Elsewhere in a move bound to bring joy, light & happiness in the lives of Tamils’ worldwide, T R Rajendar has promised to stop acting in Tamil films thanks to his rapidly expanding fan base in Hollywood, after a recent facial surgery considerably reduced the South Indian bombshell’s  resemblance to a full-grown panda. Even as Hollywood critics groan in dismay at India’s unleashment of its secret weapon of mass disruption, the actor was heard to say, “I go Hollywood, because I love Kollywood, I go North, because I is South.”

As further proof of the fact that the world’s problems are solved, “rationalist“ Mr M Karunanidhi in a dispute with his sons, sons-in-laws, daughters, daughter-in-law, nephews, nephews’ sons, wives & companions has disowned one & all concerned & exchanged his yellow shawl for saffron robes at the Vellore Golden Temple; dogging the footsteps of the superstar to the Himalayas.  Ms J Jayalalithaa has of course forfeited all her claims to green shawls, the Kodanadu estate, Jaya TV, Jaya News and V N Sudhakaran (in the face of media claims that she had done this years before).

In another stirring development, Lalit Modi has been re-named as IPL Commissoner, following a news poll that the majority of India finds him more entertaining that the combination of Poonam Pandey & cricket.

In a breaking news report, which is a Mad Hatter Times exclusive, we report breaking news that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has abdicated the high seat in favour of Mr Lal Krishna Advani on the premise that being a stooge of the government or Madam Sonia is a uni-lateral, bi-partisan issue that has to be supported by all parties. Soniaji has of course been given the Padma Shree for pulling off this stellar example of horse trading.

In another startling development, the Karnataka Government has decided to publish meteorological reports free of cost to the Tamil Nadu Government, in a spirit of cooperation and camaraderie to help the TN government file its 35,000 page reports on the Cauvery dispute. This move has been welcomed by the Ministry of Environment & Forests, which has been facing severe criticism with the felling of thousands of trees; needed for the compilation of Arundhati Roy’s 50,000,000 page report on Maoists in the tree-denuded jungles of India.

The Ministry of Tribal Welfare, in a move to conserve forests and curb the activities of Arundhati Roy’s has banned The Hindu, The Outlook & Tehelka from re-publishing Ms Roy’s reports – a move which has been welcomed by the Readers’ Circles of all leading newspapers even as it has dented the profits of the publishing & paper industry.

Now, we will take a short-commercial break, before we continue our coverage of how the world’s problems have been solved because President Obama sorry Osama is dead.

“Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.” – Oscar Wilde

Whereas, political opponents can always be depended upon to know how to live & when to die very timely deaths.

I mean just when George Bush’s popularity ratings are on a downward swing you have 9/11 & the Iraq war as Weapons of Mass Distraction to help the king of the White House climb up the popularity ladder. And then again as American death counts mount (I mean we all know Iraqi, non-white deaths don’t matter like in the words of General Tommy Franks ”We don’t do body counts”) and the mood in America chills, we have the capture of Saddam Hussien — to help stem that flood of criticism about the oil rat pack that was scourging the Iraqi countryside.  And then some more months down the line, when it seemed Uncle Sam’s love for Halliburton, Veritas Capital, Washington Group & Environmental Chemical was hitting too many headlines, we have the hanging of Saddam Hussein.

But then wars serve very useful purposes. Apart from ensuring that a lot of private companies profit from “Wars of Terror” & “Axises of Evil” they also help the politicians — the companies backed to power — soar heights of popular adulation from well-meaning, but misguidedly patriotic citizens.

In India, we played the same Blame Game – Game, Set & Match!!! Feb 1999 – Pakistan begins occupying posts on the Indian side of the LOC. Elsewhere in the country, the AIADMK withdraws support to the NDA government tottering on the brinks of hell. And just when things seem to be going really bad, we employ our own “Weapons of Mass Distraction” and have the brainwave to “Attack Pakistan” as late as July. Never mind, that no had given a damn about Pak for all those months they had happily been occupying India’s LOC posts. Our politicos can be trusted to fall on the time-worn game of “Blame Pakistan” for everything going wrong in India. If one doesn’t watch out we’d soon have a uber-sober Vijaykanth blaming Pakistan for the Cauvery issue or maybe Rajinikanth blaming Pakistan for the non-take-off of his pet inter-linking-rivers theory.

Even the announcement of LTTE Prabhakaran’s death in a way seemed well-timed (May 13, 2009-Last phase of elections; May 16-results; May 18-announcement) - almost as if someone had orchestrated the safe completion of the election process in India; almost as if someone had feared the drastic effects of Prabhakaran’s death on the pollscape of Tamil Nadu (the strain on DMK-Congress ties, Jaya’s electoral advantage).

And now with Osama Bin Laden,

The Independent reports:

“The successful mission to kill Osama bin Laden will give a much-needed boost to President Barack Obama’s flagging popularity ratings. The world leader, who stressed his personal involvement in the events leading to bin Laden’s death, has seen his popularity with US voters fall significantly since his election to the presidency in November 2008.News of bin Laden’s end came little more than a month after a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that only 17% of Americans regarded President Obama as a strong military leader.”

