You may have heard of the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group of medieval geeks who gather in cardboard armor every week to beat each other senseless about the head.

The AP now tells us about groups modeled on the movie Fight Club where the fighting is real:

Gints Klimanis, a 37-year-old software engineer and martial arts instructor, started the invitation-only “Gentlemen’s Fight Club” in Menlo Park in 2000 after his no-holds-barred sessions with a training partner grew to more than a dozen people. Most participants are men working in the high-tech industry…

Fencing and hockey masks are the only protective equipment used. Several fighters have suffered broken noses, ribs and fingers. [Link]

You knew there was a desi angle to this:

Five-year fight club veteran Dinesh Prasad, 32, a heavily tattooed Santa Clara engineer, said he once broke a rib in a match but never complained to his fellow combatants. He also recently skipped his first wedding anniversary to attend a fight rather than drive to Los Angeles, where his wife is finishing law school.

“I came here to get over my fear of fighting, and it’s working,” he said. “I’m much tougher than I was five years ago. I’m not at the level of these other guys, but if things were to get tough, I can get tough, too.” [Link]

So in Silicon Valley, a masochistic desi engineer gets into fights for the hell of it. Back in the desh, Bollywood has whipped up its own rip of Fight Club. Predictably, it’s a musical rather than a nihilist commentary on consumerism. Predictably, there are no human-simian hybrids and no delipidators made of human body parts. Predictably, there were once plans for a topless Salman Khan:

The buzz from tinsel town is that brawny Salman Khan might do an item number for brother Sohail’s forthcoming film ‘Fight Club’. [Link]