Short Note on India Elections 09

Election 09 for me was only two people. Varun Gandhi and his mom Maneka Gandhi. In 80's Rekha had shown us Biwi ho to aisi and in 2009, Maneka shows Maa ho to aisi. BJP had almost disowned him, Congress was against him but one person who was always wit him was his mom, she visited him every day when he was wrongly put in the jail. She tried so hard for him that she had almost lost in her own constituency. But all's well that ends well. Both mother and son duo has won. I do not care if they are with BJP or any other party of their choice but the sweetness of their victory can not be ignored. Imagine Varun and Maneka sitting together at one end and Rahul and Sonia on the other. Both the mothers beaming at their son as they speak and as soon as they finish, hurry up to give them a warm glass of milk, that too malai marke.

BTW, I had pulled off the post below but now re-posting it. Originally posted even before Varun was caught under NSA.

My Views on Varun Gandhi

There are 2 ways you can really have strong views about a person. When you have done all your research and when you haven’t done any. For me, the analysis below is mainly because I did not read much about it and I think I just read the facts. I do not want to read what each and every person is saying to form an opinion. But yes, this is not a hard and fast opinion (With more proofs, things may change, and come on, he’s just 29)

I feel Varun Gandhi is just a puppet in a big game that is being played by BJP or even the sinister BJP-Congress alliance which I have a feeling is always cooking under the hood. Ok, not to sound too absurd with my argument made above, but even if it is anybody’s plan, it is certainly not Varun’s own. Hate speeches like these are being made every day by RSS workers and have been made in the past by all the BJP stalwarts except perhaps Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Sikander Bakht. To make this a political issue is a part of a bigger conspiracy which I am really eager to find out. It might even be political ambitions of the likes of Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt etc.

Second startling fact is the comparative low tone of condemnation by Priyanka and Rahul. As star people of opposite parties I had expected harsher criticisms but their statements are more like “We are ashamed of our little brother but after all he is still a kid, he will learn”. Whether these things point to the BJP-Congress under the hood pact that I speculated earlier or a case where blood is more important than political rivalry, both are good for the country as a whole. We need sensible next gen leaders who are not like present Advaniji’s BJP which had decided to oppose each and every word that Congress says in the parliament and vice versa. By showing their solidarity, Priyanka and Rahul prove that even if the become political opponents, they won’t be as insensitive as the 80+ lots.

Third reason I would like to defend Varun is his mom. She is an outcast of the great Gandhi family but she still managed to stay in picture. There are numerous people who are now nameless because of their non allegiance to Gandhi Family. But she still survives. Also, for a politician, she looks really cool( much better than Mayawati, Mamata, Jayalalitha and even Jaya Bachchan. She is in the league of Sushma Swaraj, Vasundhara Raje who themselves are collectively below the league of Jayaprada, Smriti Irani, Hema Malini). Thirdly she does this really hep and cool green and animal care thing. I do feel with most of her issues like keeping birds in cages and killing stray dogs and all such animal right things. I even try very hard to get out of Non Veg, but I promise Ms Gandhi, that the day the taste ratio of Non veg to veg based on availability even falls below 200%, I will turn a vegetarian (right now, from what I cook and what I get in restaurants, the ratio is far more than even 500%). So, I think the son of such a great mother does deserve a bit more respect and probably forgiveness because I would like to believe that he at least didn’t mean the words that we think he said.

Kuch bhi

It has been a long time. I am not sure what to write, now that I have tried so many different things. I tried to be emotional, I tried to be gossipy, I tried to be personal and I tried writing about current affairs. Today I am bored, but I still feel like writing. I am not sure if it is a good idea to clutter the blog with such posts. But then, I have seen not blogging gets into a habit and I would not want to do that. Let there be no issue based blog, but at least keep the blog alive with some written text rather than random links and pictures.

Readership has been low. Or has it increased? I do not know. But definitely, it is not the current posts that are being looked at. I think the most read ones are the Bollywood awards that I dish out and the one about “Bengali in me”, thanks to the dhono dhanye song I have put in there.

Ok let this be an update blog. I will update all of you who do read this blog and may be more for me to read later what updates I can comfortably share on this date.

I have got this craving for some good “Rani/Priety” movies now. By Rani priety I mean recent movies with a dominant heroine role. Rani has not been doing much good stuff. I saw Priety in Last Lear and Heaven on earth. I liked Last Lear.

I have also been watching this series called “The big bang theory”. It’s about 4 geeks and a dashing girl in next apartments. It’s extremely funny and I highly recommend it.

