05 February, 2010

Welcome to the 19th Century

Ah, modern times. Check out these two amazing news headlines:

Community ostracises woman touched by outsider
Muslims on social networks are sinners

Such stories they contain. It’s bewildering to be a writer of fiction sometimes, when the real world is so very far out and strange. 

Posted at 4:45 PM by Amit Varma in Arts and entertainment | India | News | WTF

Hachette on the Rise

Just back from the Galle Lit Fest, rested, and all set to resume blogging. Let me begin with the good news that my publisher, Hachette India, just a year old in this country, has already become the second-biggest publisher in India, ahead of Harper Collins and Random House, and behind Penguin. Here’s the full story: I’m most pleased that My Friend Sancho has been described as one of their flagship sellers here. Authors are supposed to have uneasy relationships with their publishers, but I get along really well with these guys, and their success is well deserved.

Also, in the UK, Hachette consolidates its No 1 position, which it has held for a while now. More power to them.

*

In other book related news, I’ll be part of a panel at the Kala Ghoda Festival discussing “City Stories”. Anjum Hasan will moderate, and my fellow panelists are Chandrahas Choudhury and Lata Jagtiani. It’s on Monday, at 8pm; the full Kala Ghoda schedule is here. There’s also a panel on food writing at 6.30 pm featuring my friends (and India’s best writers on food) Vikram Doctor and Nilanjana Roy, and I’m looking forward to being in the audience for that. Hop over if you have time.

Posted at 2:46 PM by Amit Varma in Arts and entertainment | My Friend Sancho | Personal

27 January, 2010

Off to Galle

In a few hours, I’m off to the Galle Literary Festival. Blogging will be light till I’m back in town, and I don’t expect to be online much. But who knows, I may tweet salacious (and made-up) literary gossip if the fancy strikes me. Watch out for that.

If you’re at the festival, both the events that I’m part of take place on Sunday, January 31. At 10am, I will be in conversation with Shehan Karunatilaka, a Sri Lankan novelist who will be talking about his forthcoming novel, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew. It’s a book set in the world of cricket, and we’ll talk about Sri Lankan literature, Sri Lankan cricket and Shehan’s own writing.

At 2.15pm, I will have a session to myself in which I will talk about My Friend Sancho, read out bits of it, and chat with the audience. If there is time, I may also read from an Abir Ganguly short story that I finished writing a few hours ago, and that will be part of an anthology of Indian writing that you’ll see on the stands later this year.

And ah, I promise at least one orgasm. So if you come, you’ll see me come. Promise.

Posted at 10:14 PM by Amit Varma in Arts and entertainment | My Friend Sancho | Personal

Why Australia? Why Not Dubai?

Reader Ruchir Khare writes in to point me to this passage from the Johann Hari piece on Dubai that I linked to in my last post:

A Human Rights Watch study found there is a “cover-up of the true extent” of deaths from heat exhaustion, overwork and suicide, but the Indian consulate registered 971 deaths of their nationals in 2005 alone. After this figure was leaked, the consulates were told to stop counting.

Ruchir’s questions: What has the Indian government done about this? What has the media done about this? These figures, after all, are greater than those coming out of Australia.

*

Oh, and my buddy Madhu pointed me this morning to the WTF headline of the day: “Aussies celebrate R-Day by racially assaulting 2 Indians.”

This is not on some random blog somewhere, it’s from The Economic Times. Some editor actually approved this. Such it goes.

Posted at 10:02 PM by Amit Varma in News | WTF

26 January, 2010

An Offence That Cannot Be Ignored

The WTF statement of the week comes from a Dubai cop:

The woman confessed that she had sexual intercourse with her fiancé and that she had alcohol. We cannot just ignore such an offence.

The woman is question is a British tourist who complained on New Year’s Day that she had been raped by a waiter the previous evening. The cops “arrested her after she revealed during questioning that she had drunk alcohol and had sex with her fiancé, with whom she was on holiday.”

As for the waiter, he’s presumably still on the loose, still waiting.

*

And while on Dubai, check out this superb article by Johann Hari: “The dark side of Dubai.” (Link via Sonia Gupta.)

Posted at 5:35 PM by Amit Varma in Freedom | News | WTF

23 January, 2010

My Walking Stick Is Bigger Than Yours

The line of the day, which I want to see on a t-shirt before I die, comes from the great Mahinder Watsa:

Why have a walking stick if your own penis can oblige!

