Unaccustomed Earth; A review from a Jhumpa Fan;

There are few people whose opinion I value and I change my adamant stance about my thoughts and views only based on these selected people. One of them told me that Jhumpa writes too much about Bengalis immigrated to US and their lifestyle. I believed and the next day, Jhumpa was out of my orkut community which I have diligently kept to a small number of 13 which identifies my past and my passions.

But still I could not resist the weekend “Unaccustomed Earth” was released. It was released on Friday the 4^th April and I bought the book on the 6^th from Barnes and Nobles, the counter lady telling me that the book is becoming very popular. Well I didn’t care because something told me, I have to read this. I have this knack of following authors and reading all of their work; so far have finished Jane Austen and Mario Puzo. From the goddess (JKR) and the queen (Jhumpa), I expect many more but I guarantee I will follow all of their works.

Anyway, with an opened mind, I read through the stories. As always, the language so simple yet so elegant made me fly though the stories. Here each story was quite different from the other, all dealing with some form of complicated relationships. The base was still the same though (Immigrant Bengalis) but now it was all about the GENNEXT: The first generation immigrants. Some of the views really opened new windows of thoughts. Once she mentions how the Indian parents always tell about the hardships they faced before coming to the US but never do the children tell about the humiliation they have to go through in the schools for their strange habits of greasy lunch boxes and unfamiliar rituals. The parents do not like when the children fall for a non-Indian partner leaving their parents speechless and heart-broken but did the parents realize that they have done far worse to their parents leaving them 10’s of thousands of miles away?

Another nice part I liked and this has to be personal is the location. All the stories are primarily based in and outskirts of Boston. Cambridge, Wayland, Marlborough, Peabody and even my present place Natick. To all the readers of this blog who know me, please read this book just for the sake of the description of New England, the weather, the people etc. Just yesterday for the first time, I went to one of my family friends place on their anniversary. It was full of Bengali people and pages from Jhumpa’s book just flashed before my eyes. The kids speaking with rolling r’s and not eating the elaborate 7 course meal and instead savoring the cheese pizza. The parents discussing the school they have put the children into, the grading etc. It was just like they were acting on Jhumpa's directions.

But the masterpiece of the book is surely the 3^rd part, consisting of three short stories jointly called “Kaushik and Hema”. It can surely be made into another of those movies like The Namesake. And this should be an eye opener for all the people who criticize of her choice of topic. Though the story is still about immigrant Bengalis, it is not about their lifestyle. It’s a story; I feel is ageless and location less too. Infact, still leaving the characters to be Bengali Immigrants, she just proves her literary superiority. The flow of the story so elegant and so different from the other Bookers I read where I spend almost 50% of the book before I get glued to it.

Again, for the readers, who know me personally; if you decide to read this book, let me know. I will be truly happy to gift one copy. (Well, a few don’t have a choice : ) )

Of birthdays and birthday gifts

Today (In India)/ Tomorrow(here) (i.e. 7^th April) is Umesh Bude’s birthday. Happy Birthday Doobs. When I called him, his phone was busy and instead he called me in sometime. This is one of the firsts oh this kind. Generally people (me included) generally don’t give calls to others on their own on the birthday. But it does sound like a good idea. What he explained to me was that there was a brief gap between his calls and he thought of maximizing his efficiency by himself calling up other people. Good Idea Doobs, will surely implement it from next time.

Somehow I have always enjoyed friends birthdays more than my own. Over the top of my head, I remember these few:

1) Mana’s birthdays: They were always fun with me going a bit early to help in the decorations. And Mana always got an amazing number of Sketch Pens as birthday gifts.

2) Sumit’s Birthday: Sumit’s birthday in 2000, the last one before I left home was a fun. It was one of those last get togethers we school people had. We both wore Kurtas instead of usual clothes just to be different and did soil it thoroughly.

3) Doob’s birthdays in college: It was rare that we brought cakes for friends birthdays. I bought one this time. But what I remember that for is that was one of the worst cakes ever. The icing was too sweet and non-soft. The cake was dry too. But we were all so hungry that we finished all.

4) Vikram’s birthday in 2^nd year: Vikram likes his birthdays low key. But somehow that day was some function at college open theater and when everybody knew he was thrown his birthyear times in the air and every time it was around 20 feet into the air.

