Chandrasas, Arzee, Coelho

As many of you might know, my friend Chandrahas recently released his debut novel Arzee the Dwarf. I am looking forward to reading it soon, and I am sure it will do very well.

I read this interview of him on Rediff, and absolutely loved it. The honesty, frankness and thoughtfulness he conveys in the interview is so Chandrahas, I can almost hear him saying those things. The interview, which is already very cool because of the peek it offers into how the book came about, becomes uber-cool when he minces no words in going after one of my pet-peeves. The following that Paulo Coelho has, especially in India.

Any advice for aspiring writers?

Yes, read a lot -- read varied stuff. Don't stick to your comfort zone. Read something that challenges you, makes you think about it. If you understand everything from the beginning, you're a passive consumer, which won't increase your range. Don't stick to Paulo Coelho and Dan Brown. In fact, throw them as far as you can! Paulo Coelho is a rubbish writer -- I know many people like him, but I think it's just comfort food for the mind. It's not going to lead you anywhere. I honestly do NOT believe that if you want something bad enough, the universe will conspire to give it to you. Rubbish!

Total pwnage! The indignant responses by Coelho fans on the message board below the article also make for a hilarious reading, as Rediff message boards always do.

Are gays born gay or do they choose to be gay?

The correct response to this question in a regular conversation or a scientific debate of course is, they are born gay. The correct response in a debate about legality or public policy should ideally be "That's an irrelevant question" or "That's none of the state's effing business". That is, from the libertarian freedom-based point of view.

Remember Colin Powell's famous interview where he endorsed Obama? He said that whenever people say "Obama is a Muslim", then the response "No he is not a Muslim" is correct, but the really correct and perfect response would be, "Why should it matter even if he is?".

I know gays are very emphatic about people recognizing that their orientation is something they were born with, not chose. And considering the narrow-mindedness of the general population towards gays, I can understand where they are coming from. Whether gayness is something you can choose or not is a valid question to be answered correctly in academic, social or even scientific debates. But it DOES NOT belong in the policy realm.

Because even if tomorrow it is somehow miraculously proven by scientists that being gay is a choice, Sec 377 was still wrong, and banning gay marriages is still wrong. What two consenting adults do is their choice, and the state has no business poking its nose into it. There should be no onus on them to prove that their sexual orientation is caused by nature and not by choice.

I understand that the whole "being gay is not a choice, but what you are born with" line is necessary to counter the slippery slope naysayers. Naysayers who say, you legalize gay sex, so why not legalize beastiality, prostitution, polygamy? To which the correct response should be, yes, we should! Prostitution should of course be legal, as long as it is being done by choice. Same with polygamy. As far as beastiality is concerned, if it is OK for me to buy an animal, then kill it, chop it into little pieces and eat it up, why should buying an animal and buggering it be such a crime?

In the end, I guess the choice argument is important in policy/legal debates dependent on whether you are arguing from an equality position or a freedom one. From the equality angle, which is where almost all gay activists seem to be coming from, I guess the "not a choice" point is central to the debate. From a freedom angle, it is at best peripheral.

Blogger Demands HAF Remove Offensive Demand

As a meat-eating Hindu, I demand that the Hindu America Foundation immediately cease a demand campaign that is highly disrespectful and offensive to meat-eating Hindus worldwide.

The foundation displays a clear-cut Brahminical bias by claiming that the Hindu religion proscribes offering meat to deities. The foundation clearly has not heard of the tradition of Gatari Amavasya, observed by non-Brahmins in Maharashtra for a very long time, when animals are sacrificed to Gods and then consumed. Traditions of sacrificing animals to rural deities, and then consuming their meat are prevalent among Dalits, Kashatriyas and Shudras, all over India. Are they not Hindu, I ask the foundation? Are only vegetarian Brahmins qualified to be called Hindu?

Last year, MS Dhoni, India's cricket captain, sacrificed a goat at a temple in Ranchi. Is he not Hindu, I ask the foundation? Is he going against the religion, and is thus a heretic or a blasphemer?

If you want to make demands of Burger King, please do, but do not, I repeat, DO NOT insult us in the process. I demand that you immediately issue an apologies to all meat-eating Hindus, Hindus who belong to communities where meat offerings to deities are part of age-old tradition, and to MS Dhoni, whom you have implied as being a heretic. I also demand you withdraw the letter to Burger King, or at least amend it to make it non-insulting to us meat-eating Hindus. I await your swift response.

Yours Sincerely
Gaurav Sabnis

Budget Day in India leads to a funny observations

In the United States, issues like tax rates, spending, budget deficit etc. and other budget-related points are a BIG deal in terms of their being election issues. But the actual federal budget presentation hardly gets any news coverage.

On the other hand, in India, no one can make spending cuts, tax rates or deficit reduction an election issue. And yet we treat the day, on which our federal government announces is budget, like some big national festival!

Is Michael Cera the teenage Gary Coleman?

Remember Gary Coleman? Little Arnold from Different Strokes? The little kid who, like Peter Pan, always stayed the same age because of a kidney disease, and even now in his 40s, could pass off as a kid with some make-up? Well, I have been wondering - is Michael Cera the teenage Gary Coleman?

I am a big fan of Michael Cera. He has that understated yet engaging screen presence of Amol Palekar, without the in-your-face nerdiness of Woody Allen or Larry David. Almost everything he has been in, has been watchable at worst and classic at best. But I've been thinking... whether it was his breakthrough role as George Michael Bluth in Arrested Development in 2004, or then good teen movies like Juno, Superbad in 2007 or Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist in 2008 he looks almost exactly the same! Even in Year One, with all the prehistoric make-up, he still looks like a teenager for cryin' out loud! And he is already twenty one!