I especially love the touch of having the exclamation mark at the end of the rhetorical question. Immense panache. The quote is from here, and is part of a recent development in Watsa’s writing—he’s actually beginning to indulge in wisecracks. Consider his crack here about how he thought only frogs were green—or his advice here to “eat any vegetable you like best and with every bite think a sexual thought.”

The questions, of course, are as clueless as ever. Still, we’re over a billion people strong, and the stork sure didn’t bring them.

*

Ouch. Did I just write, “Consider his crack here...?” Somebody hit me.

*

Earlier posts on Watsa: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

Posted at 10:57 PM by Amit Varma in Miscellaneous

Cricket and War

The WTF statement of the day comes from Pradeep Magazine in Hindustan Times:

In this wave of attacks from all sides, the IPL has unleashed one more this year. What the Mumbai terror attacks could not achieve—an Indo-Pak war—this fresh row could well do that.

I never thought that in a fracas between Lalit Modi and the rest of the world, the rest of the world will make a fool of itself. Such it goes.

*

My thoughts on the IPL auctions are here. I must admit, the thought of war never crossed my mind. But then, I am not a defence analyst.

Posted at 8:26 PM by Amit Varma in Journalism | Media | Sport | WTF

22 January, 2010

Modern Warfare

The US Army has killer robots. The Lashkar has para-gliders. I’d love to watch the movie—but I’m scared about the real world.

Posted at 6:47 PM by Amit Varma in News

Vir Sanghvi’s Cognitive Dissonance

Reader Mani Shankar writes in to point me to a post by Vir Sanghvi in which he hits out at people “who blog and tweet”. I have three things to say about it:

1] Sanghvi criticises bloggers and blogging… in a blog post. Is there not a little bit of dissonance there? If he is blogging, he is a blogger. And yet, his criticism doesn’t seem directed at himself.

2] He attacks a straw man and generalises madly. He’s upset because some bloggers “complain that the media are only interested in circulation and viewership (or TRPs)”. (He doesn’t link to any of them.) He finds this criticism invalid, so he generalises about how bloggers “regard themselves as an elite.” Which bloggers? All bloggers? Me also? Him also?

This is as silly as my attacking the writing skills of Indian journalists because some journalists mix metaphors. It would be fallacious of me to generalise in that manner, and far more productive for me to link to a specific journalist whose writing falls in that category—as I did a few days ago with poor Bobilli. Should I have generalised about Indian journalism on the basis of Bobilli’s writing?

3] Finally, when people (bloggers or otherwise) criticise the media for chasing TRPs, they are effectively criticising them for catering to the lowest common denominator. Sanghvi attacks them for feeling this way, and calls them an elite. But hey, wait a second, what about when journalists criticize politicians for the exact same thing? As when Sanghvi himself writes:

If we are led by the lowest common denominator then that is where we will remain in the community of nations: at the lowest level, without any hope of catching up with the rest of the world.

The “elite bloggers” Sanghvi mocks presumably hold the same sentiment about our media. Can Sanghvi not take his own medicine?

*

There’s another response on Sanghvi’s post over at Retributions. I think this is by one of those “pseudonymous bloggers” Sanghvi is so upset about. Heh. Correction: The post is by Rohit Pradhan, who’s not been pseudonymous for a while now, I’m told.

*

Also read: An old piece by me, “In Defence of Blogging.”

Posted at 5:42 PM by Amit Varma in Blogging | Journalism | Media | WTF

‘Haiti Needs Business, Not Business As Usual’

That’s Salil Tripathi, on why foreign aid is the last thing that Haiti needs.

And here’s Bret Stephens on the same subject.

*

To shift the context to Africa, check out this wonderful TED Talk by Andrew Mwenda:

Also, here’s an old piece by William Easterly: “What Bono doesn’t say about Africa”.

Posted at 4:41 PM by Amit Varma in Economics | Politics

Scientific Consensus

The tastiest bit of the recent controversy over the IPCC’s mistake is this nugget:

Interestingly, the IPCC study is reported to have taken the deadline on the melting of the Himalayas from a Russian study, which predicted the melting of the glaciers by 2350. IPCC changed it to 2035, making it a ‘Himalayan’ blunder.

