Doomoo's Blog

From the moment I first saw it, I always wished that the ‘Moment of Truth’ was brought to India. And my wish came true a few weeks ago. The Indian version called ‘Sach ka saamna’ that airs on Star Plus has caused quite a furore in the general public and even some wise MP’s have asked for bans. But some of my favourite quotes in the whole episode comes from the High Court Bench:

1. Switch off your TV, Mister, if you don’t like it, or change the channel. Moral policing is not our job.
2. We don’t think our social values are so fragile that one TV programme will
damage them.

Seriously, these culturally erect guys took the hard way out by pursuing legal action rather than pressing a button on their remotes. What do they want anyway? An apology? “Sir, I am so sorry that I stole money from my job or slept with some random person. I will never do it again, and even if I do, I won’t tell because as you pointed out, telling the truth ‘offends your culture and ethos‘.” WTF?

The contestants come of their own volition, have a choice to discontinue at any point, and if they lose their jobs or their wives so be it. They are mature adults and cannot be told how to act by other, more mature adults.

I have a feeling that the actual reason for demanding a ban on the serial is that we are unable to accept a different opinion or behaviour and we want to believe life is dandy and perfect. Ain’t that the truth?

Q: What’s the best word to scare one’s wife when one’s down with fever and other flu-like symptoms?

A: Oink.

I know, don’t tell me – I’m mean as an average. Sick as a mass murderer. Aaargh.

The similes are off colour today. Apologies. A little under the weather. And speaking of weather, check this out.

Hurrah for our government and their proactiveness. Ok back to the bed. Blogging shall soon resume. Don’t go too far.

After the recent racial attacks on Indians in Australia, Canada and never-never land, Indians are now being racially targeted in unexpected quarters – India’s metros.

Earlier in the day, Chennai-ites were shocked to learn that Indians were flowing into Chennai like rasam in a plate of rice. One man, while self-immolating was heard shouting the slogan, “Who set me on fire” to the joy of the mob that had gathered around him. Upon hearing this, the Chief Minister immediately declared that babies born with non-Indian names would be given gold coins and made to cover up their nudity for this was a most non-Tamil state of being. At the time of going to press, a bill was being discussed to make curd rice the symbol of the Tamil movement.

In New Delhi, young boys teased young Indian girls, occasionally molesting or raping them in order to a lesson. Cops who stopped some of these offenders were immediately presented with a cellphone saying, “Lo baat kar lo”. The code phrase led to a wide smile from the cops who immediately recognized the Dilli ka bandas and responded with, “Panchod.” Later in the evening, Punjabis and Nepalis joined the Delhi-ites in a candle light vigil at the newly-rechristened Delhi Gate.

As the tension spread, Kolkata was slow to react since it was on strike for no apparent reason. As a result of general excitement, it had to call off the strike in order to protest the vast numbers of Indians coming in from non-Bangladeshi borders. “This is not true, we are never racist”, Mr Banerjee said without provocation. “We are too slow to be racists. We will come last.”, he said and giggled with glee bordering on insanity. Upon further enquiring, it was understood that he had attempted a joke. Sourav Ganguly further fuelled outrage among his fans by revealing that the Fake IPL Player was indeed an Indian.

Mumbai-ites were appalled after learning that most of the people in the city were Indians and that they were a minimum in their maximum city. As a stop-gap measure, they renamed their IPL team to ‘Mumbai Mumbai-ites’. Also on the edge of the sea, tourists were treated to a newly-lit Gateway of Mumbai. A pro-Mumbai political party burned down cabs, shops, slums, trains, babies and pictures of the numeral zero claiming that these were Indian influences they didn’t need. “The Marathi man has been suffering indignity for too long now”, said Mr Bhamurdekar as he packed his bags to leave office at 3 PM. “I’ve been working hard, but these bhaiyyas are ruining Mumbai”, he wistfully added as he stared at Mrs Godbole.

