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Open Government

Heartcrossings — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 14:36:00 +0000

Having spent the majority of my life in India, I am no stranger to the slow, lumbering and mostly ineffective machinery of government bureaucracy. With computers making their way into the system, there was some improvement but not nearly enough to make the experience of interacting with a…

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Review: Love Sex Aur Dhokha

brangan — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 13:08:09 +0000

OYE PLUCKY! PLUCKY OYE!
Dibakar Banerjee pulls off a courageous experiment, even if that’s not quite the same as a satisfying movie experience.
MAR 21, 2010 – SOME FILMS MAKE YOU GRASP FOR breathless clichés about thinking out of the box. With some others, you wonder if the director has boxed…

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Between Reviews: Century!

brangan — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 13:07:54 +0000

CENTURY!
Baradwaj Rangan wonders if he should, henceforth, be called a centurion (even if that sounds like someone begging for a bludgeoning by a small village of indomitable Gauls).
MAR 21, 2010 – THIS IS THE ONE-HUNDREDTH EDITION OF Between Reviews, and on this occasion, I’d like to thank…

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Introducing Yourself to Indian Classical Music 4-Voices

uttara — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:04:51 +0000

Contd. from here.
In the last two posts we heard the voice of MS Subbulakshmi, of the South Indian Carnatic tradition. It has to be said that North Indians who follow Hindustani music, i.e. the classical music of the North, know very little of the South Indian Carnatic tradition. Southerners who…

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Good Girls Keep Their Legs Together

Dilnavaz Bamboat — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:46:01 +0000

MY PIANO TEACHER LIVED two floors below us. A large lady with a stentorian voice and glasses dangling on her ample bosom, she caressed the ivories with a passion most teenagers reserve for romps in the hay. Single and living alone, music was her life and her students her family. That she was a…

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Review – Lahore: sport, war, whatever…

meetu — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:57:30 +0000

18 Mar 10

Hindi Movies,

Social,

Politics,

Action,

Sports

Running time: 150 minutes

Quick Review

Rating:
Watch if you have nothing better to do (rating…

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The Idea of India being Whittled Away

gargi — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:56:21 +0000

This From Today’s ToI
If the state government has its way, it won’t be possible for students to dream of a seat in a professional degree course merely because they have been born in Maharashtra or because they have passed their Std X or XII from institutions in the state.
A change sought to…

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Part Of The Picture: Death by Sleeplessness

brangan — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:58:50 +0000

Picture courtesy: tiff.net
DEATH BY SLEEPLESSNESS
MAR 20, 2010 – IN THIS FIFTH AND FINAL OSCAR-NOMINATED FEATURE, a bespectacled grey-haired man, known as “Shampoo Negriz,” walks up to three youths sitting in the street in the Ajami neighbourhood of Jaffa. The greetings are courteous, the…

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The Lost Valley

Manisha Chitale — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:02:23 +0000

When do you get the opportunity to touch a wall built about 4500 years ago? I guess not always! That is why the opportunity to visit live excavation site for Indus Valley Culture grabbed the top spot on my priority list. It was middle of winter and we were headed for some obscure town [...]

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Chance Remark

Heartcrossings — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 08:08:00 +0000

I met a group of former co-workers for lunch a few days ago. The group was diverse in many ways besides ethnicity and cultural background. We had among us those who were young and still single, older and suddenly single, married for two decades and those who were in relationships that…

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Review – Love Sex Aur Dhoka: Betray convention, seduce audience

meetu — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:31:41 +0000

10 Mar 10

Hindi Movies,

Noir

Running time: 100 minutes

Quick Review

Rating:
Watch for sure, preferably in theatre (rating scale)
– Only for people who can stomach…

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Pickled Jalapeños

The Purple Foodie — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:17:00 +0000

For weeks, nay months, almost a year (without any exaggeration), I’ve been looking for jalapeños in Bombay. On the rare occasion that I did find them, they looked as if they were sitting in the cling film wrapped box for weeks before they reached my hands. Yesterday while shopping at a supermarket,…

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Interview: Wilbur Sargunaraj on Dappan Koothu

maxdavinci — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:57:45 +0000

My dear unclejis, auntyjis, brothers and their sisters this is Munna Mobile reporting from Vancouver Canada. Now you didn’t think our budget permitted us to bring you stories across international borders did you? Well this one isn’t about how Walter Vetrivel officiated as a referee in…

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Raising Kids in an Atheist Household

Patrix — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:47:16 +0000

Festivals although rooted in religion have often strayed from its roots and focused instead on celebration that doesn’t require belief in god. How do you balance raising your kids and celebrating festivals while staying true to your atheist core?

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Horror : Cinema’s step-child

Amodini — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:23:00 +0000

A lot can pass for horror – in some hindi films that is. And I don’t mean the acting or the direction or the just plain bad script/story/dialogue. Yes, they scar the soul and probably traumatize you for life ; I write this from my shrink’s office waiting for my next appointment where she (the…

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Narendra Modi needs political room for reconciliation

offstumped — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:55:51 +0000

With Mr. Narendra Modi set to meet with the Supreme Court appointed Special Investigation Team, debate has been rife in the media and in the blogosphere on the stance he will take and its implications.
At the one end of the spectrum was an utterly despicable and racist piece by Vir Sanghvi which…

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Nashik Chivda

Anil P — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:42:00 +0000

When the Sun relents on an ancient river on a hot summer day in Panchavati, the devout make way for evening strollers meandering by the Ram Kund where in the waters of the Godavari Ram once bathed during his exile from Ayodhya.

Shepherded downstream through a cemented channel and spanned by…

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Beguni — ar Ashare Goppo

Bong Mom — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:59:00 +0000

Eggplant coated in a batter of chickpea flour and deep friedThe rain had started out strong, not meek like other days. Huge blobs of water, hit the warm earth rapidly, with an urgency to quench out its parched dryness. The rain was now hitting down hard on her window, with that drumming sound, she…

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Desi products could have high lead content

Santosh — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:01:14 +0000

Fair is fair. Three year ago we blogged about how researchers discovered something desi households have known for years, turmeric is good for your health. So when a study comes out that turmeric may not necessarily be as good as advertised, we’re here to report on that. As it turns out, the…

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Withdraw helicopters on UN assignments first

Pragmatic — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:08:33 +0000

If the IAF is feeling the pinch by deploying four MI-17 helicopters for providing logistics support to anti-Maoist operations, it must withdraw the 17 helicopters deployed on UN peacekeeping missions in Africa first.
Indian Air Force[IAF] wants to withdraw its helicopters deployed for providing…

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