If you’re predisposed to reaching a particular conclusion, and all your incentives are tailored towards it, then such mistakes become inevitable. It doesn’t help that RK Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, calls himself “unsinkable”. Mr Pachauri, remember the Titanic, for which that term was also used? There’s an iceberg of truth heading your way.

Also, Pachauri really does owe VK Raina an apology. Maybe, following the example of David Frith, he should literally eat up all the IPCC reports. That would make for a good YouTube video.

(I got some of these links via an online discussion involving Mohit Satyanand, Barun Mitra, Yazad Jal and Sruthijith KK, among others.)

Posted at 4:08 PM by Amit Varma in News | Science and Technology

Fat Man Flying

Reuters informs us that Air France has denied that it plans to charge overweight passengers extra. There had earlier been speculation that they could “bar obese passengers from flying.” Well, that’s been clarified.

Here’s the interesting thing, though: fat passengers do cost more for the airline to fly then thin passengers, as greater weight leads to more fuel consumption. It would politically incorrect and logistically impractical to charge passengers according to weight, of course, so the airlines don’t make that a factor in their pricing. As a result, thin passengers end up subsidizing fat ones.

I would have complained about this bitterly in my college days, when I was slim like a male Kate Moss. But I couldn’t afford to fly in those days, and had no stake in the matter. Today, I’m probably one of those benefiting from the subsidy, so you won’t find me complaining anytime soon. It’s all worked out well.

(NDTV link via email from Sudipta.)

Posted at 3:50 PM by Amit Varma in Economics | News

Subsidies

This is brilliant. The last line of the letter, especially, is a killer. 

Posted at 3:42 PM by Amit Varma in Economics

The IPL Auction Hoo-Ha

Hindustan Times reports the WTF news of the day:

A Pakistani parliamentary delegation has cancelled its visit to India after none of the country’s cricketers found any takers at an auction for the third edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL).

National Assembly Speaker Fehmida Mirza made the announcement in the House on Wednesday after opposition members raised the issue, terming it a “planned conspiracy” to prevent Pakistani players from featuring in the cash-rich series.

Now, really, if you were in charge of an IPL franchise, what would you do? Your resources are limited, and you want to make sure that every player you bid for and buy actually turns up and plays. If there is a no-show, even if you don’t have to pay the player, you incur an opportunity cost, and there’s a gap in your team. And with India-Pakistan relations being the way they are, it’s quite possible that, like last season, there may be no Pakistan players. All it takes is one more terrorist attack like 26/11.

The rational thing to do—indeed, the responsible thing to do, from your shareholders’ point of view—is to play it safe and not bid for any of Pakistan’s players. As a cricket fan, I find this tragic, because I love watching Umar Gul, Shahid Afridi and Sohail Tanvir in action. But from a business point of view, there was really nothing else the franchises could have done.

All this speculation about government directives and collusion between teams is, thus, pointless. Each franchise looked to its self-interest and made a perfectly rational decision. Such it goes.

As for the anger in Pakistan about their players not playing in the IPL, it is entirely justified. But it should be directed at the Lashkar, not at the IPL franchises.

*

And I don’t get this whole business of auctioning players. Why can’t the franchises just negotiate with players on their own? Why do we need the BCCI in the middle, distorting price signals?

If I remember correctly, Lalit Modi had once argued that the auction system and the spending caps in place are necessary so that a franchise like the Mumbai Indians, flush with Mukesh Ambani’s money, can’t buy out all the good players, thus killing the competition. But such a state would be unsustainable—consider these two scenarios:

1. Assume that Ambani has way more money than anyone and can conceivably buy off all the good players. But once he has an XI full of superstars, the attraction of being part of his franchise diminishes for the others. No up-and-coming star will want to be part of his team because they need the exposure more than the extra money—that is where their long-term equity lies. And established stars not guaranteed a place in the XI will also have an issue with the tradeoffs involved, because their long-term brand value can only go down, not up, if they don’t play.

2] Make the far-fetched assumption that Ambani somehow pulls it off, and his team is by far the strongest, and is thrashing everyone else. What happens? Because the matches are one-sided, the crowds lose interest, ratings fall, revenues go down, and it is no longer sustainable for Ambani to be spending those big bucks. He scales down, the players drift to other teams, and we move towards an equilibrium again.

