The hungry couple

She was anxious. He had been gone since morning. He had never been away that long before. But times were such. A fortnight ago, a couple had rang their doorbell looking for directions, having lost their way in the vast non-descript countryside and there was no other house in sight. That was the last time they had some fresh food. The couple provided them with enough food to last a week and they had been starving since.

“I’ll go to the city and try to find some food”, said the husband and walked out of the door, famished and desperate. It wasn’t always such. They were a typical family, living a typical life in the suburbs of the city. There was nothing of note to distinguish them from the family next door, or at the end of the lane. They had been to a few, clandestine wild places to satiate their innermost fetishes. But then, which family doesn’t have its own embarrassing secrets.

Something, though, had changed over the past year or so. The sensation was strange and each of them kept it to themselves until they could no longer hold it and confessed to each other. They were surprised to learn that both of them are going through similar condition. They promised each other to not share it with anyone else and tried to ignore it.

They put up a façade for sometime but first the family and then friends, colleagues, the entire world started noticing the changes. Invitations from the social circles decreased, greetings from familiar faces ceased and then one day, he was asked to look for a job somewhere else. That was the first time in her life that she felt hunger pangs. He had then tried to grab some food and run from the store. He was caught; they were declared unfit to inhabit a civilised society and ordered to be put under care. They managed to escape this time around. After treading through the country side for days, surviving on the kindness of a few drivers who pulled over to help, they had come across this isolated house in the wilderness.

They knew that they wouldn’t be accepted in any town or city and so they decided to live there. It was old but intact and the nearest town was only a couple of hours’ walk away. “I got some meat”, declared the husband, breaking her chain of thought. “Now clean it and cut it up while I light the fire.” She hurriedly took the sack from him and thrust her hand inside. It was still alive and started screaming as soon as he saw her. She cut through with one strong, precise swing with the knife, and the head of the boy rolled over the floor, spewing blood all over the place as it went. “Can’t you ever do it cleanly? I’ll have to clean the floor again!” he yelled. “I don’t like the screams. Why don’t you ever kill them yourself?” she retorted and began hacking the limbs off the severed body.

Don2: An honest review

Perhaps I should start by telling you the emotions the movie evoked. Imagine a bright, sunny morning at the SCG. You've got the best seat in the house and you sit their, sipping on a tea or beer, watching a Sachin straight-drive. Now think of the equivalent of this pleasure in terms of pain and multiply it by 3 hours. That should pretty much describe how the movie will make you feel. We went in with low expectations but only after the movie did we realise as to why the Police in 11 countries is looking for him. All the citizens want their money back!!!

In the first scene, SRK tries to walk in with a swagger but comes across as a bad case of osteoporosis. It is just funny that the uncrowned king shows up himself to take a consignment. With the recession around and plenty of unemployed youth around, you'd wish he had hired a few to do the dirty job. At least that would save us the agony of watching SRK trying so hard to be the cool Don.

Hoping against hope, we were certain that the movie shall pick from there. It did, as Priyanka Chopra sizzled in her scenes looking every bit hot and delicious. But that seems to be the only upside to the 3 hour long torture. But she also provides lessons in manipulations as she fires orders at her colleague, making him do the clerical work but takes all the credit herself. That poor chap seems to have a thing for her but with his zombie-like expression, it is tough to tell whether he is scared, angry or concerned.

Boman Irani, who seemed to match Don's wits in the 1st movie, is made to look like a complete fool as SRK breaks away from the jail in which he's been rotting for 5 years. I think the jail food hadn't been all that good for his IQ. The scene in which he questions Lara Dutta's ability could be likened to the Opposition's questions to Rahul Gandhi; we keep expecting a witty response but none arrives. To top it all, I present you Kunal Kapoor, a genius hacker who has impregnated a woman without any source of income. I'd like to visit the country where women are ready to hook up with unemployed youth.

When it comes to the action sequences, the less we talk about, the better. Personally, I have never understood the reason behind a car chase. Even you manage to outpace the escapee, you can't force him out of the car because you won the race and banging your car in to his is plain stupid. But that's another story for another day. The point here is, a car chase has never made me yawn, until now. And the underworld seriously needs to get its act together if SRK can beat up those thugs with bare hands, however unconvincingly.

The dialogues and those one-liners are the best part. Looks like there was a holiday discount on defective dialogues and all the characters shopped to their heart's fill. Some of them are so bad that they come around all the way to be good again. In one particular scene Boman Irani asks SRK if he can ask him a question. SRK quips; "no". It used to be funny when I was 10 but the movie unfortunately, is 15 years late.

All this, only until the first half and a bit. I'm sure the latter half too deserves to be written about but fortunately for yours truly, he could not bear the torture and passed out for the better part of it.

