"One Day I will find the right words, and they will be simple" – Jack Kerouac
“This time I saw something on Michelle’s blog and thought even I would get into the fad of checking out what movie I belong to (really I dont believe in all this, just for fun
Fight Club!
What movie Do you Belong in?(many different outcomes!)
brought to you by Quizilla
What say??
“I was going through an article in The Times of India when it brought back the memories of Bangalore. It is one and the only place which I love more than Bombay, one primary reason being its open-mindedness towards music. Bombay is more pop-centric and no one but the connoiseurs can accept anything remotely related to Rock music. And the much touted pub-culture of Bangalore. You have to see it to believe it. Before I went there, there was a feeling that the pub-culture was over-hyped. But not so. There were pubs like Styx and Purple Haze which were nothing short of heaven for me. Believe me guys Bangalore is really more happening than Bombay.
It’s a bacchanal zone on and around Bangalore’s Brigade Road. At the dozen-odd watering holes here, techies rub shoulders with medicos, wannabe models with wannabe musicians, businessmen with ad professionals.
Pink heads mix with the gell-haired and hipster pants meld with micro-minis. Welcome to pubbing paradise.
It’s heady inside. As if some cult guru has ordained the final celebration. The blaring surround sound is only a sundry item in this boisterous scheme of things. If you throw your fist in the air on spotting a pal, you are making a cultural understatement. Raise your mug
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the following excerpt are solely that of the author and he doesent give a shit to what some people think. It is not influenced by anyone or any software as such.
It all started when some cool dude who goes by the name of Shawn Fanning was sitting somewhere thinking of a revolution quite unaware himself. But the drop of fuel that he poured was enough to ignite the whole world. There was born Napster and the domino fall of the music companies.
Then came Audiogalaxy which was shut down by a court-ruling. Up came KaZaA. The case against that is still pending. But lemme tell you something. No court in the whole world is capable of entirely stopping p2p.
I think all the media moguls from the big recording houses like Universal, Warner Bros., Sony are the biggest asses in the whole world.
Not quite.
P2P will always rule the internet.
It was a bloody monday as the city was rocked in its entirety by two powerful blasts that ripped it apart.
One of the blasts happened at 12:35 p.m. at Zhaveri Bazaar and the other shook the Gateway of India a half hour later.
The atmosphere was of gloom as the clouds, yet again, braced themselves for the days of thunder to come by. Its a characteristic of the day of calamity. The atmosphere too mourns the death of people.
There were body parts strewn everywhere and some pigeons lying around in a pool of blood. When the bird of peace is killed in an act of violence we should necessarily be going wrong somewhere. Innocent and unaware lives were lost in an impoverished charade of politics and religion.
And then comes the most widely staged spectacle. Politicians coming and throwing a farce in the faces of the already asleep. Then would come the blame-game and the time for endless enquiries and the wild goose chase. Next up would be the political debauchery in the face of the inhumanity.
Days would go by and the whole issue would be buried by the sands of time never to be uncovered again. A clich
“Rock in Bombay or should I say India has been the bastion of the society branded mavericks.
Digression:But I would beg to differ on this viewpoint. Check “”Rock is Dead””.
18 years back in time, Independence Rock (I-Rock) was started with a few oganizers coming together. And it has now snowballed into an event that people swear by. Farhad Wadia, one of the main organizers was a part of the band that played at the first I-Rock and from then on he took up the reins of the event.
Touted as India’s Woodstock it has lived up to the name. It rocks the city every year on 14th and 15th of August. (this year it was 15th and 16th).
To me its an annual pilgrimage that I cannot miss. Rang Bhavan has now been the mecca to the rockers. For 18 strong years, it has stood the Heavy Riffs, the Pounding Bass and Cymbals and the frenzied souls. Come 15th and you can see the rockers gather from all around bombay. Theres an unidentified feeling of amity and brotherhood among the rockers. Rockers move out of their homes strutting in their black T-Shirts, rebellious long hair and innovative beards.