Also, the auctions harm the players more than they help them. A franchise may be willing to pay, say, US$80,000 for a player, but the base price set for him is $100,000. So they don’t bid for him, and both the franchise and the player suffer—after all, where he could have been earning 80k, he’s earning nothing. (At this point, you might want to listen to Milton Friedman on the minimum wage. Here’s the transcript.)

And this affects the superstar players as well, who might command much higher prices than the franchises are allowed to pay. In other words, players and franchises are all made worse off by this auction system—so what’s the point of it at all?

Posted at 1:34 PM by Amit Varma in India | News | Politics | Sport

16 January, 2010

‘There Is No Quit’

Bob Herbert writes about Haiti in The New York Times:

Just when you think the ultimate has happened, the absolute worst, something even more dire, comes along.

And yet. No matter how overwhelming the tragedy, how bleak the outlook, no matter what malevolent forces the fates see fit to hurl at this tiny, beleaguered, mountainous, sun-splashed portion of the planet, there is no quit in the Haitian people.

They rose up against the French and defeated the forces of Napoleon to become the only nation to grow out of a slave revolt. They rose up against the despotic Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier and sent him packing. Despite ruthless exploitation by more powerful nations, including the United States, and many long years of crippling civil strife, corruption, terror and chronic poverty, the Haitian people have endured.

They will not be defeated by this earthquake.

The overwrought prose and dubious insight here is more suited to a schoolboy’s essay than an NYT column. No quit in the Haitian people? That sounds just like the patronising remarks about Mumbai’s ‘resilience’ after each terrorist attack that we go through. Mumbaikars went to work on 27/11 not because they were resilient or especially brave but because they had no choice. They continued commuting in trains after the train blasts of 2006 because of the same reason. From outside it might look brave, but here, we see it as just getting on with our lives. Is there an option?

The people of Haiti, I’d imagine, are like people everywhere else—they make do with what there is, and respond to circumstances as they arise. That is a human quality, not a Haitian one. There is no quit across the world.

*

And while on NYT columns, I’m increasingly surprised by the kind of writing Gail Collins gets away with. Writing about Scott Brown, the Republican candidate in the Massachusetts senate elections, she says:

When he was 22, he [Brown] won an “America’s Sexiest Man” contest, the prize for which was $1,000 and a chance to pose naked in a Cosmopolitan magazine centerfold. One of his daughters — this is perhaps the best-known factoid in the campaign — came in somewhere between 13th and 16th on “American Idol.”

“For our family, especially me being on ‘Idol’ but my dad being in politics, there are always so many people who have something negative to say,” Ayla Brown told The Boston Herald this week. Her talent was singing, not sentence construction.

Now, how crass is that last sentence? When she’s writing about politics in these polarised times, one can expect her to get snarky and personal about the candidate from the party she opposes. But his daughter? I can imagine a tabloid going there, but an NYT columnist should surely consider it out of bounds.

I wonder, if Herbert and Collins left the awesome platform of the NYT and started independent blogs, how many readers would they have? That would be the real test, and I’m sure they’d be resilient if it went wrong.

Posted at 7:31 PM by Amit Varma in Journalism | Media | Politics | Small thoughts | WTF

The Joys of Petting

In an email conversation, the good Arun Simha points me to what he says “will surely be the sentence of the year”:

My own movables were subject to trespass.

Arun is right. For the wonderful Roger Ebert article it is taken from, click here.

*

An aside: What would you call the practice of throwing a dog or cat at someone?

Posted at 4:38 AM by Amit Varma in Miscellaneous

14 January, 2010

It Must Be Terribly Lonely…

... to be the only hippo in Montenegro.

Not as bad as it must be for the only pig in Afghanistan, but still.

And imagine being the only human in a country full of hippos. I can see you in a cage in a zoo, mournfully contemplating what might have been if humans were the dominant species, when the zookeeper hippo and his hippo girlfriend put on some music and start dancing outside your cage.

‘What are you doing?’ you ask.

‘It’s called the Hippo Hippo Shake.’