If I try remembering now, I would rate my 2005 birthday as the best because what happened was totally unexpected. And I was actually cribbing that how my past birthdays were and how I am stuck up in such a faraway land this year when suddenly 20+ people come in with a huge cake. And it ended with me in almost zero degree water(that time zero degree as still cold, now its warm). It was certainly the most pleasantly surprised birthdays.

Now coming to gifts. Even though the most popular gifts evolved over the ages, since for some reason I never celebrated my birthdays, I never got any. Till I was 6-7, the traditional gifts were always vessels (tumblers, plates or bowls) wrapped in Magenta color papers and with to and fro names etched on it. Most of the tumblers at my home still have “Tua ke.. xyz”. Still don’t know why there was no “Tublu ke..”

Then times changed and plastic took over steel. The gifts: Pencil Boxes, tiffin boxes (especially the one with spoons with it) and of course The Sketch Pen set. People would get 6-7 sketchpen sets on birthdays but by default, still a month later, you will make your dad go to the store and get another set. Sketchpens are meant for losing.

And then came the time of show-pieces. These were the most nonsense gifts one could think of and added no value but were considered very up class. It was mostly black metal photo frames or Natraj or Ganesh.

Then things changed to perfumes and deos (and this was not so long ago) when somebody told me that these gifts are just meant for girlfriends and boyfriends. So since I have none, that was also out of question.

And at this time, I realized that books are the safest gifts. I have received a “Blandings Castle” every year during my undergrad from dada. When I started gifting people, my favorite was Pride and Prejudice. I have gifted it to atleast 10+ people. Books are still my favorite gift items to be given because its easily available and offers such a variety, that it can often be considered “oh so thoughtful”

The most selfish gift I ever bought was a headphone to enable a friend for voice chatting so that telephone minutes could be saved.

Anyway, can anyone suggest more ideas? To a girl you can give flowers, plants if not books. What do you buy for guys?

Control system and the present state of nation

Certainly this is something big. Same day in Times of India, there are four columns by Bachi Karkaria, Jug Suraiya, Shashi Tharoor and Taurn Vijay. All lashing out against oust of Taslima Nasreen from India. Apart from the slight Hindu angle by Tarun Vijay (which is expected) all others speak of freedom of expression at different levels.

The root problem is that we are succumbing to a very small group of people. And the reason is obvious. Because this small group of people always vote. (or are they made to vote?) I still remember my mom voted only once and that too because a local party worker provided her and her friends a ride to the polling booth. Well, we so called educated people feel lazy to vote. We need some stimuli which will make us vote. Certainly the poorer classes of the people get those stimuli. They are targeted by the politicians during the run up to elections that their needs will be met. They are the people who attend the mass rallies. We conveniently sit in our couches and listen to the Sagarikas and the Barkhas. Whatever they present to us, we discuss all about it but on the crucial day we chicken out. I have heard during elections, politicians do come door to door to ask for vote. But I have never seen anybody at my door asking my parents to come and vote. Only once did the local municipal leader come and that was the only time Maa voted. Is it the way the politicians treat us or the way we treat the politicians that has made the middle middle class and upper middle class disconnected from politics. Worse still is with India Shining, this middle middle class and upper middle class is increasing. And so we are seeing a growing political disinterest amongst people. And sure enough, politicians are all out to woo the lower middle class and the poor and not in a proper way but the cheap tactics. The result: 60000 Cr loans, Oust of Taslima and many many more. By the way, the tax slabs are such that the lower middle class and lower class doesn’t pay taxes.

What’s the end result? The taxpayers’ money goes towards cheap appeasement and creating vote bank of the non tax payers. It doesn’t need a control system engineer to say that this is an unstable system. It needs a feedback loop (well the control engineer in me says that open loops can be stable too and closed loops can still be unstable).

