Sach Ka Samna will do well to samnofy its own sach!

The recent show Sach ka samna is making waves. It is being spoken about everywhere, in local trains, news channels, and by the office loiterers. People talk about it in the same breath as the first edition of KBC with Amitabh Bachchan. Both are on Star Plus. Both are on prime slots. Both are a question and answer format. Both are about winning a crore rupees. Both are rip offs of popular shows outside India. But for me, the comparison ends there.  The baritone of AB’s voice pales in comparison to Khandelwal. Inspite of being seated on the high chair, AB could emote that empathy he felt with the person on the hot seat. It could be mocking or throwing in more doubts, but it felt as though AB was living every moment of the contestant’s pressure. RK falls woefully short here. The powder pack on his face makes him look like a clown, he could do with a lot less. He perspires to deliver his dialogue right, more than the contestant. He asks nasty questions without any sympathy, voice modulation. The sound effects don’t help him either. I feel more inclined to follow up on the contestant’s personal lives after they have exited from the show. Is Star Plus listening?

The Police brush

It was a big white canvas.

Not a spot of guilt.

The first encounter was within their borders.

Documentation and I was in order.

But they dipped their brush in a pot of grease.

Wanted it coloured gold.

Cause the pages had a little crease.

Painted it with a silver speck.

So that it won’t show on the white deck.

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Still, the canvas was now jaundiced.

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But they say the cure could only be more plush,

Not just a stroke of the paint brush.

Greed overcame the Lord of this prey.

I tore my canvas and walked away.

Not a spot of guilt (on them)
Not a spot of guilt.(on ahem)

Azhar or Qasab or Sanju or Sec 420

I was miffed with Azhar getting a Congress ticket for the elections. What has the country come to? It seems like the graver the sin you commit, the better are your chances of getting political mileage.

On a different note, does Dawood drive the politics in the country as well? Take a look again at the title of this post, and you will get what I am saying.

Please do not help me.

A recent visit to the mall left me really sighing for some personal space while shopping. The one that I was really annoyed with was the Health and Glow showroom. It is housed in a space hardly 300 sq feet. There are sales representatives every 5 square feet. They shove their products into your face, bother you with would you like to try it irrespective of whether it is a tube of toothpaste or an eyeliner, and above all, block all pathways. If you escape one, you bump into another even before you could say hallelujah. I do not know if there are many other shoppers like me who get bothered with this continuous pestering. I am more likely to not buy their product in this case than I would have if I were left alone.

Catty About It

The following is an article that appeared in today’s news.

Once kitten, twice shy

Gardener of Malad society gets caught dumping four tiny kittens into creek; animal lover who had him booked hopes he won’t repeat it

By Anand Holla
Posted On Friday, January 23, 2009 at 02:22:52 AM

Gardener Sangappa Gawde holds a kitten after it was rescued
They are barely a month old and incapable of doing harm to anyone. But four stray kittens born to a cat at Malad’s Haridwar Housing Society were mercilessly dumped into the nearby creek. Fortunately, the tiny moggies still have eight lives to go, thanks to resident Irene Fernandes who spotted two of the society’s gardeners stuffing them into a gunny sack. Fernandes spotted the two men from her window at around 12 pm on Thursday, and rushed downstairs to find out what they were up to. One of the gardeners, Sangappa Gawde, ran towards the Malvani Creek with the sack. When he came back, Fernandes asked him what he’d done with the kittens, but he said he had no idea what she was talking about and that he’d only thrown some garbage into the creek. Fernandes then got in touch with local animal rights activist Bhavin Gathani, who rushed to the scene and informed the Bangur Nagar police about the incident. After booking Gawde under the Prevention of Cruelty Act, the police took him to the creek and asked him to show them where he had thrown the kittens. By 4 pm, the purring kittens were found unhurt and reunited with their mother. Bangur Nagar police said that the gardeners had committed the act at the behest of some society members who found the kittens to be a nuisance. “Had any of the kittens died, the accused could even be punished with five years imprisonment under the law,” warned Gathani. “If societies have a problem with strays dirtying their premises, they should approach the BMC, never take law into their own hands.” Irene’s daughter Dorin, who also helped bring the kittens back to safety, said, “Those who ordered the act will now have to appear before the court and pay a penalty of Rs 1,200. Even the police were very reluctant to help us out, but once we showed them the rulebook, they were forced to take action.” Cat’s like a good Samaritan.

It argues that the kittens are harmless, ask me about it !!
While I agree that killing them is an extreme action, and we do not have the right to take away a life, they are a menace. I can quote realms on how they get stuck on car wheels just below the bonnets, bite up wires, litter in the most unexpected of places, dirty scooter/car covers and scratch glass panes.
If you appeal to the other members of the society to stop encouraging them by feeding or petting them, they pose the argument that the cats are God’s own creatures and it is an act of salvation to take care of them.
BMC Appeals .. are they a solution? Somebody quote me an instance when the municipality has sprung into action and cleared the premises of these creatures.

All this leaves me wishing that all the cats will disappear one day, even if accidentally, under my car wheels.

