Moving on

I am shifting my blog to Wordpress and can be found here. Hope to see you around in the future!

Ishwar Allah tere naam, Hey Ram!

Two amazing wtfmaxness in today's newspapers. The first one concerns a curious kind of ban that has been declared in Malaysia.

Action can be taken against non-Muslim publications in 10 Malaysian states if they use four words related to Islam, including ‘Allah’. A 'fatwa' had been issued to prohibit non-Muslim publications from using the words ‘Allah’, ‘Kaabah’, ‘Solat’ and ‘Baitullah’ in their reading materials.

Post buying the exclusive rights of A. R. Rahman's Jai Ho for its election campaign and engineering the appointment of the tainted Navin Chawla as the next election commissioner, the congress has decided to make the issue of acquiring Mahatma Gandhi's belongings a matter of national priority. But the current owner is playing hard to get as an article in NDTV reports:

In his proposal sent to Indian negotiators hours before the precious items were set to be auctioned, James Otis, who gave Antiquorum auctioneers Gandhi's iconic watch, glasses, a plate, a bowl and a pair sandals, asked New Delhi to "substantially" increase the proportion of its budget

spent on health care of the poor, shifting priorities from military spending.

The second wtf comes in the form of Anand Sharma's (minister of state for external affairs) reply to James Otis (see article):

India rejected the conditions set by the American auctioneer of Mahatma Gandhi's personal items for stopping the memorabilia from going under the hammer and is in touch with United States and international legal agencies to get the articles back.

"Gandhiji himself would not have agreed to conditions. The Government of India representing the sovereign people of this republic cannot enter into such agreements where it involves specific areas of allocation of resources," Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma said.

Reading these sanctimonious words would make one wonder if it was an indecent proposal that James Otis made originally to have elicited such a self-righteous response. The UPA layers are slowly beginning to unfold as elections approach, and the stench continues to rise; talking of elections, I feel a tingling roll in my stomach when I think of them. Are those butterflies of excitement or bugs of despair? I wonder.

The Middle

When I remember bygone days
I think how evening follows morn;
So many I loved were not yet dead,
So many I love were not yet born.

-Ogden Nash

Slam-dog

Some quotable rhetoric from Jug Suraiya in a recent editorial:

More recently, Bachchan, in a blog that sparked off the current round of controversy on India's poverty, voiced similar sentiments regarding Slumdog Millionaire. Bachchan seems to find the portrayal of India's poverty gross and distasteful, rather like cracking racist jokes in front of a racially disadvantaged person, or breaking wind at the dining table. Unpleasant things, like racism, flatulence and poverty do, regrettably, exist. But must we have the bad taste to discuss or exhibit them, more so when guests are present? Wouldn't it be better all around, more polite and socially correct, to pretend that these awkward things just don't exist? And of course if you can afford to donate Rs 50 lakh to a temple which you visit with your son and your 'manglik' daughter-in-law to be, when you make as much money if not more from commercial endorsements, including an ad for what is billed to be the world's most expensive suiting material, as you do from your movie roles, poverty must seem like a really insensitive joke or a particularly nasty expulsion of gastric wind.