Well how did this happen? Let’s say that the open loop system was stable and the transient responses (independence, emergency) being over, it was the steady state responses that were taking effect. This system can now go unstable because of some external disturbances. I don’t know the creator of disturbances, but I can see the kind of disturbances. It’s religion. I have been taught all along that all religions are equal and I believed it without even questioning it. And so did everybody. We all thought Sanskrit as an ancient language which defines India. Was it so Hindu? We all learnt shlokas as a part of pur curriculum. So did we learn the stories of Jesus and all the Muslim soofis. We learnt ramayan and mahabharat as stories. I enjoyed the complex characters, the wars and every bit of it. I bet all of my Christian and Muslim friends did too. After all it was a nice story, and the way it was presented was a story and we didn’t sit with flowers and agarbattis in our hands to read these books. So were the stories from old testaments and Akbar and Mughals. It all came to us as a natural course. We never thought of it as religion. But then one day (thankfully after I passed out of school) some moron politician started rethinking the curriculum. They thought Mughal portion is more and it should be otherwise. Well it started with that. The other party came to power and not only vetoed this decision but also made sure that vande Mataram is not sung in schools. Saraswati is a hindu goddess and not the goddess of knowledge. I think soon the Ramayan and mahabharat will be banned from school and our morning prayers, though still will have

“Vatan ke waaste hi jeena, watan ke waaste hi marna”, it won’t have “Sarve bhavantu sukhinah, sarve santu niramayah, sarve bhadrani pashyantu, Ma kashchid dukhbhagbhavet, om shant shanty shantihi”.

Everything we were taught had been dissected. We were not told that Hinduism is a way of living. We just accepted it not as Hinduism but as Indianness. We always liked Christianity not because God is great, but we associated it with God loves children (the pictures showed so) and Christians make cakes which are good to eat. We even had a faint hope of getting fairer. But all that went on in a subconscious level. It is the new age politics which is putting finger in eye and and saying this act is Hindu, this act is muslim and so on. The disturbance made the loop unstable.

The solution? There can be 2 ways: the engineer may want to introduce a feedback loop which will make it stable even against disturbances. But then I guess this loop will be that educationàpolpulation circular loop. Unless we tackle polulation, we can’t educate people, we can’t stop population unless we educate people.

The other solution is cut off the disturbance. After all, its there in Gita:

“Yada yada hi dharmasya ( countrysya) glanirbhavatu bharatah”

“Abhyutthanam adharmasya (bad people) sambhavami yugey yugey” Only this time, it won’t be Kalki, it has to be all of us.

News I am keeping an eye on

Well, yet again, I want to write something but not have anything to write about. So I do the usual, news that I am following nowadays. The comments to the blog have reached an all time low so this post will help me later when I try to think "What was I thinking that time?"

To begin with, the most nonsense piece but which is talked about everywhere but is of least significance I think. US elections. My local friend says US has never withdrawn troops from any country it ever attacked (like even Japan), so no way anybody who comes will have chance to do anything different. The healthcare plan both Obama and Hillary talk about is nonsense. It can never match India's healthcare system where you can afford to go to a doctor even if you sneeze in the morning. And whenever people talk about "First colored President" or "First Woman President", I get reminded of the great president of India who inspite of being the "First woman president of world's largest democracy", fills me with shame. Nobody can deny that she is in noway more talented than our kaamwali bai - Parvatibai Gayakwad.

Next ofcourse is the bloggers favorite: The great 60000 Cr Rs loan waiver to Indian farmers. This topic hurts me lots and I tend to avoid it but so many people constantly writing about it leaves me with no choice but to read. My Take: This may be a bad step, but which govt hasnot done something this foolish before the elections?


Getting on to better topics, IPL. The money game. It cannot be anything other than that. Right now, none of my firnds seem to be too much interested in that but soon they will be. And we will have to choose a team. But I will be waiting for more teams that are planned for future. I will wait for Nagpur team. Let's see when the "Nagpur Narangis" are ready to rock.

WLIFW or Wills LifeStyle India Fashion Week. Offlate it seems that this event is not a yearly but a quarterly event. And ofcourse none of the clothes they have makes any sense to me. But then the best part of every IFW is Bipasha's commitment to fashion industry. She always comes and wears some funny clothes and surely there is John to cheer her up and rediff and Hindol Sengupta of IBNLIVE to cover the news.

Aamir Khan blogs. They have been a news item in themselves as I have seen Times of India and Rediff making news articles out of his blogs. It's utterly funny because Aamir's blog are so amateurish. I guess he doesn't know anything about blogging but still I bet his blogs are most read and most commented (May be in the world)

And ofcourse the evergreen Bipasha Basu. Well, she is never out of news and if Google News is to be believed, she makes it to some news on Times Of India everyday. After her disastrous Dhan Dhana dhan goal, and the splitting and making up stories with John, latest she is in news for her "Classic Bob Cut" and her saucy role in Race. Well, but the funniest of all that was Bipasha saying she doesn't like makeup ( I can't find the link where I read this). And here is the news I just read today. This news is surely written for the visually impaired:

"Bipasha showed her curves in a jersey knit black halter top with a revealing neckline and a short tube skirt. Her top was accented with a satin bow at the center of the V-neckline.