Need I say more?

So the first job of the cub-reporter after he has finished sleeping over the super-boring report he has himself filed on —Rotary club functions, kindergarten graduation parties and Ladies Recreation Club parties — would be to read up on today’s newspapers (at 4.00 pm) so that he can knowledgably discuss yesterday’s events with his Chief Reporter who comes in at 4.30 pm. So as is the habit of everyone young at heart, the cub starts reading the paper from back-to-front so as to get an eyeful of “hot” news, before going on to the front sections to get bleary-eyed over who’s “hot” in the news.

In fact Page 3 is a myth started by journalists to get people to read news about Rotary club functions, kindergarten graduation parties, Ladies Recreation Club parties and the like. I mean honestly, which newspaper have you seen which sees fit to put hot pictures of hot girls wearing hotter clothes that leave men super-hot & sweaty on Page 3?

None!!! Coz that’s the exclusive territory of state & city reporters to bemoan the rubbish heaps at the end of their street. Just like a merry-go-round – the corporation reporter first reports on the rubbish at the end of their newspaper office street, then the rubbish at the end of the Editor’s street and then the rubbish at the end of the Principal correspondent’s street, senior correspondent’s, correspondent’s, trainee correspondent’s till they work their way down to the rubbish at the end of the newspaper watchman’s street.

But the rubbish reports sorry reports on rubbish are done only every alternate day because the day after this mind-blowing, award-winning “Blunton Mail expose” or coverage of rubbish, the next day the concerned newspaper will carry a huge story titled “Blunton Mail Impact” and a photograph in which you can see corporation workers clearing away the rubbish from the street they reported on yesterday.  So with everday having a “Blunton Mail expose” or a “Blunton Mail impact” you can be sure that reporters do their part in keeping corporation workers on their toes. Which is why the reporter, who covers problems on civic amenities, is known as “the Corporation Reporter”. Get it?

As to why the Court Reporter is called so, we can talk about that in another episode titled “Poonam Pandey, Dolly Bindra & Shilpa Shetty-Part II” (which we will call “Mad Hatter Times Impact” as its the follow-on) where we will get around to actually talking about ”Poonam Pandey, Dolly Bindra & Shilpa Shetty.”

It still beats me as to how my nephew who groans and moans and has to be dragged out of bed and plonked in front of the television set with a glass of milk and a plate of idlis at 7.00 am on school days, can bounce up like a well-oiled spring and start stirring hell out of the place by 5.00 am on summer holidays and weekends.

Children operate on this perverse principle that they are sick, their head is aching, their stomach is paining, their knees are hurting, so can they “please, please, stay away from school,” only to fully recover the minute the school bus rounds the corner without having picked them up due to your gullibility in believing them. And if you are stone-hearted enough to heartlessly send them to school on a Monday, you can be sure you won’t hear the end of your cruelty & tyranny till Friday. By Saturday of course all signs of illness would have mysteriously vanished or transferred magically to you.

For my nephew the holiday, hasn’t started till he has properly tangled up the yowling, furious cat in quantities of yarn, written silly messages with toothpaste on the bathroom mirror, dumped a generous quantity of flour on himself and on the floor in an attempt to eat forbidden candies, flooded the bathroom, kitchen, living room and maybe even the neighbour’s balcony in his attempt to have bath, marked out the floor with marbles, lego bricks and rice krispies as a booby-trap to the unwary passerby to trip and break his/her neck, turned on the TV at full blast so that the word “holiday & weekend” becomes a misnomer and broken some hideously ugly vase that some loving relative fostered on you!!! That’s when the day has started for him at 5.00 am..

By 6.00 am when the household is fully awake and cursing their stupidity in staying in the same house as the boy genius, who would give Dennis the Menace a run for his money, he would have progressed to better things, like Tarzan-testing the cable wires on the terrace by swinging across with a howl to set terror into the heart of every street dog, ratcheting up a string of cans, bottles and other miscellaneous articles on the tail of the unsuspecting neighbour’s dog, which was misguided enough to be lured by a packet of biscuits….

Sigh!! Why can’t I, who can fully appreciate the peace and solitude that comes with summer holidays, ever have summer holidays; but must be condemned to warming my office seat, 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month, 12 months  a year…the world is so unfair!

He was also a advocate of free love…sorry, an advocate of free press – so much so that he got then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee,  former CJ P N Bhagwati, Ranganth Misra, Najma Heptulla and Shivraj Patil to write a letter, declaiming the exposure or should we say coverage of his “love” for the fairer sex.

He has also been hailed as the “Sai Baba The Mighty!! Sai Baba The All-powerful!!” for his ability to produce vibhuti, or holy ash, and assorted trinkets, watches, sweets and fruits, on request. Sigh! One only sees it as a sleight of fate that Harry “Houdini” and John Anderson, who were remarkable for the same gifts in this line of work, never managed to capitalize on the same and create a Rs 40,000 crore ($8.8 billion)-worth empire. Someone ought to have had the good sense to make them change

their midnight blue magician’s robes for saffran-hued ones.

