What I’m going to write about happened yesterday so I’m a little late in writing about it. Actually, it happened day before yesterday because it was in yesterday’s newspapers. While I’m fully aware that in the world of internet reporting it’s better never than late, this is not an e-paper (hallelujah). Therefore, let me tell […]
Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I gatecrashed an event. I’ve known people who have gatecrashed in the past. The motivation has generally been the free alcohol or narcotics. Occasionally a gatecrashed party has held the promise of some “action”, especially if one could last till the end when the soundtrack goes from […]
The official website for Thailand’s tourism doesn’t work too well (I haven’t been able to open it in the past 15 minutes) which is probably why the Thai consulate in Kolkata decided to host a select crowd for a fancy dinner to acquaint the city’s opinion makers to the wonders of Thailand. All those who […]
We had the first bout of rain last night. Once upon a time, I’m told the monsoon used to come to Mumbai on June 10 with the regularity of a cuckoo clock. It’s become less punctual over the years and his lack of punctuality has given rise to what is rumoured to be a $2.5 […]
Obviously only those who hang upside down in the sylvan neighbourhood of Bandra, Mumbai, need heed this warning.
(A lot of the links are to YouTube videos so apologies to those with slow internet connections. In most cases they are, however, worth waiting for. )
He has Shah Rukh Khan’s title, Tamilian superstar Gemini Ganesan’s hair, Kannad cine and YouTube legend Rajkumar’s moustache. All hail King Khan, who with The Shrines (an eleven-piece […]
Burma is disappearing, like Atlantis; sinking under the weight of bloated corpses and greedy governments. We can thank the inimitable junta and Cyclone Nargis (which macabre twit named a cyclone after a flower?) for giving the country the mystique of Greek myths and making sure it doesn’t last into 2009. One million people are […]
When I came to Mumbai for the first time, years ago, I was certain that the city had a strong Japanese community. What else explained neighbourhoods being called things like “Saki Naka” and “Oshiwara”? A couple of months in the city and I realised my chances of getting miso soup were about as high […]
It’s mindless, messy and, when the next day you remember exactly what you did, potentially highly embarrassing. If we were talking about sex, then at least one could hope for an orgasm. With Holi, no such luck. Not in contemporary India, at any rate.
The popularity of this festival probably originates in it being the one […]
I love our newspapers, sometimes more than I love the Guardian whom at present I love most intensely since they’ve shared with us an extract from Philip Pullman’s Once Upon a Time in the North, the book that will be the background to the Northern Lights trilogy. Newspapers in India realise that we live in […]
The Asian Age, which chronicles our life and times with random bits of information that are unlikely to be of any use other than being excellent conversation sprinklers, informed me this morning that the Vatican has ordained that the Christian god cannot be a woman. This information comes via the Daily Telegraph. Feminist hackles are […]