I could understand his excitement when he finally had an experience that was uniquely, unquestionably Indian. “Dude!” he yelled into the phone one morning, “You’ll never believe this. Do you know what the Delhi Police uses for breathalysers when they want to test drunken drivers?”

Honestly neither did I believe it. Amidst all the glitzy malls, Jai Arjun’s US-based friend finally gets the Indian experience he was craving for.

Every fucken time I walk out in the maroons, or my whites with my maroon hat, I have to pick up 10 men, and carry them around for a day, and sometimes 5.

This really ruins the vertebrae.

Today was the perfect situation, we bowled Pakistan out for 230.

I should have had a small role to play, maybe a 30 odd at the end, just a nice little average pumper.

Instead I end making more than half the runs, sure I really boosted the average, but I am sick of this.

I want to play in a team.

Cricket with Balls writes on the tragedy of being Shivnarine Chanderpaul [hat tip: Ojas]. Probably we can send a few to his rescue.

PS. I’m not entirely sure this is a desi blog but what the hell!

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The results for The Caferati-LiveJournal Quick Tales contest are out. The twelve winning stories are linked along with the links to the prize-winners’ LiveJournal profiles.

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India’s former foreign minister spoke to Pragati on the relationship between the state, the nation, and society. You can listen to the podcast here.

Here, flowers are plastic, lips are painted, breasts are silicon filled, smiles are wicked and you know men don’t have moustache. People in a pretentious frenzy, clamoring over their cell phones sprinkling ‘Fuck’, liberally in their tele talk, run amok like rats in a trap.

Santosh wants to get out of the plastic world,but his cowardice holds him back.

If you are a fairer than most, you fit a wide variety of roles. If you are dark, a couple of obvious career paths are available to you.
You can position yourself as a “dusky sex siren”. This is the Bipasha Basu route. A newer actress barelling down this path is Jiah Khan.

Aspi does an analysis to find if color has a say in the career graph of Bollywood beauties.

In a capital city, where we always face a power and water crisis, building new luxurious villages is nothing out of norm. The thing that Government got wrong this time is that it plans to build its Commonwealth Games village on Yamuna floodplains. If Yamuna floodplains are stifled with permament structures, Delhi will be prone to floods in the monsoon. Because Yamuna will not be able to manage excess water without the spacious floodplains. National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) report clearly states this fact. Yamuna has always been flood-prone. Just this year in September, low-lying areas of Yamuna have been evacuated.

Poonam is unhappy with the construction of Commonwealth village on Yamuna floodplains.

In spite of his tryst with Asimov, he never wanted to be an astronaut. He had been hearing stories of the strenuous training involved in preparing oneself to become an astronaut. The story had a tragic end, else he could have said he knew India’s second astronaut. 

Seeing the recent Chandrayaan launch, Nikhil gets nostalgic about  ISRO.

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Selva announces the results of this years Scientific Indian Story Contest. Although he hasn’t posted the winning entry yet, he shares this wonderful toolkit that every creative science writer should be aware of. Perhaps next year you can win.

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They have taken an anti-Dalit line and this has led to minor skirmishes in the recent past. In pamphlets and posters within the campus, the Mukkulathoor Maanavar Peravai specially omitted the usage of “Dr.Ambedkar’s” name while referring to the college. By refusing to use the Dalit leaders name, they were taking an explicit anti-Dalit line. It is easy to argue that there’s really nothing to a name, but if there was nothing, why did the Mukkulathoor Maanavar Peravai not evoke his name?

Meena reports on the violent casteist attacks on Dalits in Dr. Ambedkar Law College (of all places) in Chennai [via].

The Dostana promos included an un-self-conscious proclamation of “We’re gay.” After the release this Friday, what did the audience think of Bollywood’s newest offering about a (supposedly) homosexual couple?

Neha thinks that the gags have at least improved from the Kal Ho Na Ho days.

Broom and MJ, on the other hand, take offense on behalf of the gay community and feel done in by Karan Johar’s latest effort.

And finally Meetu puts it all together by pointing out the blandness of the storyline and ending with,

Fluidity is in general lacking around here. The focus is on mockery here. Mockery of how the gay behave and of how they are perceived too. Mockery of how parents react when they know their child is homosexual and of how blinding love can really be. A movie on relationships and friendships, yeah right! Not this one.

I wanted to objectively evaluate India’s potential ‘Obamas’, three names have come up pretty consistently are Rahul Gandhi (INC), Sachin Pilot (INC) and Omar Abdullah (NC). The discerning observer will quickly realize that these are all heirs of a political dynasty, which although not Obama-esque, does not automatically mean that they cannot be good leaders for India. So I am going to compare these 3 guys + my candidate, Kiren Rijiju (someone you have probably never heard of, no dynasty here)

In a search to look for the Indian Obama (if there is such a thing), Vikram evaluates the four possible choices [via]. Feel free to agree/disagree or add your own choice even if he is your local corporator.