She wore two necklaces with lovely pendants in silver tone and a black wide bracelet in her right arm.

Bipasha's newly acquired bob cut is still in place and continues to look great on her. It compliments her facial cut and gives her an air of confidence."

Well that's all I follow. Thanks rediff, for my complimenting my interests. :)

Obscenities and Moral Policing

I am against both moral policing and the obscenities in public. But when I try to analyze it, I myself stand confused. Let me do a self introspection and writing always helps.

What motivated me to write this article is the latest post by Rashmi Bansal. She writes about MTV roadies and channel V hotties. What she wrote and what videos I saw when I did a bit of background check was shocking. They are so narrow-minded; they have just concentrated on the college kids and the fresh out of college generation. I myself don’t swear in common day to day dialogues, but I know it’s pretty natural and I do accept it from others. But it is entirely different if these come on national telecast and that too without beeps. I just saw a video about behind the scenes roadies and the profane obscenities totally shook me. Asking people to roam around in undergarments in a 7 pm show is not really acceptable.

Another thing I dislike more is swear words in public. I know it’s close to reality, but there should be some scale. I didn’t like “Departed” in spite of it being a nice movie is just because though I tried hard, I could not justify the F word in every 10 seconds. In the Indian context, obscenities strike me even more. I can accept if these kinds of shows (Hotties / Roadies) are reserved for after 11, or some other channel. Or even if parents just take care that the child is not watching these. But I myself has once seen that a small kid and his father both watching “Kaanta lagaa” and enjoying it.

Am I being Shiv Senaish? May be. But I still don’t support Sushma Swaraj’s act to ban Fashion TV. Banning is not a solution. But definitely, the parents should be responsible. But who will do that?

And doesn’t this contradict with the fact that I like Bipasha Basu? I definitely wouldn’t have liked Jism to be a movie where whenever John and Bipasha come, they show two flowers.

I guess it is just the beginning phases of a developing nation. In a developed nation, all things are available. But because the people are educated, they themselves can differentiate between right and wrong and take care of their children. On the other hand, in India, the content has come but people are not smart enough to take it wisely. I guess, with time things will settle. Let’s just pass this trend as momentary.

Side Note: Off late, I realize that most of my posts end up in a solution where people have to be more knowledgable and wise? Is this a practical solution? And is it achievable, If so, how?

Immigrants

It all starts by reading these two articles. The Bachi Karkaria one and the Greatbong one. I think I can comment on this new hot topic of immigrants as well. I have been an immigrant all my life. But still I can’t fight FOR the immigrants. There are two reasons for that. First one is, I feel, commenting on immigration problem as an immigrant is like the extremely dirty proverb “Kandhe Pe Chadhao to Kaan mein Mutta hai” ( Take him in your shoulder and he will piss in your ears.) Yuck. I can’t believe I can write this on my blog, but please give me a more apt and decent one. The other day my manager (American) was discussing how he hates the quotas for H1B and how they should be removed. I felt I don’t have the right to speak on that topic.

The second thing is I have seen two of my favorite places ruined because of the influx of immigrants. First one is Bangalore. Undue advantage has been taken on the generally quiet and well mannered Kannada people. Firstly by the Tamils and now by the North Indians. The costs have risen sky high and the traffic jams. Plus this tendency of Indians in general to impose their culture on others. Unlike them becoming like the rest of the Kannadigas, everybody wants their own kind of living. And with the predominantly young software crowd, things are out of hands.

The second case is that of Puri. Did you know it belonged to Orissa? Even if you did, just go there once, you won’t feel it that way. Its Bengalis all around. Even the shopkeepers say only one sentence in Oriya- ‘Dhai Kiri Kiri’ (hurry up, fast fast or something similar) and this too just because for some strange reason Bengalis find it funny. Makes me cry though.

Coming to the recent Marathi Manoos chaos. Technically I can comment because I have been born and brought up in Maharashtra. It’s Maharashtra’s and Nagpur’s generosity/fault that I didn’t learn Marathi because I could survive well without it. Anyway, I think Mumbai is an exception. I have never been to Mumbai but I have been to New york. And if Mumbai is even a bit like it, it’s a city of immigrants. The city thrives on immigrants. And New York was the first place ever I liked the immigrants. I think Mumbai is also the same.