(Pic courtesy Reuters)

Posted at 4:49 PM by Amit Varma in Miscellaneous | News

A Dress Code For Mannequins

The WTF statement of the day is the warning given by Chandra Shekhar, a politician in Bhopal, to local shopkeepers:

Your mannequins should wear sarees, not underwear. From now on, keep all undergarments inside. Show it to the customer when he or she asks for it. Five days from now if undergarments are still hanging outside, we will light a bonfire of the lingerie.

Yes, the culture police is protesting against the public display of lingerie now. In a country in which there are so many serious issues to tackle, this is getting surreal. But why, it must be asked, are they doing this? Is there actually a constituency that approves of this kind of behaviour?

My answer: Yes, there is. We are a country that contains around half-a-billion sexually repressed men. Many of these dudes, who don’t get the kind of action they desire, resent anything that reminds them of this. Like lingerie on mannequins. Like advertisements for coffee-flavoured condoms (another target of these thugs). Like the ubiquitous bogeyman of ‘Western Culture.’

And where there is widespread resentment, there will be a political party tapping into it. Such it goes.

Posted at 4:37 PM by Amit Varma in India | News | Politics | Small thoughts | WTF

11 January, 2010

Five Monkeys

On a mailing list I’m part of, I came across this wonderful excerpt from a book called Thinkertoys:

Imagine a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb toward the banana. As soon as he touches the stair, spray all the monkeys with ice-cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result - all the monkeys are sprayed with ice-cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, turn off the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and will want to climb the stairs. To his surprise, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

Again, replace a third monkey with new one. The new one goes to the stairs and is attacked. Two of the four monkeys that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing the fourth and fifth monkeys with new ones, all the monkeys that have been sprayed with ice-cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs. Why not? Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been around here.

I have a feeling that this is the problem with Indian television programming and Indian newspapers. Hardly anyone thinks outside the box. And the box is old. There’s a great opportunity not being taken here because no one has courage and imagination. Pity.

*

On a related note, check out Michael Kinsley’s recent essay on what’s wrong with newspapers today. (Link via Peter Griffin.)

Posted at 7:47 AM by Amit Varma in Arts and entertainment | India | Journalism | Media | Small thoughts

07 January, 2010

The Free Speech Cop-Out

The Times of India reports:

In a significant ruling, a three-judge bench of the Bombay high court has held that in India criticism of any religion is permissible under the fundamental right of freedom of speech, be it Islam, Hinduism, Christianity or any other religion, and a book cannot be banned for that reason alone. But the criticism must be bona fide or academic, said the court as it upheld a ban issued in 2007 by the Maharashtra government on a book titled Islam—A Concept of Political World Invasion by Muslims.

Aah, that first line sounds so nice, gives so much hope. And then the second one makes it meaningless. Why should only “bona fide or academic” criticism be allowed? Who decides if a particular critique is “bona fide or academic”? The judges there paid lip service to free speech—and in the very next sentence, added caveats that took the ‘free’ out of it.

It could be argued, of course, that the bench merely followed a precedent already set by the framers of our constitution. They too, in Article 19 (1) (a), paid lip service to free speech. And in article 19 (2), allowed restraints on it on grounds such as “public order” and “decency and morality” that are open to interpretation, and make it easy for those in power to stifle free expression. Such it goes.

Also read: Don’t Insult Pasta.

Posted at 2:19 PM by Amit Varma in Freedom | India | News | WTF

Is India’s National Dish…

... pork?

Hindustan Times reports:

The Bombay High Court has stayed the disbursal of Rs 1,000 crore of the taxpayers’ money — in the form of subsidy by the Maharashtra government — to distilleries that make alcohol using foodgrains.

The subsidy is applicable to 21 distilleries, many of which are controlled by politicians.

Questioning the state’s policy, the court on Wednesday asked: “What is essential commodity — foodgrains or wine?”

[...]

The beneficiaries include former chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s son Amit and Nationalist Congress Party leader Govindrao Aadik.

That last line I quoted is the killer, isn’t it? What’s the point of power, a politician might argue rationally, if you can’t enjoy its spoils?

(Link via email from Deepak Shenoy. For more posts on how our taxes are misused, click here.)

Posted at 2:02 PM by Amit Varma in India | News | Old memes | Taxes | Politics | WTF

Dear Shah Rukh Khan

Dear Shah Rukh Khan

A recent tweet of yours recycles Pascal’s Wager as a joke. I would urge you to read this response to it. And this one.