2. Anonymous name : Being anonymous or not revealing your true identity does not guarantee anonymity. It just takes a couple of hours to track anyone down on the internet. Sad but true. (Unless you are a hacker. Not someone who just took a course in ethical hacking with Ankit Fadia. An experienced one. Even then I am not too sure.)
3. More keywords : Use keywords like ‘allegedly’ and ‘citation needed’ in case it is something you overheard, like rumours.

In a recent incident a blogger landed in trouble for writing about the Kurla Best Bus Encounter. Deepak Iyer writes about the points to note while writing such posts.

The Indian History Carnival, published on the 15th of every month, is a collection of posts related to Indian history and archaeology.

1. As Tamil Nadu politicians and film stars are protesting against the killing of innocent Tamils without uttering a word against the LTTE terror, Priya Raju  explains the relationship between the Sri Lankan Tamils and the Indian Tamils.
2. A two hour climb on a hill in Nijagal near Bangalore takes you to a once-impregnable fort which has a story to tell. Sandeep has a gripping account of how Madakari Nayaka of Chitradurga captured Hyder Ali’s fort with the help of among other things, Giant Monitor Lizards.
3. Did the Portuguese have a part in “cementing the dowry system and color consciousness into the Malabari cultural fabric?” Maddy writes about various Portuguese customs in Malabar.
4. Calicut Heritage has a story about the Kerala Soap Institute, “which used to supply soaps to the Viceroy, among other dignitaries.”
5. The Muslim community in Malabar had a monopoly in trade as “exporters of pepper and ginger, importers of horses and necessary produce for the great Vijayanagar empire that controlled almost all of the Deccan.” Soon they faced competition with the arrival of the Portuguese and the conflict between the Portuguese and Moplahs is the topic of Mamale of Cannanore: An Adversary of Portuguese India by the French Indologist Geneviève Bouchon. tangentialia has a translation.
6. Search Kashmir has a detailed account of the nautch girls based on the accounts of various western travelers.
7. Writing about the Divide and Rule policy of the British, Disjointed Laptop says, “If somebody asks me, about the British Divide and Rule policy, I would say it was purely Made in India.”

If you find any posts related to Indian history published in the past one month, please send it to jk AT varnam DOT org or use this form. Please send me links which are similar to the ones posted, in terms of content.The next carnival will be up on Dec 15th.

(Cross posted at varnam)

See Also: Previous Carnivals

CSO : 3G hasn’t been launched yet sir. Why the hurry?

MS : Oh, no real hurry. So far, 2G was enough. I had only Sonia-ji & Rahul-ji to call. But I heard Priyanka-ji may enter politics. So I just want to be prepared. [Let's put da: Manmohan calls Customer Service]

Ramesh has the transcript of a call which Manmohan Singh placed to Vodaphone customer support.

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Following the guilty verdict handed down to Anand Jon, Indiatime looks at the other bad apples who at times use the crutch of desi-desi-bhai-bhai to excuse their crimes.

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G’bye meandering ways

[click on image to enlarge] Selected by Arun. Join the DesiPundit India through Flickr group to see your photos here. This group is administered by Akshay Mahajan.

Overated Outcast is unhappy with Obama. He wants the good old guy back.

This is completely unacceptable and has to change. Look, we cheered for you. Kenya had an orgasm when you won. The British dropped their plate of spotted dick (it’s a food item, you pervert) as soon as they heard. The Chinese opened up some lead-infested dog food to feed some of it’s rural workers, in your honor. A few Russians stopped hitting their wives for a while to see CNN declare you the winner over that 200 year old man and that professional infomercial saleswoman.

Prof.Giridhar talks about some changes he would like to see in JEE and GATE.

Considering the distribution of the marks in JEE is a Weibull distribution, we know that the average does not correspond to the 50 percentile. The cut-off formula is changed just based on public criticism. For example, when the cutoff was based the 20th percentile in 2008, they corresponded to just 5, 0 and 3 marks in math, physics and chemistry, respectively. This raised a hue and cry that someone who scores 0 in physics but enough in mathematics and chemistry such that the aggregate exceeds the overall cutoff would get admitted.

[Hat tip: Jatkesha]

The Mad Momma refuses to be a victim - of sexual harassment or street harassment.

‘Don’t you dare do that again..’ I screamed as they got away.

People in the market stared but no one tried to stop them. I didn’t care. I was fine. I could take care of myself. I was no victim.

Are we more constrained by our conditioning of what is ‘civilized’ or the fear of consequences?