The traditional queue outside Rang Bhavan to gain the entry has become more of a meeting place than the ritual it once used to be. And once you enter, then is when the rocking feeling grips you. The (relatively) huge amplifiers and the stage all set to unleash the power of the chosen few. This year was the biggest I-Rock in its history with the number of rockers crossing the 5000 mark. If not a landmark, its atleast a beginning. The bands come and belt out some originals and the omnipresent covers ranging from Black Sabbath to Metallica to Iron Maiden and the usual.
And after the bands have come and gone, we rockers start to leave the place only with a resolve to come next year and get rocked all the more……..
Late at night all systems go
You have come to see the show
We do our best You’re the rest
You make it real you know
There is a feeling deep inside
That drives you fuckin’ mad
A feeling of a hammerhead
You need it oh so bad
Adrenaline starts to flow
You’re thrashing all around
Acting like a maniac
Whiplash
The show is through the metal is gone
It is time to hit the road
Another town Another gig
Again we will explode
Hotel rooms and motorways
Life out here is raw
But we will never stop.”
“This is an article taken from the very famous TOI column “”Swaminomics””. I was surfing the web when I came across this website: www.swaminomics.org. And he article given below is truly significant.
Another Independence Day has come and gone. Right through history, imperial powers have clung to their possessions to death. Why, then, did Britain in 1947 give up the jewel in its crown, India?
For many reasons. The independence struggle exposed the hollowness of the white man’s burden. Provincial self-rule since 1935 paved the way for full self-rule. Churchill resisted independence, but the Labour government of Atlee was anti-imperialist by ideology.
Finally, the Royal Indian Navy mutiny in 1946 raised fears of a second Sepoy Mutiny, and convinced British waverers that it was safer to withdraw gracefully.
But politico-military explanations are not enough. The basis of empire was always money. The end of empire had much to do with the fact that British imperialism had ceased to be profitable. World War II left Britain victorious but deeply indebted, needing Marshall Aid and loans from the World Bank. This constituted a strong financial case for ending the no-longer-profitable empire.
Empire-building is expensive. The US is spending one billion dollars a day in operations in Iraq that fall well short of full-scale imperialism. Through the centuries, empire-building was costly, yet constantly undertaken because it promised high returns.
The investment was in armies and conquest. The returns came through plunder and taxes from the conquered. No immorality was attached to imperial loot and plunder. The biggest conquerors were typically revered (hence titles like Alexander the Great, Akbar the Great, and Peter the Great). The bigger and richer the empire, the more the plunderer was admired.
This mindset gradually changed with the rise of new ideas about equality and governing for the public good, ideas that culminated in the French and American revolutions. Robert Clive was impeached for making a little money on the side, and so was Warren Hastings. The white man’s burden came up as a new moral rationale for conquest: It was supposedly for the good of the conquered. This led to much muddled hypocrisy. On the one hand, the empire needed to be profitable. On the other hand, the white man’s burden made brazen loot impossible. An additional factor deterring loot was the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny. Though crushed, it reminded the British vividly that they were a tiny ethnic group who could not rule a gigantic subcontinent without the support of important locals.
After 1857, the British stopped annexing one princely state after another, and instead treated the princes as allies. Land revenue was fixed in absolute terms, partly to prevent local unrest and partly to promote the notion of the white man’s burden. The empire proclaimed itself to be a protector of the Indian peasant against exploitation by Indian elites.
This was denounced as hypocrisy by nationalists like Dadabhoy Naoroji in the 19th century, who complained that land taxes led to an enormous drain from India to Britain. Objective calculations by historians like Angus Maddison suggest a drain of perhaps 1.6 per cent of Indian GNP in the 19th century. But land revenue was more or less fixed by the Raj in absolute terms, and so its real value diminished rapidly with inflation in the 20th century. By World War II, India had ceased to be a profit centre for the British Empire.
Historically, conquered nations paid taxes to finance fresh wars of the conqueror. India itself was asked to pay a large sum at the end of World War I to help repair Britain’s finances.
But, as shown by historian Indivar Kamtekar, the independence movement led by Gandhiji changed the political landscape, and made mass taxation of India increasingly difficult. By World War II, this had become politically impossible.
Far from taxing India to pay for World War II, Britain actually began paying India for its contribution of men and goods. Troops from white dominions like Australia, Canada and New Zealand were paid for entirely by those countries, but Indian costs were shared by the British government. Britain paid in the form of non-convertible sterling balances, which mounted swiftly. The conqueror was paying the conquered, undercutting the profitability on which all empire is founded.
