Bank Robbers at Pune may now need Financial Adviser!

Times of India / Pune Mirror reported on June 11, 2008:

“Police chief cannot protect banks, he can’t stop MNS from holding illegal rallies. He can’t keep senior citizens safe. He can’t stop burglaries, chain snatchers. Under the present circumstances, he says he is helpless.”

On June 9, 2008: Broad daylight dacoity at Punjab National Bank, Sanewadi Branch, Aundh. Eight robbers enter the bank at around 10 am.”

In calendar 2008, this was 10th attempt of burglary at a bank in Pune.

Police commissioner said: “Maybe the banks are apathetic towards safety as the cash is insured.”

Following picture shows a classic win-win! Bank , bank-employee, robber.


‘Would you like to see a financial adviser, sir?’

The Spectator

Maybe Hillary didn’t Lose because she was a Woman but Joan of Arc?

Pundits wrote Hillary couldn't lose. Therefore, I made an appeal to her using poet B S Mardhekar's बा सी मर्ढेकर words. Read it here.

Now pundits are analysing her loss.

“…Obama is like her idealistic, somewhat naïve self before the world launched 1,000 attacks against her, turning her into the hard-bitten, driven politician who has launched 1,000 attacks against Obama.

As she makes a last frenzied and likely futile attempt to crush the butterfly, it’s as though she’s crushing the remnants of her own girlish innocence. “

MAUREEN DOWD, NYT May 7, 2008

“…She didn’t lose because she was a woman. She didn’t lose because America isn’t ready for a woman as president. She lost because of her own — and her husband’s and Mark Penn’s — fatal missteps.”

MAUREEN DOWD, NYT June 8, 2008


Artist: Mischa Richter The New Yorker 29 January 1949

BJP Saffron and Ivanovic Neo Red are going to be Huge this Summer

Frontline Jun 07 - 20, 2008


A Colourful Champion


Artist: Robert Mankoff The New Yorker September 27, 2004

new caption: "Ditch Detainee Orange now, BJP Saffron and Ivanovic Neo Red are going to be huge this summer."

Have you read M F Husain Version of Ramayana?

U.R. Ananthamurthy says: “The only two languages that are understood all over the country are the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.” (India Today, August 20, 2007)

I know there are many versions of these two ‘languages’ but don’t know which one M F Husain uses.

This refers to “Politics of Art” by GPD from Economic & Political Weekly dated May 17, 2008.

GPD sounds naïve even comic when he compares “blasphemy” of Saint Janabai संत जनाबाई with insensitivity, ignorance and plain mischievousness of M F Husain. He seems to be carried away by the fact that Husian hails from Pandharpur पंढरपुर.

On this subject, I wish to quote the late Durga Bhagwat दुर्गा भागवत, who all her life defended freedom of expression, challenged the dictators like Indira Gandhi when most intellectuals were silent and fought culture-vultures of Maharashtra while defending Marathi author Bhau Padhye भाऊ पाध्ये who was accused of obscenity.

“…why does Husian draw Seeta sitting on the tail of Lord Maruti flying across the sky? And that too naked one? Obviously religious people will get angry, won’t they? Basically Husain has not read Ramayana is obvious because no where in Ramayana, Maruti carries Seeta. In Ashok-vana, he offers Seeta that he would transport her on his shoulder safely. Seeta declines the offer because she wants Rama to go there personally, slay Ravana and free her. That shows Seeta’s confidence in Rama and also pride. Without considering this context, drawing revealing pictures of Hindu goddesses has to be considered objectionable. Such pictures are naturally going to hurt the sentiments of religious people. Not just that even a religious Muslim may not like this insult of gods of other religions.”

In the same book, Ms. Bhagwat dares likes of GPD to defend the right of Salman Rushdie to write “The Satanic Verses”.

(Source- ऐसपैस गप्पा : दुर्गाबाईंशी लेखक प्रतिभा रानडे “Aispais Gappa: Durgabainshi” by Pratibha Ranade, Rajhans Prakashan, November 1998)


Artist: Alan Dunn The New Yorker 22 April 1961

Mobile Towers are a Health Hazard for Parachute Jumpers!

The New Yorker's Cartoon Caption Contest #149


Artist: Mick Stevens The New Yorker June 9 2008

"You completely forgot about the last communication tower installed by Bharti Airtel in our neighbourhood last week. Didn't you?"

Mothers and Sparrows Don’t Thrive on Neglect

I always took my mother and a sparrow for granted.

And why not. They were the two species I sighted most during my childhood. The story millions of Maharashtrians most heard- in Marathi- in their childhood was that of a sparrow and a crow.

