Since day before yesterday, the media and large sections of the public is having a gala time over Swami Nithyananda’s bedroom antics with a Tamil actress. Everybody is outraged. “Shocked,” “devastated,” “how can he do this?” “betrayal of trust,” “Fake Gurus,” is the typical reaction from what we call the “layman.” But here’s the thing: [...]

An Introduction of Sorts Question: What’s common between Nicolas Sarkozy, Taslima Nasrin, free speech, and the Indian media? Answer: The Burqa, the veil, the headscarf, the chador, the purdah, which is regarded by various people variously as “dignified,” “protective,” “secure,” and “comfortable.” Those who hold any view that opposes these positive connotations are given a [...]

Swapan Dasgupta, a writer I’ve admired for long writes in the Wall Street Journal about the BJP’s chance of making a fresh start under Nitin Gadkari. It’s really an OK piece compared to Swapan’s more incisive articles. No new insight or food for thought and not quite blog-worthy except for this. Since it lost power [...]

Writing about the recently-concluded Hampi festival, the SpIndian Express boldly asks: Who’s the Charioteer? The Hampi festival is an annual cultural extravaganza that began 15 years ago with the Hampi Ustav in 1995. This year’s festival holds a special significance because it marks the 500th year of Sri Krishnadevaraya’s coronation in 1509-10. But the festival [...]

It’s been about 10 years since I started this blog and this post is a personal stock-taking of sorts. This blog started as a space for personal rants/ruminations that made sense perhaps only to me. At a level, it still remains that way. But I’ll spare you those details. The point is it did take [...]

Two fine posts, the first, a well-crafted crafted response to Vir Sanghvi’s mention of a mysterious Blogging Elite and the other, a gentle but firm rap on the media’s superiority complex represented again by Vir Sanghvi and Sagarika Ghose (whose choice of words in her tweet is quite heartwarming). So here’s an FAQ of sorts [...]

So when I read this email exchange between a certain Professor Ashley Tellis and Nitin earlier this evening, I merely smiled. I attributed the Professor’s venomous tirade to either of these: uncontrollable blood pressure that blasted through his keyboard, or a naive assumption that Nitin is his student. And such venom on a really trivial [...]

Slimes Productions proudly presents! Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara. This 16-minute digital affront from the Slimes of India group singlehandedly eclipses the candle-lit darkness of the eminent dolts who were awarded various Lotus Awards for Family Loyalty on Republic Day. The Slimes of India is on an urgent mission to show ‘em who’s the worst. [...]

Today is Makara Sankranti, celebrated across India to both herald the beginning of longer days, and reap the harvest of months of backbreaking work in the fields. But the greater significance of Makara Sankranti like most Hindu festivals, is to highlight another living instance of the amazing cultural unity of India. People in Karnataka exchange [...]

A person’s true culture often emerges involuntarily in two circumstances. One when he is drunk and the other, when he is senile. We’ve never seen Deve Gowda speaking when he was inebriated so it’s both logical and safe to assume that his senility wrenched out his true culture. The political mudslinging over the NICE project [...]