Let Pune be the city of Marathi manoos. And that does not mean immigrants not allowed, but immigrants acting as “In Rome, Do as the Romans Do”. Same has to apply with Bangalore now as it is in irreparable state. Let Mysore be the Pune of Karnataka. As for Kolkata and Chennai, they are different league. Whatever you try to do, they will never change. Kolkata will always be bongy and Chennai be Tamily.

Ok, so as the conclusion was ‘In Rome Do as the Romans do’, a bit of appendage is necessary: ‘To the extent you don’t loom foolish’ and this appendage applies to all those fake American accent putters. J

Republic days of the Past

Oh yes, this is how I started the blog with. Musing about the olden golden days. And here we go again. Let's begin. And it's fun. Because this does have a beginning, a middle and an end. Surprisingly beginning and ends are just 1 years each.

Beginning: I don't remember what I did in Lower KG (We called it KG1) but in KG 2, I performed. Stop.... I forgot a prologue.

Prologue: Republic day for me/OF Ambajhari Nagpur, people mean the mega interschool competition held at the ATS grounds in the OF estate. Don't be overwhelmed by the abbreviations and the jargons, it simply means the only stadium in our locality. There used to be 2 sections, KG schools and schools (included primary and secondary). There was competition in 3 categories (March Past, Dance, Mass PT) and finally the coveted best school title). Note that KG schools did not participate in March Past.

Resume Beginning: I was in the dance competition and we danced on the famous 'Jee Ka Janjal' which I also mention in an earlier post. I don't remember whether we won or lost but undoubtedly that was my biggest ever stage appearance. I would believe the typical crowd will be 6-8 thousand people. And that was the end. I never performed anything on the republic day ever after.

Middle: As I said, I never performed after that and the main reason being PT and dance was a girls only territory and march past was for people >= 9th Standard. So lets concentrate on the other factors for this huge period between 1st standard to 10th standard.

Though officially a holiday, thanks to my fathers insistence, we never thought we could NOT go to school that day. Another attraction was the Laddus. After flag hoisting in respective schools, there used to be sweets distribution to all the students in the school. It used to be 2 laddus and a packet of Chewda. Sometimes the school gave just 1 laddu and we would shout that the management is "eating" money. Anyway the point is not that. My mother is a big fan of this school laddus (though they are far from the best) and it was perhaps the only occasion where I could give something to mom instead of she giving something which was the case every time. So fighting with my greed and determination, generally mom will end up with at least half the laddu and I would like to believe that she understood the hardwork that went behind giving her that piece.

The other fact is the feeling of patriotism. Pardon me for generalizing my feelings, I feel Indians are one of the least patriots amongst all countries. At least from what I have seen, patriotism amongst Indians is far less than the US people though its a farce because hardly any of the US people have American roots. But this republic was different. I would wake up and amidst getting ready to go to school, I would surely not miss the live telecast of the republic day celebration from Delhi. With the entire nation, I would also stand up when the national anthem was sung in Delhi with the 21 firings of canon. After that dressed in an all white uniform I will head for the school where until the actual falg hoisting starts, they will play all the patriotic songs most moving being 'Ae mere watan ke logon'. Then after the laddu distribution, we all will head towards the big stadium where the inter-school competitions will start. With one eye on the ongoing events, we will be mainly looking at all the food and small toys shop. We never got our weekly/monthly pocket money but in occasions like these, we did get some (10/- being on the higher side.) We always compromised with cheap food so that we could buy some toy not because the toy is good but because the longevity of a toy or a flag is more than the food and we get more time to show off our purchases. Finally around afternoon, the prizes will be given out and more often than not, it was the 'other' school which won most of it and I came back with a sad face back home. But that is only momentary. Some special cooking by mom will be ready in the tables. I will ask maa about all the details of the various tableau (jhaaki) that were in procession in Rajpath Delhi and who won the best tableau which was mostly goa or lakshwadeep.

Lastly in this middle zone, I also realized that republic day actually marks the entry of spring. It was the first day when I would take off my sweater in the middle of the day and never wear it again.