The story runs something like this: a sparrow builds her nest using wax and a crow builds his using cow-dung. A rainfall washes out crow’s nest and he goes to sparrow’s nest asking for a shelter. Sparrow refuses to oblige, giving one reason after another.

Although I now refuse to believe that crows are that stupid, I enjoyed the story especially when my mother told it in her clear diction.

My mother now is gone and they say sparrow too may be on its way. Read Outlook India story here.

Therefore, these days every time I spot a sparrow, I get the same pleasure as I may get finding dinosaur bones.

I have learnt one hard lesson. Unlike some flower, mothers and sparrows don’t thrive on neglect.

(Isn't picture below apart from its other qualities just poetic?)


Artist: Perry Barlow The New Yorker 10 April 1948

Sakharam Binder सखाराम बाईंडर and the Basic Middle-Class Hunger for Property

Writing Vijay Tendulkar’s विजय तेंडुलकर obit, Girish Karnad says:

“…Then came Sakharam Binder. It's not only Tendulkar's best play, but one of the masterpieces of Indian drama. When first performed, several political parties united to demand a ban on the play, and it had to be rescued by the courts. Its critics claimed to be scandalised by its overt sexuality. But one suspects that Tendulkar had once again hit a raw nerve, the basic middle-class hunger for property as a guarantee of security, and the ruthlessness this hunger could unleash. Lakshmi, a perfect embodiment of Hindu womanly virtues, manoeuvres a murder to keep the roof intact over her head, invulnerable in her sense of moral rectitude…” (Outlook June 2, 2008)

This angle I had never thought.

As real estate prices climb relentlessly in Pune, everyday one hears sordid stories of greed, corruption, moral decay and crumbling family values. Duryodhana’s following words don’t sound all that far-fetched: “The Pandavas will not receive even a needle- point of territory,"

In 1980’s, I lived in a Bombay where girls fell in love only after ascertaining where the suitor’s property was located. Western suburbs upto Andheri were preferred over eastern ones. I had no chance because I had neither! Now I joke about it, then I felt castrated.

Now, the whole of urban India is Bombay.

I mentioned ancient India by quoting from the Mahabharata. Let us turn to an example from American history.

WILLIAM HOGELAND said in NYT December 27, 2006:

“…In 1763, George III drew a line on a map stretching from modern-day Maine to modern-day Georgia, along the crest of the Appalachians. He declared it illegal to claim or settle land west of the line, all of which he reserved for Native Americans.

George Washington, a young colonel in the Virginia militia, instructed his land-buying agents in the many ways of getting around the law. Although Washington was not alone in acquiring forbidden tracts, few were as energetic in the illegal acquisition of western land…

… By the early 1770’s, George Washington had amassed vast tracts to which his titles were flatly invalid. The Revolution rectified that. With British law void, Washington emerged from the war with his titles legal by default…”

Jonathan Yardley said in Washington Post May 18, 2008:

“…Not merely did George Washington want the capital on the Potomac, he also "was determined to place the capital close to the Eastern Branch, today known as the Anacostia River, virtually across the Potomac from his own estate at Mount Vernon." Washington believed that the Potomac was fated to be the essential connection between the Atlantic and the rapidly growing West -- he didn't know, or more likely didn't want to know, that for most of the year much of the Potomac is unnavigable -- and "he stood to make a great deal of money" from a capital on the Potomac, a useful reminder that the motives of the Father of His Country were not always pristinely patriotic…”


Artist: Bruce Erik Kaplan The New Yorker 17 January 1994

Shiva’s Wrongful Depiction! The New Yorker's Cartoon Caption Contest #148

I continue NOT to be a "U.S. resident age eighteen or over". So here is my entry by stealth.



Artist: Drew Dernavich The New Yorker June 2, 2008

Proposed Caption: “Hindu fundamentalists have threatened to burn this down because of Shiva’s depiction next to an unknown woman instead of his consort Parvati.”

Shit- a WMD at Work in Myanmar 2008…Panipat 1761…

For NYT May 19, 2008, ROSE GEORGE writes:

“IT’S the rainy season in Myanmar. It’s also cholera season. When Cyclone Nargis arrived two weeks ago, the waters it unleashed destroyed houses and killed people and livestock. The storm also devastated other things that haven’t made the headlines, but that can mean the difference between life and death: toilets. Even before the cyclone, 75 percent of Burmese had no latrines. Like some 2.6 billion other people worldwide, they do their business by roadsides, on train tracks or wherever they can. But the few latrines that did exist in the Irrawaddy Delta are now flooded or flattened, and their contents have seeped into already filthy waters.

