Drop everything and give charticle ustad Krish Ashok some love for posts like this, this, this, this, and this (via Masala Chai). How to throw flowers at a Tamil wedding:

Say you’re an Indian psychopath: a child rapist, a cannibal serial killer, a kidney thief, vagehra vagehra. Here’s how your racket works. You do something so evil that few are willing to compete. Naturally it generates healthy cash flow. But over time, it inevitably comes to public notice. So what do you do? You just [...]

From the book “Race Types” in Maury’s New Complete Geography, copyright 1906. It classifies East Indian Raja, Anglo-Saxon, Arab and Hebrew as Caucasian. [ via bb]

Back during the helium-huffing of the first Internet bubble, a second-rate dialup company bought out the publisher of Time magazine with inflated, gilt-edged shares. When the clock struck midnight, the old media diva was left with a lover turned pumpkin and the sickening certainty that she had sold herself cheaply.

… AOL was then at the [...]

The buyer of heavy metal on Gandhi Street made an entirely too-brief cameo on Colbert last night, wearing a Veronica Lodge headband (thanks, zed):

Navdeep Singh’s Manorama Six Feet Under is another in a line of very interesting, relatively low-profile films that haven’t done too well on commercial release but which seem likely to acquire cult followings on DVD. Other notable recent movies of …

Sibel Edmonds

The Times of London has been serializing a blockbuster tale of nuclear espionage in America at the behest of former FBI translater Sibel Edmonds. After years of being gagged by abusive, supposed national security laws, Edmonds is risking jail by going public with the British paper. She alleges that under sponsorship of a high-ranking [...]

The NYT reports that Disney is exporting High School Musical to the land which thinks it invented musicals about underage love. Here’s the pseudo-Punjabi version, ‘Aaja Nachle,’ which isn’t ashamed to steal from the best. The skirts are more modest, the legs more covered, but let’s face it, Bombay blew past that Rubicon long ago [...]

The San Francisco Zoo where Tatiana the tiger mauled a teen to death reportedly had an under-height tiger fence because of an Indian urban legend:
… the enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo was only 12 1/2 feet tall. That height, Willis said, can perhaps be traced to an age-old confidence in India, where tigers are [...]

A dance team earns my eternal gratitude for playing ‘Rump Shaker,’ ‘Freek-a-Leak’ and ‘Here Comes the Hotstepper’ on Boogie Woogie, an Indian TV show more used to Hindi film songs. The old-skool judges look traumatized, while the younger ones are into it, like Samrat Chakrabarti’s beatboxing talent show judge from Loins of Punjab:

The Onion in ‘04: ‘Bollywood Remake Of Fahrenheit 9/11 Criticizes Bush Administration Through Show-Stopping Musical Numbers.’ Featuring pixelfodder from Bombay Dreams (thanks, Dave).
Previously: ‘Sicko’

Delhi, a few hours ago:
To avoid creating a diplomatic incident, the poor French president even visited the Taj Mahal without girlfriend Carla Bruni.
Happy Republic Day. When in Delhi, beat retreat.
Related posts: Republic Day in pictures, Beating Retreat, Fanaa in security

The latest from the Indian sports wire…

The IPL will be fairly pleased with how 2008 is unfolding so far. January has seen an estimated influx of almost $1.75 billion as famous faces and lucrative TV deals have poured money in. After the sour first half of the Indian tour Down Under, a Test win and [...]

Reality

Hollywood

Hollywood did it with Charlie Wilson’s War and The Last King of Scotland, and now they’re at it again with Nanking. This new flick about one of the vilest atrocities of the 20th century, the wave of Japanese troops bayonetting, immolating, quartering and raping their way through a major Chinese city, automatically gets Mother Teresa-like [...]