The policemen around the country seem to be helpless as they claim that their organization has been infiltrated by Indians. We will keep bringing you news as it happens. Stay tuned.

(c) Paranoid Indian Media

While India began their T20 title defence under the spotlight with much fanfare, at the same time an ageless Indian performer won yet another title in one of the most competitive sports on earth.

Congratulations Leander Paes on your fifth Slam.

It’s a great time to be Vijay Mallya. His fly-fly airline company has added 600 odd crores to its market cap. His daddy’s road is finally going to get fixed. Those two drivers who’re always first from the bottom had their best start yet and Giancarlo Fisichella came in 15th. And the Bangalore Royal Challengers almost won this year’s IPL. But not quite. Well played anyway.

Last year’s bad patch is a thing of the past it seems – the good times seemed to have finally started.

There was a warning that the news of Prabhakaran’s killing may cause riots in the city, so the company that I work for let me go one hour early today. No doubt they’ll keep me back one hour late somewhere in the near future.

So, given the risk of venturing out into the city on a dangerous day, half my blog’s readership (my friend PJ) and I decided to do what most rational souls would have done – travel for about 10-15 km to the Landmark store where India’s most powerful blogger (or something like that), Amit Varma was making an appearance to promote his book.

The book reading was good, although for those of you interested in celebrity trivia, Amit pronounces that as ‘dat’. The passage that Amit started out with contained swear words and orgasmic sounds; these were greeted by silence and a muffled gasp by the Chennai audience who are not used to such potty mouths. And after the discussion with Sharanya and another reading, came the funniest part of the session – audience Q&A. Some gems from the evening below:

1. I am a journalist, and as a journalist I know what journalists go through. Since I’m a journalist who’s written a couple of books called ‘?????’ and ‘The ???? of ????’, my journalistic question to you is about journalistic writing. What is it?

2. Why don’t you start a website?

3. WHO IS THIS YOUR FRIEND SANCHI?

The last question came from a really grumpy but cute old gentleman. The end of the session was followed by the book signing and the most anticipated part of the evening – snacks. Unfortunately, my Ayurvedic diet mandates that bread cannot be eaten, so I had to keep away from the sandwiches.

Oddly, Amit seemed to remember me and insisted on getting his photograph taken with me. Here’s the picture we took after a nice, short conversation about writing, Mumbai, blogging, wives (all good), work and books.

Amit signed my book with, “It’s nice to finally meet you.” The feeling was mutual Amit.

Also, check out Sunil’s more detailed coverage of the event here.

What a day – The Hand that rocked the Lotus, rules the country again. Of course, the Left didn’t do well, because you know that in our culture a ‘Left Hand’ means shit.

All the news channels are thrilled to bits that their exit polls were correct and this is a common headline across the board, ‘UPA Win – Just as we had predicted.’ CNN IBN is even showing that their new website has had 7.5 million hits so far. What joy for me.

I just hope that a united government is able to work towards the progress we desperately need now – no more communal tension, effective anti-terrorism measures, economic and infrastructural reforms. We’ve had enough of these problems – time to move on.

Moving to the IPL, one spot was booked in the semis. Mumbai effectively walked out of the semi-finals of IPL 2 when Sachin walked off the field having scored only 11 from 15 balls. Despite reaching a reasonable total, it was Sachin’s reliable captaincy that ensured they would never make it past Dhoni and Hayden. If anyone should have the nickname ‘The Wall’, it really should be Hayden. Not only does he play with consistency and is difficult to get out, but he also looks massive – a veritable Great Wall of Chennai. And it is on this wall with an orange cap that Chennai have jumped to the other side of the tournament.

The only interest in the DC vs KKR match was to see if DC would continue to be in the hunt for the semis. KKR has become like the Third Front of this IPL now; they can only screw up the other teams’ chances (as BJP claimed the Third Front did in these elections) to be in the top four, and that’s exactly what one though when Andrew Symonds was run out.