On the bad sides, I am not at all excited about the Indian general elections 2009. I do not like NDA/BJP’s prime ministerial candidate and Congress was never glamorous. The rising clout of the regional parties will just add noise to the government and no real breakthrough can ever happen. How I wish Samajwadi party was a national party. It has got glamour, it has got the backing of industrial big shots and it seems that it always means business and no nonsense party. It may be corrupt etc, but then it’s end goal is get into the government and it makes it very direct to a common man like us. On the other hand, BJP’s election issues are so baseless: attacking congress for the global recession, Afzal Guru hanging etc. How can these be election issues. Unrealistic 2 RS rice and free color TV campaigns also make more sense than this. Congress on the other hand can do such a constructive campaign, but it is so busy with it’s Rahul baba that it cannot see anything beyond. Sonia madam was an efficient backdoor puppeteer, but the problem with Rahul is that he is the puppet.

Worse is the recession. Just when we think it cannot get worse, there is more shocks. We cannot predict. But I think we are at a stage where we have already expected the worst. Nowadays lay offs, shut down does not even alarm us any more unless it is us at the receiving end. Is the slowdown also slowing down?

But for me, the biggest concern is “Woh ladki hai kahan”. It is a combined effect of so many factors. Suddenly I realize that the often used line “pehle khud ko establish kar loon” has began to blur. There had been times when I could have really gone ahead but this line pulled me back and now when the line goes blur, the picture gets blurrer. Add to it the fact that almost all my friends are already ahead of me in this race. Not only lonely, I feel angry too.

And hence we should do yoga. I have started Ramdev baba yogas. The thing that I enjoy most in that is my daily choice of accompanying music. I need a clock with second update so that I can rate my kapalbhatis. Hence I play songs on you tube. I had started wit meditation music, bhajan, devotional songs, rabindra sangeet etc. But today I tried Aishwarya Rai songs, and I enjoyed it. Probably tomorrow will be jaadu hai nasha hai. Let’s see. I should probably follow the Shilpa Shetty yogas. It will be glam yoga .

Book Review: Sea of Poppies

After a long time, I am writing a book review. And I have read a few available about the book. One thing I noticed that the reviews are actual reviews, not the typical hindi movie reviews which just go on to praise the film if they like one and find every possible flaw if the do not. The reviews always give an idea off what the writer is trying to achieve and as he successful in doing that. It is difficult for me to write a review of that kind, and hence I will stick to the Indian kinds. So people, here comes the new Kazmi, Sen and Masand.

Bottom line first, I liked the book. So it will be only good things about the book. I am not new to Indie English novels but I am very new to historic novels which give you a balance of history along with a strong storyline. This book pleased me thoroughly but did not come as a surprise as I has already read “Hungry Tide”. While reading it I never realized that I know so much about Sunderban. This book just takes this feel further and this time it is not confined with a small region like Sunderban but instead covers a vast region of the world. It talks about China, Cape Town, England, Kolkata, Bhojpuri belt and of course about the life in sea which can be considered a whole new country of it’s own.

Another of the thing that I liked immensely was the language. It’s just so varied. I never enjoyed the language so much in any other novel before. There is English by the sea men, there is the African American English, there is the English English (English spoken in England), the French English, English that the English people spoke in 1830’s India and then the English that Bengalis spoke in 1830. Each is so different and the way Amitav has blended all of them leaves me mesmerized. To add to it, so many foreign words are borrowed all throughout the book: Bhojpuri, Bengali and especially the language of the seamen who are called Lascars. I know Bangla and can understand bhojpuri, but as I had no idea about the lascar tongue, it was a pleasure decoding that. Towards the end of the book, Amitav is blending cultures. I got so excited and kept thinking of all these people who then went to Mauritius and how is the present culture of Mauritius affected by it.

And of course the part that had me dumbstruck was the sex. The very fact that I am shamelessly writing about it shows its impact on me. I have always read sex with either curiosity or disgust and I think that was its purpose when it is written about or shown. But here it was a part of the story and blended so well. And it was in all forms. There is the straightforward straight and then both forms of non straight, there is sexual harassment of children, there are different types of punishments and there is even with animal. But it comes so naturally in the book in a way that I am not used to. You are never excited or disgusted about it. In most of the other reads, you either read a rape with contempt and hatred for the rapist or in normal descriptions it is something which bonds love more strongly. But in this book, it does neither. It comes in and goes wit the same flow as say a day goes and the night comes.

Unlike Rajiv, I will not go and tell you about the best moment in the story. I also won’t criticize the book like Raja Sen who thinks that a critic has to criticize. Unlike Nikhat, I would still rate the book with five star though it does not have shahrukh or amitabh or directed by K Jo.