WTF

Show me the tree!

First there was the whole saga about Aishwarya Rai marrying a tree. Then, recently, a denial from Aishwarya. Well, now Amitabh Bachchan himself has spoken:

Ash is not married to a tree! […] It’s a challenge—please show me the tree she married! Bring that person who married her to the tree. Where did it happen?

Hmm. Perhaps they’ve killed off the tree and buried it. Or maybe they’ve kidnapped its saplings and warned the tree to deny everything or else…

Perhaps we should just take Mr Bachchan at his word. But why, I wonder, would so many people report the matter if there wasn’t something to it? Still, that’s our media…

(Link via email from Arjun Swarup.)

Quote of the day

He can’t even eat by himself. How will he throw stones at the police?

—Kamti Devi, the aunt of a two-year-old boy in Patna who has been “accused of leading rioters in an attack on policemen in Bihar.” Heh.

This kid may be innocent, but we really should teach them young, I say. Like they have the Spelling Bee in the US, we should have the Rioting Bee here. Then we can truly reap the demographic dividend when these kids grow up.

(First link via email from Prabhu.)

Vibrating condoms and Indian culture

Everywhere there is joy and squealing. CNN-IBN reports:

The Madhya Pradesh government has banned the sale of Crezendo condom in the state saying it’s against Indian culture.

Public Works Minister in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh Kailash Vijayvargiya has taken up cudgels against Hindustan Latex Ltd’s condom on behalf of the government.

Vijayvargiya says the condom is a sex toy and will not be allowed to be sold in the state.

I’d argue that the penis is a sex toy and should be banned from Madhya Pradesh as well. And I’m also most curious to know what a public works minister is doing commenting on this matter. What public works?

CNN-IBN’s TV news report on this is also hilarious—I love the back-and-forth between the anchor and the reporter, and I’d take their tone as mock seriousness if they weren’t always like this. The vox pops are immense fun too. These reporters are going to put satirists out of work. Watch:

(Links via separate emails from Anand Krishnamoorthi, Gautam John and Ashutosh Jogalekar.)

Got wheelchair? Can’t fly

A headline today in the Times of India: “Private airline offloads wheelchair-bound man.”

Maybe they figured he had his own transport. No, quips aside, this is quite stupid, and I hope the airlines in question figure that they can get a slight competitive advantage, at least in terms of image, by taking special care of the disabled. (I also hope they don’t do cheesy ad campaigns about it, with lines like “So what if you have wheels—we’ll help you fly!”)

And the rhetoric of that disability rights group is quite over the top.

Anyway, the last four paras of that story seem to be transplanted from somewhere else: what could the cost of living index have to do with airlines and wheelchairs? WTF?

(Link via email from Ojas Sabnis, who got it from Shailesh Tavate.)

Update: Those extra paras are gone!

The relationship police

AP reports:

A Canadian man won’t be available for a relationship over the next three years—by court order.

An Ontario judge has ruled that Steven Cranley cannot have a girlfriend until 2010.

He can, however, start masturbating in 2009.

Ok, fine, I made that third line up. But not the first two!

(Link via email from Shruti.)