Churchill opposed this, and wanted to tax India rather than owe it money. But he was overruled by India hands who said India would resist payment, and paralyse the war effort. Leo Amery, secretary of state for India, said that when you are driving in a taxi to the station to catch a life-or-death train, you do not loudly announce that you have doubts about whether to pay the fare.
Thus World War II converted India from a debtor to a creditor with over one billion pounds in sterling balances. Britain, meanwhile, became the biggest debtor in the world. It’s not worth ruling over people you are afraid to tax. That’s why the British left. Our school textbooks do not mention this as a key reason why India got its independence. Yet, that is the case.
Chew on this!”
Bars of steel and people shouting behind them. Trapped in the three walls with cops whiplashing them. This is the scene in a trite bollywood movie.
But not with Nagesh Kukunoor. He is and was always known for breaking away from tradition. In his new movie 3 Deewarein, he subsumes a very subtle yet mind-numbing portrait of the 3 walls called the prison.
Its hard to imagine Nagesh Kukunoor with the typical hyderabadi accent that he sports. He is fast joining the league of the versatile actors of bollywood, few as they are.
The society condemns the criminals for the punishment that the judiciary gives them. But has anyone tried to understand, under what circumstances the crimes are committed? Or are they actually committed?
There have been several cases, where a so-called criminal is convicted of a crime he had never committed. And after a few years the slow judiciary realizes what a grave error it committed. But because of that one error, several lives would have been irreparably damaged.
In the High Courts alone there are about 2 million cases pending. The smaller courts have got an even greater backlog.
Where is the respite??
Where is the redemption??
Does the Indian Penal Code have a clause to punish the people who punish others??
“Most objective, yet didactic.
Most impassive, yet creative.
Comics have for years, enthralled the audiences by takes and double-takes of the polity and its likes. One way of expressing your strongest opinions without creating a flurry would be through comics.
I was going through “”The Essential Collection of Calvin and Hobbes”” when I read what Charles Schulz had to say. He said that contrary to popular belief the most difficult form of art was the one used for comics. After all a comic which is just capable of delivering the author’s view-point is no better than a soliloquy.
The creativity that goes behind contouring the milieu would be much intense than the one that goes behind the abstract. True, that abstract art (or the so called modern art) is considered by connoiseurs as only for the people who have the eye for it. But then isnt that one of the biggest drawbacks? Comics never target a specific set of people.
On a more lighter note, over the years I have realised that it becomes so easy to relate the comic strips to your daily life, thus pondering over the un-tread waters and thinking of the unthinkable.
Some of the personal favourites are (not necessarily in that order)
“
The Shatrughan Sinha duplicate recently created a flurry once again, as he roamed the covert nooks of the Parliament as freely as oxygen does.
The real issue here lies in the fact that the officials have arrested the person who posed as shotgun.
I think this is not justified at all. It only goes to show that the officials are trying to put a smoke screen in the front of the real security issue that has shaken the parliament. It was the same gate through which the terrorists had got in, in a preceding incident. The first step that they should have taken should have been maybe to strengthen the security.
Secondly, on what basis did they arrange the man??
A person who was just trying to help by proving that the security is slack should in fact be thanked.
On a more humorous note, I think that they are going to blame the whole issue on ISI or “”foreign hand“”. It is aptly demonstrated in MTV’s One Tight Slap.
Cultures and ethos are cyclic in nature.
Over the years we have seen that the eastern or more specifically the Indian urban culture has seen a radical shift towards the western kind of culture. But it wasnt always like this. We used to have a traditional Indian culture.
And now what we see is that the western countries are gradually moving towards the asia-centric cultural ethinics.
People keep ranting about how we degrade our culture by picking up western trinkets, but my argument would be that this process is cyclic and hence its redundant to talk about it.
Maybe after a few tens of years, when the cultures have exchanged their positions, the cycle will begin again. We will start getting back our inherent culture and the western countries theirs.
It is absolutely trifling to babble about ethos and cultures. Its a process that blows with the whiff of the winds. You cant stop it, neither can you control it.