Thursday, September 29, 2005

Disturbing.

Chelsea is sitting pretty at the top of the premier league with 7 wins out of 7. Their defence is almost impenetrable, and their forward line performing with mechanical efficiency.

Chelsea isn't supposed to do that. Chelsea is supposed to be a fashionable football club where star players are supposed to play a brand of extremely entertaining yet maverick football. Chelsea is supposed to be a ball club which puts flair ahead of results, and Chelsea is supposed to lurk somewhere in the upper half of the table, towards the top, but not quite there. Chelsea is supposed to be the Hollywood bevy, and not the Honda Robot assortment. Richie Rich Roman Abrahamovic and gaffer Mourinho unfortunately had other ideas. Culture killers!

On the other hand, Arsenal, which is playing as attractive a brand of football as ever, isn't winning enough, and is lingering somewhere mid table. Arsenal isn't supossed to do that either! They are supposed to win with clinical precision, stay at the top of the table, and one fine day, surpass Manchester United and win the league.

Strange things going on at the EPL. Disturbing. :|

**

Chelsea VS Arsenal Poster, 1938. (click picture to enlarge)

Saturday, September 24, 2005

A Brief History of Lovers


Friday, September 23, 2005

Bah! I'm so Bored

Like all good things come to an end, so did Rock Star INXS. I had missed the penultimate episode, and had somehow managed to goofup the fact that the grand finale was in the offing. Just like I always do, I came back home and started sifting through the cable TV landscape. I don't exactly hit the + or - programme button dumbly to ascend or descend the 0-99 whole number range till I come back to square one, ie, the channel where I had started out. That is too much hard work. I just check out the 10 odd channels that I find remotely bearable, and half of this(the better half) includes sports channels, while the other half includes some music, movie and news channels, and last but not the least, star world, if I don't stumble upon something else in the previous 9. All of this, usually in a 5 to 10 minute drill.

Thanks to an extreme bit of good luck, the other channels couldn't keep me attracted for more than a few seconds each. ESPN was showing some equestrian competition, where a poor horse made an extremely ungainly jump over a hurdle, causing the jockey to fly off from his saddle, stay in the air for a moment too long, and land back with a thud. My (extremely depraved) initial reaction was to laugh at the incident, that the commentator described simply in one word, 'Ouch'. One moment later, I realised the moral repercussions of my mistake, stopped laughing, and switched over to the next channel. Same jhol here, and pretty much everywhere else - nothing interesting enough. The new kids on the block, Ten sports and Zee sports are flooded with action from the lesser european leagues - portuguese, bundesliga and what not - they are fun for a while, but not for too long. Ten sports shows Serie A too, but it wasn't on at that time. They were showing the Sania Mirza match where she was mauled by the lesser ranked european girl. Watching the game was such a pain in the eye - the lights at the Netaji Indoor Stadium shined brightly on the courts when seen from the 30 degree camera angle, and this made the ball totally invisible on television. And the bloody broadcasters kept pursuing that camera angle.

I moved on - landed on Star world, and bingo! The finale of Rock Star INXS just started, with the credits still rolling in the foreground, and camera slowly moving around the stage, while catching a fleeting glimpse of Brooke Burke's leggy frame.

Marty, J.D. and Mig kicked off the 3 way grand finale with individual solos. Mig was up first, and sang 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. His effort was technically correct, but sadly, he couldn't fire up the stage, and lingering recollections of Suzie doing a much better effort on the same song some episodes back didn't help. I was disappointed - for I had held higher expectations from this aussie bloke, perhaps even considered him my favourite at one time. JD went next, and made a superb effort with 'you cant always get what you want'. Marty went last and sang 'wish you were here'. This guy's similitude with Mick Jagger was glaring - especially in the way they looked (skinny frame) and moved, though not in the way they sang. To cut a long story short, after Round 1 and deliberation of the judges, Mig was chucked, and after Round 2, where the judges (ie, the INXS band) hit the floor and performed with both JD and Marty, they came to the decision that JD was king. JD has good vocal talent to back him up, and his performances on stage had been electrifying, powerful, yet touching shades of vulnerability. I wasn't amazed at him being selected. In fact, right after he sang 'you cant always', it almost became self evident that he would get selected, and the rest of the show seemed somewhat pointless. It held me till the end only because of other reasons of a personal kind - Namely, this was a somewhat favourite show, and after today's darned episode, there wouldn't be one more. The INXS band raised a toast to him, and the show ended with Tim or someone saying 'tonight INXS becomes a band again', and a performance of a new track from their soon to be released album with their new lead singer. Bored, I went channelsurfing once again, this time halting at more stopovers on the cable tv landscape than I usually stop over at. Nah! Nothing interesting enough anywhere. Switched off the idiot box, and went off to check detailed reports of the scary rollercoaster helltrips of the stock market on the internet.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Real Life Mr. Incredible

Monday, September 19, 2005

Sex and Morality, the Morpheus Way

........................./´¯/)
......................,/¯..//
...................../..../ /
............./´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸
........../'/.../..../......./¨¯/
........('(...´(..´......,~/'...')
.........\.................\/..../
..........''...\.......... _.·´
............\..............(
..............\.............
I pronounce with pride that I live in my own self made moral universe. I am the king, and the slave out here. Stay Away!! :-)

Before logging out of Blogger for the day (and possibly, the month), yours truly turns on winamp, and kills himself by drowning in the mellow Stash concert for the next 50 minutes, where a 256 kbps mp3 file will slowly make him lose cognizance of his temporal physicality, and carry his incorporeal senses far away to another realm, where they'll coalesce with the rhythm of the acousticwaves.