The end: The end was as undramatic as it can be. I was in 11th standard. There was a divided opinion among that being the last year you can have some fun in school life or being the most crucial year which if neglected will screw up the very important 12th standard. The geek that I am, I was of the second opinion and hence restrained from taking part in the March Past which all others of my class participated in. Me and my firend sumit were the only two 'studious' guys who did not take part but that doesn't mean we didn't come to the event. We were there full time. What extra advantages we got by not participating is a question I still wonder.


Anyway, after this pretty much was the end of republic day celebrations for me. Though we did celebrate it at college, it just involved 5 minutes of flag hoisting ceremony.

New year, new musings

Well, a new year has come. I spent the first few hours of the new year with old and dear college friends partying in California. A great start I should say. A few new year resolutions made only to be forgotten and renewed during the Bengali new year 3.5 months later.

A few trends I have observed. A increase in the number of blog readers. Makes me happy but sad as well at the thought that though people are reading, even those who used to comment, do not comment. And I could trace various reasons for that. Most important is being lazy to type. The second most important reason is that most of the times the topics are so vague and out of the world that people won't connect to it. For example my last 2 cookery posts. Even the 2 posts related to West bengal was not that appreciated. Only bengalis will care about bengal. Whatever, I have decided to go on with my present style of writing irrespective of people's perspective about the blog. The trick is to have good titles to increase the readership. For example, te title of this blog is very vague and will never come up with possible searches. On the other had, things like potter pandal, tasleema nasreen will be widely read.

Coming to the third point, different that I am, from everybody, this one, is another characteristic of mine which right at this moment I am cherishing immensely. There is a bus service in Natick: Natick neighborhood bus, going all around Natick. Nobody except the really old people ride in the bus. those who can't drive or don't have money enough to have a car. Well, as I still haven't got mine, I sometimes travel in that bus. Even a few friends of mine did. But they got scared. They feel depressed seeing all the old people. But for me, it gives me hope, a lot of hope. A hope that I want to live a long life (bolte nei). That during the long life though my children will desert me, the government wont. I can still talk about how Mr X of 72 is dating Ms Y of 76 and how Mrs Z made pudding by mixing pudding powder as per instructions on teh back of the pack. All of them know each other. Today all the 3 of them scolded a 4th lady for not wearing enough winter clothing. I liked the whole fact a lot. Though I feel out of place. Though it should act as a motivation to buy the car soon that I do not have to look out of place, but I think even after I have my car, I will intentionally travel in this bus and sitting in a corner window seat in the back of the car, listen to these old people.

4th point is about doing things alone. People want to do several things alone and several things in groups of different size. To talk a bit yuck, even though bath with your partner may be a good idea, one never wants to potty with other people. While this is straight forward, some other things are difficult to generalize. Like eating food. Some people like it alone and some people like big group. Shopping is another such thing. Now for watching movies at the theater. As far as Indians are concerned, it is very rare that one goes alone. But today I made up my mind. Nobody was ready to see 'Atonement', so I went alone. And it was not bad. Neither was it good because I did miss sharing my ideas about beautiful Kiera, I missed talking about the wonderful transition of typewriter sound to music. But it gave me a lot of self confidence. That I can do even the unimaginable things alone.

Tublu

Sandipan Bollywood Awards 2007

Continuing with the tradition of Sandipan Bollywood Awards from 2006, here we go into our new year.

Disclaimer: Be prepared for a typical Sandipan awards, for there will be plenty of partialities. After all even Oscar and filmfare is not without favoritism. And a close second award will be awarded in some cases. There will be a special category of Razzie awards as well. This year it will be more towards anti feeling towards some than favoritism towards a few. Also, I have not seen many movies this year

Here we go. Let me start with the BollyRazzie awards.

Worst Film: Jhoom Barabar Jhoom. From songs to style to story, everything was pathetic. RGV ki aag doesn’t get this award for 2 starcasts: Urmila and Sushmita

Worst Actor: John Abraham, in Goal.

Worst Actress: Konkona Sen for her various movies. She is terribly overacting nowadays.

Anyway now I come to The mainstream awards.

Best Story: Possibly Taare Zameen Par.(Haven't seen the movie yet though)

Best Song: Sajna di wari wari from Honeymoon travels Pvt Ltd (For the awesome horn effect in the background) and "Om Shanti Om" song with all stars (Esp Juhi and that famous dance step by Rani)

Best Music Director: A.R. Rahman , “Guru”. who else?

Best Singer(Male) : Shankar Mahadevan, Maa from Taare Zameen Par.