You might say in reply that hey, you pray, and consequently many good things have happened to you. But the causation is flawed. Your success is a combination of luck and hard work—as all success is. Other people also pray as much as you, and have achieved nowhere near your level of success. Indeed, poor people probably pray more than rich dudes. But if there is a god, she clearly doesn’t believe in bribery and ass-licking.

Regards

Amit Varma

*

Link via a tweet from @Twivani. More open letters here.

Posted at 12:55 PM by Amit Varma in Arts and entertainment | Letters

05 January, 2010

Academics and Sex

I think most of us would agree that academics is boring. And that sex is exciting. So what about an academic study on sex then?

Well, consider the following quote from an author of one such study:

Understanding measures of arousal is paramount to further theoretical and practical advances in the study of human sexuality. Our results have implications for the assessment of sexual arousal, the nature of gender differences in sexual arousal, and models of sexual response.

I guess boring wins. I wonder what academics do on vacation.

Posted at 8:24 PM by Amit Varma in Miscellaneous

Bulls and Bears

The Sensex has just touched “a 23-month high.” This will, I have no doubt, make many investors feel bullish. And yet, that is an absolutely inappropriate response. If I had money in the stock market, I’d be bearish right now.

Call me a fool—but watch that space.

Posted at 8:08 PM by Amit Varma in Economics | India | Small thoughts

Michael Crichton’s Fight Club

Michael Crichton has an engrossing piece up in Playboy on how to win domestic fights. He writes:

Here’s what I don’t understand. If you were going to spend your life in physical battles — bar fights, or boxing matches, or whatever — you would almost certainly get some instruction. You might hire a coach, do a little training. At the very least you would learn the fundamentals: how to punch, and so on. Such instruction would make sense to you.

But the same people who feel the need for instruction in boxing will instantly join in a verbal domestic argument without a moment’s thought about what they are doing, let alone any real training.

Yet verbal fighting, like physical fighting, is a skill. Domestic fighting can be learned. One can become very good at it — although almost nobody is, because almost nobody thinks it’s necessary to learn this skill. Many men don’t bother because they erroneously believe that women are more verbally skilled and emotionally nimble than they are. But whatever the reason, most men just jump into a domestic fight, adopting the fighting style of their fathers, or various people they’ve seen on television.

If this method has been working for you, then you don’t need this article. But if you find you are coming off badly in your fights — if you are uncomfortable fighting — if you avoid fights, or dread them — if you are afraid of seriously hurting your opponent — then you better read on. Because you need to get a little balance. Do a little roadwork. Build up your wind. Work on your mental attitude.

And above all, learn to win.

If you’re a man, I recommend you read the full piece. If you’re a woman, um, please don’t. You guys already whip us at this every time, and don’t need any instruction. Go shopping or something.

(Link via email from Peter Griffin.)

Posted at 7:54 PM by Amit Varma in Miscellaneous

You Want Credit For That?

One of the first things I did on getting back to Bombay after a wonderful vacation in Goa was go to watch 3 Idiots. I’d been following the controversy on Twitter for a week: Chetan Bhagat’s aggrieved post about how he wuz robbed, Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s rejoinder, the contract between Bhagat and the film-makers which Chopra uploaded on his site, Vir Sanghvi’s spot-on comment on the fracas, and the opinions of Twitterverse. Damn, I thought, the film must be something special if there’s such a fight to take credit for it.

Well, well.

I enjoyed watching the film, but if there was one thing about it that truly sucked, it was the story. Even accounting for the necessary suspension of disbelief while watching a Bollywood film, the story was ludicrously bad. Everything else about the film was excellent: the screenplay was immaculately crafted, the dialogues were easy and natural, the acting was delightful. Even though Aamir Khan’s lecturebaazi about something everybody already knows got occasionally tiresome, I enjoyed the film. But think about it, what a silly story. And they’re fighting for credit.

*

Regardless of whether the story was good or bad, I think Bhagat is right to feel hard done by. While much of what made the film so entertaining was not in the book, that is the case with many adaptations—Slumdog Millionaire being a case in point. The genesis of the story was certainly the book, and by having a story credit at the start of the film that did not include Bhagat’s name, the film-makers were being intellectually dishonest. Hell, what would it have cost them to put Bhagat’s name there, along with Abhijat Joshi and Raju Hirani? It was silly on their part not to do that—though I’d say that the resultant publicity has done everyone involved a world of good. Bhagat’s books must be flying off the shelves, and I don’t imagine he will be pissed for long.