So what? There are other priorities, aren’t there? Food, shelter and clean water are what aid agencies emphasize. But human excrement is a weapon of mass destruction. A gram of human feces can contain up to 10 million viruses. At least 50 communicable diseases — including cholera, meningitis and typhoid — travel from host to host-in human excrement. It doesn’t take much: a small child, maybe, who plays in soil where people have been defecating, then dips his fingers in the family rice pot. The aftermath of a disaster like Cyclone Nargis — with masses of weakened people on the move — is a communicable disease paradise…”

This blog already has a post on the status of sanitation in urban India of 21st century. See it here. What chance did then a brutal battle location almost 248 years ago have?

For a period of 2.5 months in late 1760 to January 14, 1761, Maratha army camp- approximate 200,000 people strong- was forced to stay put in an area of about 15 miles long near Panipat. It could never change its location even once unlike their enemy army of Ahmad Shah Abdali that changed its own location 3 times.

Unfortunately today there are few letters available that were sent from the Maratha army camp during this period because most of the sent ones were captured and destroyed by the enemy.

T S Shejwalkar त्र्यंबक शंकर शेजवलकर has described the kind of difficulties Maratha army probably faced- foul smell, polluted and inadequate water (Rs. 1 per pot!), famine like food supply, lack of clothing to protect from severe and unusually wet North Indian winter, undisposed rotting corpses of soldiers who died in skirmishes etc. A lot of people and cattle died due to starvation and disease.

Foul smell, polluted and inadequate water? Surely human feces, a WMD, got deployed.

“…In our sanitary, plumbed lives, the toilet — an engineering marvel — removes waste out of sight and out of mind. As Steven Pinker recently wrote in “The Stuff of Thought,” the vocabulary of excretion has sneaked in and taken the taboo place previously held by religious words, and this switch parallels the rise of sewers and the sanitizing of excrement. A substance common to us all, and as vital to life as breathing, has become unspeakable, and particularly in the polite and powerful circles that could do something about its deadly effects…

…This year, the International Year of Sanitation, is a fine time to address a pointless and damaging conversational taboo. Solving sanitation is about more than semantics. But our refusal to talk about it says something about us, and none of it good.”

Not every one refuses to talk about human excrement though.

Vinoba Bhave used to say “प्रभाते मलदर्शनम” (In the moring sight feces) rephrasing the last line famous Sanskrit shloka

कराग्रे वसते लक्ष्मी:
करमूले सरस्वती ।
करमध्ये तु गोविंद:
प्रभाते करदर्शनम्।।

(At the tip of the hand resides Laxmi, At the root Sarasvati,
At the centre Govinda, in the morning sight hand.)

Not too long ago in India, during early years of my childhood, human soil was carried manually in carts. If Americans (and during Nixon administration it was entirely plausible) came looking for WMDs in India then news ticker in the picture below could read…

"White House says latest attacks prove Indira Gandhi has human carts of mass..."


Artist: Michael Crawford The New Yorker 8 December 2003

Bollywood also is a Dog-doesn't-Return-Other-Dog's-Phone-Calls

Woody Allen: “Show business is, is dog-eat-dog. It's worse than dog-eat-dog. It's dog-doesn't-return-other-dog's-phone-calls.” (Crimes and Misdemeanors, 1989)

Hindi film industry writer-director Vikram Bhatt has started writing a weekly column for The Asian Age. He has something interesting to say and tries to say it honestly.

The last time I really enjoyed an insider’s view was when the late Vijay Anand wrote or spoke. (btw- It’s a great loss of all Hindi film lovers that Vijay Anand never wrote a book on his art.)

In his latest column “Enjoy it while the phone rings” on May 18, 2008, Bhatt writes:

“…That is the life of people in the entertainment industry. Sometimes they are dying for the phone to ring and at other times they are busy ignoring calls…

… The cellphone is also a very good idea to find out where you stand in the scheme of things. Like a success and status check. The struggling actors, directors and other technicians will not get a response from almost anyone. They might as well not message or call…

…The successful can call anyone and text anyone…

… I remember being in an actor’s house once and the phone kept ringing and he said "Oh god! This damn phone keeps ringing." A senior producer who was also sitting there smiled and said, "These are beautiful problems son. Enjoy them." What he was trying to say was enjoy it while the phone rings. Answer the calls. Enjoy being wanted because in every stars or important creative person's life, sooner or later the phone will stop ringing and then every half an hour you will check your phone for missed calls.

Then you don’t even have to withhold your caller identity. All that will be left will be to deal with your new unwanted entity.”


artist: Lee Lorenz The New Yorker 27 February 1960