Best Singer (Female): Shreya Ghoshal, Barson re megha megha

Best television interview: As an Obituary and posthumous award to Benazir Bhutto in Devil's Advocate especially the way she pronounces "Pakstan" with missing 'i'. The second one goes to Rani in the Madhuri Dikshit KWK interview.

Best Item Song: Mayya Mayya Mallika Sherawat

Lets move on to the main awards now.

Best Comedian: Tabu, Amitabh and Sweeni Khara in Cheeni Kum.(Wittiest movie)

Best Supporting Actor: Mithun Chakrabarty in Guru. Not very sure about this though. Open to better suggestions

Best Supporting Actress: Sweeni Khara for Cheeni Kum.

Best Villain: Shilpa Shukla as Bindiya Nayak in Chak De India

Best Newcomer (male) : Prashant Raj Sachdev in RGV ki aag.(Award given because of lack of better choice)

Best Newcomer (Female) : Sagarika Ghatge (Preeti Sabarwal) in Chak De India.(I hate the eggface Deepika)

Best Actor: Shahrukh Khan for Chak De India (Unanimous).

Best Actress: I don’t want to give this to Cat Eye Kareena (has animosity with Bipasha and dumped Shahid) and neither to Aishwarya (I hate the family of Pati, Patni, Woh(Amar Singh), Beta and Bahu). So the award goes to Soha Ali Khan in 'Khoya Khoya Chaand' for so much looking like her mom.

Best Director: Aamir Khan for 'Taare Zameen Par'

Best Film: Chak De India for creating the enormous impact. The T20WC may be attributed to it.

Comments Welcome!

On Taslima Nasreen

Does it matter? Is everybody supposed to have an opinion on the Taslima issue? Ideally it should not. But somehow I could not stop thinking. I felt the need that I have to have a stance on this issue. But I was confused. Unlike the majority of the blogger society or the news channel projected this to be a violation of artistic freedom, somehow I was never satisfied with the answer.
Another thing is that we should forget the political colors that has been surrounding the entire issue. As for that, there can not be any separate opinion that the political drama was of 3rd grade.

But let's come to the issue of writing something which may hurt the sentiments of certain people. Being an ardent fan of Jane Austen, I feel you need not take the shelter of hot and controversial topics to show off your literary talents. But whenever I think that, the much highlighted term of "Artistic Freedom" keeps poking me. I begin thinking about what would have happened if there were no artistic freedom? Would the world still have been flat? Would the sun still have rotated around the sun and could Archimedes have ever said Eureka? When I think along those lines, I take my view back. This dilema had been haunting me for almost a month now. But suddenly the week before last, I got my answer. And this time it was form Shobhaa Dey in Sunday Times of India 9th Dec.

The gist is this: Let's define the people. If a person is writing controversial thing, it got to have a purpose behind it. Simply writing controversies is a cheap tactics of money making. Noway better than yellow journalism. Let's say Taslima or Rushdie were not yellow journalists. Through their writings, they want to grab the world's attention to the atrocities they thing is a part of their religion with the hope that there will be some kind of action and world wide support which will help in abolishing this problems from the society.

The moment you think on those lines, you are no more an author. You are a human right activist or some rebel or some leader. Authoring becomes just a mean of expanding your net to attract more and more people towards the mission. So the bottomline is, when you write controversies, you should eventually atleast think that what you think will benefit the society and work towards it. Simply writing sensational stuff is a cheap act.

Now what did Taslima do? Agreed, she was in mortal danger in Bangladesh and had to run away. But why did she stop her protests? Why did we never see her in the streets of London/ Kolkata / wherever condemning what she found out in the religion. But I didn't see her fight. Shobhaa just confirms the fact (in case there is some error in my judgement). Taslima should not have been afraid of death. She should have taken her cause to the streets of Bengal. It would have been a test for the cultural capital of India also fr it's reaction to her cause.

Now it falls in line with Galileo/ Leonardo Da Vinci etc. These people were severely punished. But they took their cause to the streets. They believed that the current believes are wrong and people need to change.

I don't think Taslima is brave enough to face the brunt. She is not ready to take her cause to the level when people can actually be benefited. And this is why, I think she is wrong. If you dare, come what may you should go ahead.

Well on a side note, if it were me, I would have chosen the easier way, avoid controversy. NOt the other way round..