KKR managed a very good total of 160 that was primarily a result of a 17-ball 43 by David Hussey. A solid start by Gilly didn’t seem like it would be enough – at the end of the 19th over they still needed 21 to win. But a sensational final over, which Rohit Sharma faced most of, yielded 26 runs, and ensured that KKR continued its losing habit.

It wasn’t without controversy though as Mortaza was no-balled in the early part of the over as one of the fielders wasn’t within the circle. McCullum fought tooth and nail, but didn’t manage to win the argument with the umpire. Poor McCullum I feel so bad for him, he showed so much determination today – being captain of KKR is very much like being CEO of Citi. Chief of a shiny, sinking ship.

Onto some blooperdom and today we feature a Ramiz Raja classic: “It’s touch and go, and it’s more go than touch.” He really knows how to turn a phrase, with more phrase than turn. Also, check out a nice collection of these commentary classics from Cricinfo.

And is it just me or are the Zoozoos getting irritating? They were fine when they first appeared, but it’s all too predictable now.

A match between two of the best teams in the competition had to be a good one.

Just two overs of the Delhi Darevdevil’s innings made all the difference in their getting to an imposing total of 173. One was faced by Dilshan and one by Karthik and they yielded 24 and 23 respectively spoiling the hard work of DC in the field.

The chase was on all the way through. Gilchrist was at his best despite a stretched hamstring (or so it seemed) and DC’s chase was pretty much on his shoulders alone as far the number of runs and run rate were concerned. He had scored 64 out of a team total of 86 when he inside-edged Sangwan, the only bowler he really couldn’t get after. No one else got beyond even run a ball or to double figures up to that point.

The Aussie show continued as Andrew Symonds threatened to do a Gilly. But he fell to the harmless looking Bhatia for 41 alongwith Dwayne Smith, leaving his team a few shy of the target. After which, as someone on Twitter said, DC did a KKR. Delhi’s clear lead means that the battle for 4th place gets closer. None of the other teams including Chennai can let their guard down even for a bit now. What fun!

And IPL’s creative ‘guess the over’ game has been withdrawn as it’s been likened to gambling by some of our ministers and you know that Mr Modi runs away from anything our ministers sneer at.

Sorry for not adding a NSFW warning yesterday – my bad!

Determination is good in sport, but not when it’s used to convert victories into losses. And so it came to pass that KKR of the mi-dust touch scored a total of 174 and lost comfortably to Mallya’s boys. McCullum finally came good as fielder and batsman, but is still to come good as captain. Ross Taylor stitched together 81 from 33 balls to ensure that KKR’s hole-digging continued to reach a new low. SRK’s incentive to return continues to ensure that the team really works manfully against winning. Looking at McCullum though, you can’t help but feel bad for him – he’s like a strongman put in the middle of a nuclear battlefield. Fat lot of good those muscles do him.

Bravo to Mumbai who comfortably overtook KXIP’s piddly totaly of 116 which was always going to be a low one when Duminy got Yuvraj out in his first over. KXIP’s fortunes seemed to have reversed since Sreesanth got fit. His mediocre bowling and his basic fielding errors are only surpassed by his buffoonery. Tendlya finally coming into his own and making a decent-sized score and Lee steaming in like he did when he made his debut.

The table looks very interesting now. The last few games should see a desperate race to the finish with Rajasthan, Mumbai, Deccan, Bangalore and Punjab all vying for the last two spots in the semis. Much anticipation.

Also, I figured out Danny Morrison’s sentence construction rule: A full stop. Is acceptable. At any point. In a sentence.

Sad IPL-related news – A man in Mumbai kills his son for watching the IPL. Men like him give drinking a bad name.

For all of those who thing that SRK doesn’t know cricket, you may be right. But he does know about brand management and business. KKR is the most valued franchise in the $2 bn IPL, and most of those brands come through SRK himself.