Old memes

The Great Tantra Challenge

This is hilarious:

On 3 March 2008, in a popular TV show, Sanal Edamaruku, the president of Rationalist International, challenged India’s most “powerful” tantrik (black magician) to demonstrate his powers on him. That was the beginning of an unprecedented experiment. After all his chanting of mantra (magic words) and ceremonies of tantra failed, the tantrik decided to kill Sanal Edamaruku with the “ultimate destruction ceremony” on live TV.

[…]

India TV, one of India’s major Hindi channels with national outreach, invited Sanal Edamaruku for a discussion on “Tantrik power versus Science”. Pandit Surinder Sharma, who claims to be the tantrik of top politicians and is well known from his TV shows, represented the other side. During the discussion, the tantrik showed a small human shape of wheat flour dough, laid a thread around it like a noose and tightened it. He claimed that he was able to kill any person he wanted within three minutes by using black magic. Sanal challenged him to try and kill him.

The tantrik tried. He chanted his mantras (magic words): “Om lingalingalinalinga, kilikili….” But his efforts did not show any impact on Sanal – not after three minutes, and not after five. The time was extended and extended again. The original discussion program should have ended here, but the “breaking news” of the ongoing great tantra challenge was overrunning all program schedules.

Now the tantrik changed his technique. He started sprinkling water on Sanal and brandishing a knife in front of him. Sometimes he moved the blade all over his body. Sanal did not flinch. Then he touched Sanal’s head with his hand, rubbing and rumpling up his hair, pressing his forehead, laying his hand over his eyes, pressing his fingers against his temples. When he pressed harder and harder, Sanal reminded him that he was supposed to use black magic only, not forceful attacks to bring him down. The tantrik took a new run: water, knife, fingers, mantras. But Sanal kept looking very healthy and even amused.

After this the tantrik dude “tried to save his face by claiming that there was a never-failing special black magic for ultimate destruction, which could, however, only been done at night.” The channel called his bluff and kept him on air. Edamaruku survived, and seemed mighty amused at the end of it.

The irony here is that many tantra believers, far from reevaluating their faith after this incident, will instead be outraged that this faith was questioned in the first place. They will rationalize away Sharma’s failure, and might even stick small pins into a TV made of wheat flour dough that has “India TV” written on it. And then, when that channel’s TRPs fall…

(Link via email from Anil Gulecha.)

Where Your Taxes Go: 28

DNA reports:

Taxpayer money running into several hundred crores is being splurged annually on the upkeep of bungalows in Lutyens’ Delhi.

These bungalows, used by India’s political and bureaucratic leadership, are white elephants in terms of running costs, thanks to their elaborate colonial style construction, huge lawns and staggering security paraphernalia.

[…]

The residences of the Gandhi family — Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka — saw a spend of nearly Rs47 lakh collectively during these three years.

I don’t have an issue with senior functionaries in the government getting perks with their jobs, but why on earth should the taxes you and I pay go towards Priyanka Gandhi’s plumbing and electricity expenses? Truly, the Gandhis are a royal family. I suppose I should just be glad that we live in the 21st century, or they’d have me hanged, drawn and quartered for my audacity in questioning their entitlements.

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For more on how our government loots us, check out my Taxes Archive.

Invisible Cows and Nicole Kidman’s Swimsuit

This has got to be the sign of the day:

Beware of Invisible Cows

There’s a delightful comic book in there somewhere. What I can’t figure out is whether the invisible cows are the good guys or the bad guys. Whatever be the case, they make for formidable adversaries.

In other news, ABC News informs us:

A swimsuit left at a Swedish pool by Australian movie star Nicole Kidman has been sold at auction to buy cows for poor families in India.

I love the way three countries are involved in that sentence. And many udders.

(Invisible cows link via email from Kunal. Kidman link via a Nanopolitan post that reader Anand Gadiyar pointed me to. Previous posts on cows: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 , 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102.)

Where Your Taxes Go: 27

Towards establishing a professorship in Jawaharlal Nehru’s name in Cambridge.

I rather like R Vaidyanathan’s comment on the matter:

It is also ironical that the professorship is for business studies, while Nehru was the architect of the licence permit quota Raj in India. It is like the butchers’ association of Texas providing a chair to study Gandhian thought in some US university.

The butcher’s association, of course, would presumably do so with its own money. The Nehru Professorship is paid for by money taken forcibly from us. Such it goes…

(Link via email from Rajeev Mantri. For more on how our government loots us, check out my Taxes Archive.)

Long, Healthy Lives…

… are hazardous to the taxpayer, reports IBNLive.com. A study has found that “the health costs of thin and healthy people in adulthood are more expensive than those of either fat people or smokers,” and “healthy people live longer and may develop long-term diseases in old age like Alzheimer’s which are very expensive to treat.”

The solution here is not to prevent people from living long and healthy lives. Instead, it is to question what our governments do with the money it coerces out of its citizens. Is it fair to take money from the obese to pay the medical costs of the relatively healthy, as is effectively the case here? Would it be fair the other way around? Is the government taxing us to provide certain basic services like law and order, or to redistribute it according to the interests of a few politicians in power?

I hope to live a long and healthy life— and even if I don’t, to be a burden on nobody. Is that unusual?

(Link via email from Andy.)

Where Your Taxes Go: 26

IANS reports:

Rising hemlines saw temperatures going up in the Tamil Nadu Assembly on Tuesday with an actress’ short dress triggering a demand from the PMK for a law imposing a dress code and the ruling DMK counselling its ally that it should exercise restraint.

While the DMK advised the PMK that restraint, not the length of a skirt, was the solution, M K Kanimozhi, daughter of Chief Minister M Karunanidhi and MP, was attacking the ‘hypocrisy’ of imposing a dress code on female actors elsewhere in the city.

The fundamental problem here is that our governments want to rule us, not serve us. And that negates the purpose of parting us from the taxes we pay. No?

(Link via email from Karthik. For more on what happens to our taxes, click here.)

Moral Responsibility For Cows

PTI reports:

Blaming the DMK government for the death of 15 cows at the famous Rameswaram temple, AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa on Monday said Chief Minister M Karunanidhi should resign owning “moral responsibility” for the incident.

I love Indian politics. Out there in the US, they’re arguing race and gender and politics and economics. And here…

(Link via email from Pranesh. Previous posts on cows: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 , 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101.)