PS: As we left the movie hall, plenty of scathing comments were tossed about. My favorite: "Amitabh should file a defamation case against SRK for ruining Don."

To add a li'l spice

T-20 is hurting cricket. Ravi Shastri and Ramiz Raja, more so. We need technically sound batsmen and persistent bowlers for the survival of Test cricket. To regenerate interest in the ball-by-ball detail, we need someone who can call a shot something other than a tracer bullet. I long for the day when a really irritable cricketer comes to fore and makes the game and the equally long post-match proceedings a bit entertaining. I hope the Messiah arrives soon to defeat the devil called Danny Morrison and delivers us from those boring to the point of suicide inducing post match ceremonies. In fact, I have day-dreamt it so many times that I have a script of that hour of reckoning. In my imaginations, this is how it goes:

I: Congratulations. You played a great knock today when your team was reeling at 18/3 in 5 overs.
C: Gee thanks. I didn't know the score when I walked in. Next time, I'll call you up to tell me.

I: So your team was under a lot of pressure when you walked in.
C: To tell you the truth, I was cursing those 3 morons who threw away their wickets and forced me to come in. At that point, I was talking to this real hot chick and had to break off the conversation mid-way.

I: Err... I mean cricket-wise.
C: Well nothing. Like I said, I didn't even know the score until you told me. I was just thinking to spend a few minutes, get out and resume my conversation with that chick and even tried that twice. But the fielding team cannot even catch a cold, let alone a catch.

I: And the way you got Sehwag out. Was it a plan?
C: Oh yes, why not. I bowled the full-toss precisely because I knew Sehwag will try to hammer it out of the park but will get an edge. Didn't work for the first 4 deliveries but worked the 5th time :D

I:So do you think 187 is a compatible total in this match.
C: No. Absolutely not. The way we are bowling and fielding, even you can score that much.

I:So you have any plans for SRT?
C: Actually we do. After every boundary he hits, the bowler will go near him and burst in to tears while the rest of the team will be praying hard. Hopefully, SRT's heart will melt and he will throw his wicket.

I: Why do you think you lost the match after coming so close to victory?
C: Oh you don't know??? I had fixed this match and had planned to get out after putting my team in a winning position. Next time, call me before the match and may be I could help you to make a few bucks.

I: Thank you, cricketer. It was a pleasure to speak to you.

C: Yes, now that you have had your pleasure, may I go back to that hot chick?

N. Srinivasan sets an example

In the latest development over mismanagement of funds in IPL, N. Srinivasan, BCCI's president-elect has pleaded ignorance to all the wrong doings. In a statement to the parliament's standing committee, he declared, " "We were taken for a ride. I know we cannot plead before you that we did not know all this was happening. Your question would be, were you not vigilant? What did you do? I am sorry, sir, there is no defence for me. No defence in front of you. So, I am not pleading that [ignorance] at all. We just put our heads down."

Like a sympathetic school teacher who's been there, done that (and possibly much more), the standing committee is understood to have understood his situation and gave him a, errr..., standing ovation for his honesty.

Taking a leaf out of his IPL boss' book, MSD has admitted to having no idea about his own batting or the game at large. "I can't really pin point the problem on this tour. I admit it's all been happening under my nose, but I think the time has come to confess that I do not understand the game at all. I treat it as a stress-buster between my advertising assignments you see, a hobby, you might call it", declared Dhoni with a broad grin.

In a totally unrelated incident, the students from the most premiere technical institute from southern India staged a demonstration calling for an end to the undue burden resulting from hailing them as la crème du pays. "If we were so good, we would be working on tech-projects in stead of investing our time and the govt's grants in Counter-Strike, Dota, How I met your mother or IMDB top 100. Calling us technocrats deters the JP Morgans and Deustche Banks which offer us our dream jobs. I hereby appeal to the aspirants and the awed to quit touting us as the smartest technical brains and let us apply peacefully for jobs with fat pay-cheques and which involve complicating financial data even further and bear no correlation, whatsoever, to our graduation". Thus commented CKSR Janardan Reddy, a student of Electrical Engineering, who hopes to be the reason behind the next financial meltdown.

Hating the state

A bomb blast today rocked the nation,

All we could hear was condemnation.

When an earthquake later shook the land,

Our mood still remained bland.

No concern for those who were hurt,

No remorse for those reduced to dirt.

Making statements is all the govt. does,

Even we are too busy updating an fb status.

The next bomb could be beside you or someone close,

Would you do the same if that one explodes?

The deceased reduced to jokes on the internet,

I'm sorry but I don't quite see the humanity in that.

I would rather see people full of hate.

hating the terrorists and hating the state.

People looking at the country with rage,

A rage deep enough to compel it to change.