*

Also, the contract itself is ridiculous. Bhagat actually signed his film rights away in perpetuity. This is crazy. A standard clause in most adaptation rights in the West is that if the film isn’t on the floors within a particular period, the rights revert to the author. What if Chopra’s team lost interest in this film, moved on to other projects, and Danny Boyle came to Bhagat and said he wanted to make a film on his book? Bhagat would be helpless, because the rights would be with VVC, who could either be churlish and refuse to part with them, or could benefit from the resultant windfall without Bhagat seeing any share of it.

The clause about discretionary payment is also most WTF. It didn’t hurt Bhagat in the end, but still…

Admittedly, Bhagat was probably not in a strong bargaining position at the time the contract was signed. But this should serve as a cautionary tale to any other novelist today selling film rights to Bollywood.

Posted at 5:37 PM by Amit Varma in Arts and entertainment | News

28 December, 2009

The Lion in Winter

Much amusement comes from the news of the sex tapes that allegedly show ND Tiwari “in a compromising position with three women.” The guy is 86. I didn’t even know you could get it up at that age. What a man.

I can imagine him being confronted by the president:

Pratibha Patil: Mr Tiwari, I have seen these sex tapes of yours. Amazing. I mean, disgusting. You are a governer, how could you do this?

ND Tiwari: He he he. Is that a rhetorical question?

PP: No, I mean, yes. But tell me, why three women? That is so perverse!

NDT: Well, I was told once that I should only be sleeping with girls my age. Or, at least, not more than 20 years younger than me. And the three of them put together…

PP: Oh, you are so disgusting.

NDT: Thank you.

*

Well, Tiwari’s lost his job. Fair enough. But, as Prem Panicker tweeted, in this context, a few hours ago:

Strange: so NDT’s bedroom antics bother us. But not the corruption? Strange sense of priorities.

Quite.

Posted at 3:28 AM by Amit Varma in India | News | Politics

24 December, 2009

The Difference Between ‘IMO’ and ‘IMHO’…

... is that ‘imho’ inevitably carries far more arrogance with it. When humility has to be claimed it is generally absent.

In a similar vein, there is ‘I don’t mean to interrupt but...’. Like, duh, if you don’t mean to interrupt—don’t.

Also, ‘With all due respect...’. That’s like a slap.

And, in the course of a TV discussion, calling another panelist an ‘azeez dost’. Dude, he may be ‘azeez’ if his name is Aziz, but there’s no fricking way that guy is a dost. You want him to die. You want to personally torture him using an iron maiden while blasting Himesh music into his eardrums.

A list of such casual semantic hypocrisies could no doubt fill an encyclopedia. And it’s apparent, even as we say what we do not mean, that we do not mean it. Then why say it?

Posted at 4:57 PM by Amit Varma in Small thoughts

23 December, 2009

The Times of India Guide to Leching

This is very funny.

Except that it’s not. WTF?

*

And really, just see these observations:

If you’re observing her from afar and you notice her looking at other couples, she could be longing for the days when she was once also attached.

If she is not single, then chances are she won’t be twirling her hair and touching other men ever so casually.

Generally women who are not single tend to be less friendly with other men.

Who wants to bet that the guy who wrote this studied in a boy’s school, has never dated a girl and spends much of his time on Orkut? Who? You? Get in line.

Posted at 8:18 AM by Amit Varma in Journalism | Media | WTF

22 December, 2009

The Blog Song

Wilbur Sargunaraj is a genius. Check out his masterful music video, “Blog Song”:

He should totally follow this up with “Twitter Anthem”. And Tom Vadakan should should do a rap in the middle of that which goes, ”Tweet is a lonely man, yo, Tweet is a lonely man. But I won’t feel bitter, cuz I’m not a quitter, I’ll put on my glitter, and get my ass on Twitter, yo, cuz Tweet is a lonely man, yo, Tweet is a lonely man.”

No?

(Link via email from Anand Krishnamoorthi.)

Posted at 11:40 PM by Amit Varma in Arts and entertainment | WTF