Which begs a question even more important than who the father of Michael Jackson's kids is - Is Michael Cera the teenage Gary Coleman?

Finally!!!

Just woke up to this amazing bit of news. The Delhi High Court has struck down section 377 of the IPC, and effectively decriminalized homosexuality. w00t!!!

The Square Root of Three

A brilliantly cutely nerdy love poem by Kumar Patel in the movie Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay David Feinberg in reality.

I’m sure that I will always be
A lonely number like root three

The three is all that’s good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine

For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic

I know I’ll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of a three

As quietly co-waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds
With the wave of magic wands

Our square root signs become unglued
Your love for me has been renewed

Careers360 article on IIPM

Almost everyone I know has been emailing me that article, so let me state for the record that yes, I am aware of it. Here's the link for those who still don't know about it. Very well done article, and I hope more MSM outlets would do something like this.

My Favorite Scene from My Cousin Vinny

This innocuous scene, which I finally located on youtube, is my absolute favorite from the movie My Cousin Vinny.



Vinny, i.e. Joe Pescie, is woken up in the middle of the night for the umpteenth time in Alabama, this time by the screeching of an owl. So he, very understandably, grabs a gun, runs out, and lets out a few shots in the darkness to quell the infernal sound. The owl making the actual sound however, is ever so slightly startled after his latest screech, calmly turns his head back to see Vinny fire off a few gunshots, turn back around, and lets off another screech, very calmly.

As amazing as the whole movie is, this scene always makes me literally roll on the floor laughing. The surprised and then unconcerned expression on the owl's face is just priceless!!!

Four Michaels, down to Three

Growing up in a predominantly Maharashtrian suburbs in the 90s and late 80s, I initially wasn't exposed to as much non-Indian popular culture as you would think. The big names for us back then were all Indian - Amitabh Bachchan, Kapil Dev, Sachin Tendulkar, Ramesh Krishnan, Geet Sethi, P.T.Usha, Aamir Khan, and so on.

Then cable TV came to India, exposing us to the Western world. Remember those really early days when there was only 1 channel - simply Star TV? For a few hours, they would show MTV, then sports, then American TV shows, some news, and then MTV again? And considering the big names or icons we got exposed to in different fields, you could be forgiven for thinking that you could not become famous in the West unless you had the name Michael. There were four Michaels who dominated the scene in their respective fields.

Michael Jordan was at his peak, inspiring us to rush to hitherto ignored basketball courts on the playgrounds. Mike Tyson was on the wane, but still the biggest name in boxing, his knock-out wins being replayed all the time. Michael Schumacher was the man who turned "oh just a boring sport with cars going in circles" into the exciting and addictive world of Formula 1 racing. And the fourth one was of course Michael Dukakis who made us all want to get into a tank and ride it around.

Obviously, I kid. The fourth Michael was the biggest of them all - Michael Jackson. Everyone, everywhere, knew him. Even in the tiniest of second tier towns, you might not have heard of anyone from the world of "Western music", but you knew Michael Jackson. He was the most universally well-known person in every corner of the globe ever.... until the current American President whose fame is probably greater.

Ever since Jacko died, two music videos are ubiquitous on television - Billie Jean and Thriller. But for people from my generation (born in and around 1980), the two songs that spring to mind at once when his name is mentioned are Bad and Black or White, in that order. I was still being potty-trained when Thriller came out. So Bad was the album that was all the rage when I started understanding things enough to remember them. I can not even count the number of times some kid my age dressed in black would pop a cassette (remember those?) into a "tape recorder", hit play and then start dancing, mouthing the words I'm bad, I'm bad, you know it. The song was performed at school gatherings, Ganapati festival shows, New Years celebrations, and also in living rooms in front of guests when parents would go "Our son dances exactly like Michael Jackson!"

Then came cable TV and his album Dangerous. The video Black or White is the first music video I have a clear recollection of watching and liking. It was a perfect crossover hit for Indian kids. It featured then child superstar Macaulay Culkin. It had amazing visuals and never-seen-before "oooh so cool!" seamless morphing of faces into one another. And of course, it had a desi chick doing a classical dance.

After that, every few months, a new music video from Dangerous was released, and the progression of the content in the videos almost perfectly mirrored the rapidly changing phases of life that I was going through at that age. The Jam video had another Michael, Jordan, playing basketball, right around the time I was discovering the sport. Remember the Time was imaginative and exciting, featuring Egyptian royalty, and came out around the time I was enraptured by books by the nutcase Erich Von Daniken. And of course, watching a skimpily clad Naomi Campbell dancing seductively in In the Closet was heartily appreciated by my then exploding hormones.

From the age of 9 to about 14, Michael Jackson really was King and God for us. Then the scandals started. And a couple of forgettable albums came out. And of course, I discovered other artists and bands that were a bit more "eclectic" and listening to Jacko's music suddenly became very uncool and "country-chhaap". Then he came to India and we were exposed to him through interviews and other appearances.... and the dude just seemed bizarre. Gradually, he went from being a pop icon to a weirdo has been, whom I paid attention to only when some new salacious news item about him came out.

And now he is suddenly dead. Bringing back memories of those childhood years when he was something larger than life. A legend. I don't think I really feel his "loss" as such, because I know that music-wise he didn't have much more to offer me. But it does feel like it'll take a little getting used to the idea of living in a world without Michael Jackson.