If I were an intolerant high tech innovator-maniac…

1)When people stand in groups and block access to places, like entrance doors to buildings/hospital corridors, they should get a mild shock, say after ‘n’ seconds, reminding them to move ahead. Infrareds aka Dhoom2 can be used.
2)When people shove trash in the 2m circumference around trash cans, the trash can should aim some of its own poop onto him/her.
3)When someone walking ahead on a pavement suddenly decides to slow down and walk very slowly, at the same time blocking any chance of overtaking him/her (senior citizens and the physically disabled excused), the gravitation force should stop functioning just below their feet, and they should hang upside down in air until the crowd behind them passes.
4)In an attempt to get elevators to stop at their floor, if someone jams all the stop buttons, up/down, the elevator should stop at the floor, open its door, followed by a shrill voice saying “I am confused where to go – Up or down” and immediately shut close without letting that person get in.
5)When people rush into trains/buses/elevators edging people ahead of them or not waiting for those inside to get down, there should be an intelligent torrential force from within the train/bus/elevator flinging them to the farthest corner away.
6)When people use the rest rooms and leave them in a mess, their faces should be captured on camera and hung on a “I did it” achievement board.
7)When people wash hands/mouth in a public wash such that the water splashes on the person next-by, the water tap in front of them should suddenly guzzle out a big fountain onto them that no use of the drier or all the tissues out there would help.
8)When people stand in cinema queues/railway station queues without having made their enquiries appropriately w.r.t. number of tickets, number of adults/children, spelling/age of members, class of ticket to buy, borrow a pen and clip the cap with their teeth, the counter window should grow fangs and crash heavily on their hand in one swift motion.

Alas, I can’t do any of these, let alone hurt a mosquito..nincompoops will continue to suffer the mighty offenders until Hitler returns and shakes Obama’s hand.

Social N/W Sites an intrusion!

How true it is when people debate about the relevance of social networking sites. It depends all upon the user. I find them an intrusion into my time. If there are people I wish to be/ they wish to be in contact with, we will anyways. In this age of emails, landlines and cellphones and smses and the snail posts, does not require one additional medium. Why am I suddenly irked with this bright invention of some brighter engineers, after having enjoyed the benefits for quite a while now?When boredom visits like a stork, all I end up doing is browsing other peoples’ lives on Orkut/Facebook..through their photo albums, scrapbooks, profiles and the like. What do I gain from here…sometimes awestruck with people’s luck/fate, irrelevant unnecessary good-for-nothing gossip and a peek-a-boo into their recent lives. Agreed I got in touch with a lot of people whom I had lost track of somewhere on the way; but then henceforth if I want to remain in touch with someone, I would rather do it consciously than just being another e-trophy.

I have a doubt…

Notwithstanding the dozen theories on Bhutto’s assasination, controversies, chutzpah news items, bomb hoaxes we come across everyday, I have a doubt. Did the BCCI trade to drop Harbhajan in the Perth Test, if only the ban was lifted? Heck the Aussie chickens…(no, don’t flood me with mails about the bouncy track, Chappell’s version of Bhajji’s prowess, Ganguly’s dissent and the likes)

Vagaries of Indian Cricket

I was glad a few days back that I did not post the below…now I am not so glad!! Reason being India lost yet another ODI to Australia, so badly, so shamefully, that the seniors in the team hung their heads low much before the match actually started. One so called Bengal tiger decided to stay away from any ignominy that might visit the team.

Anyways, what I wanted to say before India qualified for the T20 finals…

The tradition continues. India may lose several series, its coach and its captain, the public angst does not last even beyond the crispness of the morning paper. Every ball bowled by the opposition is skilfully driven to the boundaries-in the viewer’s enthusiasm. It is a different story that the ball is left alone until the wicket keeper collects it; an over full of rugby strikes! One counts the number of batsmen in the pavilion before every ball is bowled; the umpire is there to count the number of balls that remain to be bowled in the over-of course, he brushes his counting skills beyond six, over after over, when India comes to bowl.
The Indian voices scream out in unison as ever, the crackers are ready to be lit; never mind if they have languished in the cupboard in the last two seasons. The mega serials take a break the day the matches are played, for once again the brawn-less Indian men dominate the women with their full throated war cries, while all the while the clever Indian women know that the heroine in the mega melodrama has shed/made others around her shed one more bucketful of tears and the story has not moved beyond that even a bit.
Amidst all this, the career and retirement plans of several are discussed-including those of the eleven men in blue.
Thank God for the T-20 version, all this lasts only for a couple of hours before we return to the humdrum of our lives.

Joy of paying taxes – the oxymoron

Filing your taxes with the government is something expected out of each one of us as dutiful citizens of the country. There is no joy left in paying through your nose year after year for bad roads, dipping poverty, marginally improved literacy rates, and not to be commented upon sanitation facilities in the ‘ever-developing’ country. But this time, I managed to scrape some joy on a totally different plane.

1. I managed to shirk off the dependence on some knowledgeable bloke called the chartered accountant (no offence meant to the profession) who surfaces out of nowhere, come tax time.

2. I managed to decode the ever so complicated slab system of taxes; and even thought of ways how the slab system could be further mystified-like introduce incentives in the slabs for regular tax-payers ) Any takers?

3. I managed to use a bank chalan effectively for paying additional taxes, without fretting over the procedures in the bank, which always leave me feeling a little less educated.

4. I managed to use some common sense – like using the forms available for advanced users, than the mere common man, so that I am not stuck up in the online process due to some coding error left behind in the forms. Can you believe it..it stands corrected in the advanced version, but not in the basic version.

5. I managed to tide over online help forums, several PDF guides, the ever helpful local tax guy who has no answer ever to any of your queries, the toll free number that is listed as tax-help line but is not answered most of the time.