Sex and Morality, the Indian Way

A new reality show is making waves in India. Personally I have no idea how such tasteless broadcast can make waves - I'm simply taking the words of the producers and gizmo promotions at face value. The theme of the show is quite simple - about a dozen young adults stay together in a swanky house, while competing in a music competition, for a coveted contract with a music company.

This show is a brilliant advertisement of our great Indian Parampara. The contestants touch the feet of their gurus and teachers after every 3 minutes, make a poker face and ask for the ashirvaad of the 'elders' from across the nation after every performance, and they have quickly made brothers and sisters out of each other. Any kind of sleaze is out of the question - this is an Indian show, and sleaze is blasphemy in India.

The same production company that produces this show runs another popular show all over the world, called 'Big Brother'. Like the Indian show, this too is a show of young adults staying together in a house. Another similarity this show shares with the Indian one - the contestants vote out one member every week.

But this is where the similarity ends, and that too, quite egregiously. Unlike the wonderfully puritanical Indian show, Big Brother is a show of decadence where the young adults (housemates), unlike their prudish Indian counterparts, are constantly indulging in kinky orgies, taking skinny dippings and doing other such wild things, on national television.

What is it about us Indians that we have to be so coy about sex? Why is sex such a tabu in India, of all places? On a larger context, why are we Indians and our societies are so desperately lacking even a semblance of openmindedness, and are buried in double standards, hypocrisy and a funny way of looking at women?

I really don't have the answer myself. Historically speaking, at best, I can assume that Islamisation has to do something with it, since in the good old days of the ancient world, it was our society that was the most advanced in the world, besides being wonderfully openminded (how ironic!). It was here that Kama Sutra was written, the bible of love and sex. Our epics are replete with such references of impropriety that they, put in context today and judged against our present moral standards, would bring heart attacks to many (including my uncool mom).

Some examples over the top of my head:

Karna is born to Kunti from an act of lovemaking between her and Surya, while she was still a maiden. After she marries Pandu (who was technically impotent), they decide that Kunti should bed the best of sperm donors that were on offer to get sons. So each of Kunti's 5 sons were the result of lovemaking between her and superhuman demigods. (Poor Pandu was technically impotent since he was under a curse that he would die the moment he had sex.) Moving on, the heroine of the epic, Draupadi, is polyandrous - married to all the five pandavas. Even imagining an analogous situation in our society today is impossible. The exquisitely beautiful Ahalya, married to the sage Gautama, grants sexual favours to Indra because she was bored of her old hag of a husband. While being plyed on a boat by Satyavati, the sage Parasurama is overpowered by a desire to make love to her. Realising that she had no way out of the situation, she consents to him, but on certain conditions : that her son would be assured of greatness, her stink (she was a fishergirl) would be gone, and a fog would shroud their lovemaking, so that no one could see them.

If we changed the names of the characters and demigods to present scenarios and asked people what they thought of it, I bet everyone and sundry would find them morally despicable. Change back the names to the demigods, and everyone's opinion would change in a flash. From an open minded perspective, the above mythological accounts are great exemplars of feminism, feminine empowerment, feminine sexuality, and equality in society. These ancient characters were veritable 21st century superwomen!!

Islam's dogmatic mandate not only brought a change in the existing easy going Indian social fibre, but a handful muslim conquerors destroyed art and culture brutally. Sufism did bring back some liberal thoughts, but it wasn't enough to replace the damage that took place to the free-thinking hindu and buddhist culture under the Islamic sword. Over a period of time, we had turned wonderfully incurious and numb, and the damage was irreversible to such an extent, that it has stood the test of time.

***

The other day, Rectors of some Indian Universities passed some wonderfully clever laws. At the Anna, Bombay and Orissa Universities, its been announced that women should not wear miniskirts, jeans, or any kind of western outfit (sort of forgotten at the moment which outfit was banned where) since not allowing these would bring in “more discipline and a sense of unity” among the students. (paraphrasing them). And, reduce chances of women getting molested and raped.

Excellent. So what's next? Because there is a terrorism threat, should we all give off our bikes and start moving in military tanks? Wear helmets and armours to go to the grocery?

By holding accountable the dress as opposed to the provocation, these moral policemen are only damaging the situation, and glorifying exactly the notion that needs to be driven out from our sensibilities. They can only believe that the dress is at fault, because at the back (and front) of their perverted mind runs the underlying notion and assumption that 'women are pieces of flesh'. And if these 'pieces of flesh' overdress, everything will be alright. bah! Why should the dress pay the price when clearly the problem lies somewhere else? These clever gentlemen don't realise that rape, molestation etc have nothing to do with the dress, while it has everything to do with the mindset of the people doing it. Bloody Motherfucking Idiots!

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Blogging via e-mail

I am exploring the feature of posting a blog using e-mail. This is a test mail.

 

The ‘Subject’ of the mail becomes the Title of the post.

The ‘Body’ of the mail becomes the content of the post.

 

If it works, is quite a useful feature. I will recommend to all my friends who procrastinate from blogging on the pretext of not having “net connectivity”.

 

-- Neo_Loaded