A mere three weeks backs, united stood the nation,

Answering Anna's call against corruption.

The govt. is unwilling to fight terrorism too,

Is status updates all we can do?

Is he the next Gandhi?

Technically, all articles should start with an introduction of the issue. It's 6 AM, I haven't slept the whole night and am justifiably devoid of the patience to delve in to the background. So if you don't know the background already, please don't waste your time here.

Like 'Team Anna' has been claiming, there are many similarities between the two. Both are fasting to achieve something which the govt. of their respective times reluctant to gift-wrap and present to them. Both had a strong resume of social services before catching the nation's imagination. While Anna turned a poor village in to a model one, Gandhi did something similar during the time he spent in South Africa. Both took the route of non-violence to make their voices heard. And finally, both managed to get the rulers agree to their demands.

Small aberration that Anna actually beat up the youth in Ralegan Siddhi to set them straight. Well, you cannot preach to the hungry. Hence the use of force is justifiable to my mind. Adding to that, nobody would change their way of life for a fasting stranger. He resorted to more civil ways once he got the support of masses. And now when the hour of reckoning arrives, Anna is the poster-boy of the civil society. Lesson in strategy here.

Moving on to the present, the devil of a govt. has relented, Anna has his way and everything is sunshine and roses for India. Hail the new Gandhi.

If only he was not so much like Gandhi or Gandhi was as perfect as he's made out to be. Let's not talk about the Lokpal Bill for the time being. It has already been scanned and dissected more that those poor frogs in biology classes. Let's talk about the Satyagrahi power.

Now Gandhi, during his time, was the ultimate decision-maker in India. I would go as far as saying that he was a dictator for the little amount of time he lived in independent India. Every bill the parliament passed, every resolution the govt. undertook had to receive a nod by him. And if he deemed it wrong or unfair, it wouldn't see the light of day.

Read history deep enough and you will find many fundamental blunders made by the state of India and quite a few originated from one man-Gandhi. In case the ministers protested, he would use his ultimate weapon - threat of a fast. That's how Pakistan got their 40 crores at the time of partition. He was the father of the nation and the big daddy of Congress.

Now this created problems back then, as it does now. Without doubting the integrity and intentions of either, it is highly improbable that one man, that too those with a deeply ingrained sense of fairness, can do what's best for a nation. A saint can never run a grocery shop.

Gandhi used to say "A Satyagrahi always knows the right way." And it was only he who could judge all the qualities, the IQ or the fashion sense of an ideal Satyagrahi. It is more or less the same story 60 years later. Anna decides the members of the Civil Society, the date of enforcement for the bill and even the content of the same. For argument's sake, let's suppose we give Team Anna a free hand for drafting the bill. Now say, Kejriwal disagrees with Anna on some parts of it. What next? I can bet my oversized, overweight arse that Anna will force him out of the committee or threaten to on another hunger strike.

Not judging the JLP, but it is disturbing that we let one man enjoy so much power and but still strip with joy, blowing the trumpet of being the largest democracy.

The Bill

Before the respected Anna Hazare made that very public and widely publicised visit to Delhi, I had no clue about the Lokpal bill, like many others, I might add. He then staged a fast to get his voice heard and forced the government to include members of the 'civil' society in drafting the bill. The masses were behind him and he won.

The real problems arose when the government refused to accept some of his committee's suggestions to be included in the bill. (You could google for the major PoDs in the Jan Lokpal Bill, as it is popularly known, and the government's draft.) Angered by the government's lack of cooperation he and his team is up in arms against the high and mighty once again.

The bone of discontent seems to be the difference in scope of the two bills. The JLP tries to hold everyone, including the PM accountable while the government bill is content with being a watchdog for senior level officials. While I agree with the JLP on most issues, there are some points about the whole situation that worry me.

The first is sustainability. It is all based on the assumption that the members of the Lokpal committee will be clean as a whistle. In fact, the 1st committee might even be so just like the politicians in the 50s. But later on the power that the position grants them, is bound to corrupt some and may be all. Also, the assumption that the lokpal committee will be independent of political influence is far-fetched. It is India after all. Nothing is free from political influence here. And if the committee happens to be hand-in-glove with the government, it is as good as useless.

The other problem is the motive of the masses showing such solidarity. They are all against corruption no doubt but only when someone else does it. I don't think any of those supporters will think twice before greasing the palms of a traffic cops when they are caught jumping a signal. It is the always easier way out. To them, this is not a movement against corruption as such but only against the corrupt politicians. They are fine as long as the neighborhood ration-shop owner conveniently accepts gifts.

However, if I had a choice between the two, I'd always choose the JLP but with a humble request to Anna: Please bring in some regulations to ensure the incorruptibility of Lokpal members and please do not think Indians are as averse to corruption as is visible.