generation of young boys discover hormones they had never imagined existed. But in death, she found herself relegated to the sidelines by (as one Netizen impertinently put it) “a freakishly disfigured, putty-nosed paedophile”. |
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| Taking the shine off | 20-JUN-09 |
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| At least the Shiney Ahuja rape case has taken some pressure off Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s shoulders, a friend says on Twitter, and he’s right: it takes something very special for the captain of a World Cup-losing cricket team to be only the second most vilified public figure in the country. |
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| Hell down under | 06-JUN-09 |
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| So, do you still think the Aussies are God’s gift to the world?” a friend asked on email, another reminder that I’m probably never going to live down one of the biggest misdemeanours of my youth: being a huge fan of Mark Taylor’s (and later Steve Waugh’s) Australian cricket teams, even supporting them when they played India. |
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| Gay jo hai zindagi | 23-MAY-09 |
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| The first gay wedding to be conducted under Hindu rites took place in Durban, South Africa, recently (no, it wasn’t at an IPL match venue) and what I found most interesting about the event was the ingenious nod it made to tradition. The happy couple, Joe Singh and Wesley Nolan, employed a Tamil priest to conduct the rites, did a hawan prayer and even used a Lord Ganesha pendant to “ward off evil and remove obstacles from their path”. (They drew the line at kumkum dots. |
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| Flip the bird, fling a shoe | 09-MAY-09 |
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| Transparency and the honest expression of views are central to any democracy, so it was with a sense of national pride that I read this mail forward: “Don’t these elections rock? The common man is throwing footwear at politicians and the politicians are responding by giving us the finger. Mutual disrespect all around. None of that fake politeness and genuflecting we see so much of in public life. |
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