I mean saffron-robes to India, is what Bond is to Western cinema; It gives you – “The License to Kill.” You can get away scot-free with anything short of murder or anything, including murder, if you happened to be a 70-year-old pontiff of a South Indian matt. Now if you ever wanted to dally with a buxom South Indian actress or get some long-legged Mumbai models to strike evocative poses with you, all you have to do is rent those saffron robe from the nearby theatre shop.

Apparently there’s something super-hot & sexy about holy men claiming to life a life of renunication. They dedicate themselves to a life without sex and next thing you know all the lesser-known sex sirens are queuing up at his door; and within a month the poor guy gets hit with more sex scandals than you can say “Jack Robinson.” I mean even Dawood Ibrahim or Salman Khan don’t seem to be having it real hot in the “girls department,” if one were to go by what the media has to say about our “Goodmen,” sorry Godmen.

But then we really shouldn’t be going by what the media says – I mean if media is represented by what Arnab Goswami, Rajdeep Sardesai or Radia Tapes-famed/ill-famed Bhakra sorry Barkha Dutt have to say. Maybe the Godmen are right when they say “Don’t listen to the media. They are just jealous.” I mean top journalists have accused Godmen of brokering political deals, horse trading, political black-money funding, flying in private jets and and do a reverse-Robin-Hood of stealing money from the poor to give to the rich; and then (journalists) have been caught attempting to do the same thing on a smaller-scale.

Some people might find it the height of irony that Godmen like Sai Baba and D G S Dhinakaran – famed far and wide for their ability to cure other people of sickness – have always had to get their sickness cured away by human not “divine” intervention.  But they are the scoffers, the charlatans – for the purer, higher-minded believers, who have always chose to disregard, the sex, corruption, tax evasion scandals, — Sai Baba and D G S Dhinakaran have ascended to heaven to the rejoicing of angels and mourning of Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi, Advani, Karunanidhi & the like, who have always remained faithful to those lined with deep pockets & deeper handouts.

“Between today and tomorrow, the New FB Privacy setting called “Instant Personalization” goes into effect. The new setting shares your data with non-FB sites & it is automatically set to “Enabled”. Go to Account>Privacy Settings>Apps & Websites>Instant Personalization>edit settings & uncheck “Enable”. BTW If your friends don’t do this, they will be sharing info about you as well. Copy and repost”

When I went back and checked, I was shocked find the setting enabled – giving websites worldwide access to my private information (my likes, dislikes, blogs I read, applications I use, etc, etc) …

I think its damn sneaky and horrid of Facebook. They should let users know what they are upto. They just cant allow third-parties to access info like this without alerting FB members. I think FB shouldn’t  over-commercialize its social plug-ins.

Clearly misunderstood

Exact estimate

Small crowd

Act naturally

Found missing

Happily married

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Honey is sweet,
But not as sweet as you,

You might have heard Aqua or seen it or Archies cards.

I was pleasantly surprised when I found something similar in Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd

“The rose is red,
The violet blue,
Carnation’s sweet,
And so are you.”

I have read the book many times before – and love level-headed Gabriel Oak and his capricious sweetheart Bathsheba Everdene. But only during this reading did this particular doggerel strike my fancy.  And as a clarification, this valentine is  the one which caused so much trouble between Mr Boldwood and his pretty neighbour…This thoughtless  missive, originally addressed to little Teddy Coggan,  was then sent off to the grave, dignified farmer with “Marry Me”  stamped right across it. Another interesting thing I noted was rubber-stamping – a much beloved-art of the 21st century scrapbook lover –  was something our 18th century heroine was quite familiar with.

A little more research or wiki-search and I realised that I had glossed-over similar lines while reading Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. Something like the Nan Tucker poems – there are many many variations of these lines…a few more that I came across

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I have five fingers,
The middle ones are for you

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
This is to say,

That I do love you

  “We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics; this is how we stay objective.” – Dave Barry

   “Journalism largely consists of saying “Lord Jones is Dead” to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.” – G K Chesterton

      “The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read” – Oscar Wilde

     “People may expect too much of journalism. Not only do they expect it to be entertaining, they expect it to be true.” – Lewis H Lapham

“ Journalism is the ability to meet the challenge of filling space.” – Rebecca West

Sometimes I keep wondering if I should go in for anonymous blogging – I can atleast me more honest and vociferous about my views. Maybe its part of the process of growing up..but many a time I feel so ashamed or embarrassed about something I had blogged earlier – especially personal stuff. And sometimes I even want to delete the whole blog, when I get ribbed about it by colleagues. ….Maybe there really is a strong case for anonymous blogging.

And in other ways, my views have mellowed down – more a live and let live policy…so I really wonder if I should strike down this blog and start another afresh. I sometimes think that I should start a crafts blog as I love most of the domestic arts – knitting, crotchet, embroidery – but then that will have to wait till I buy my spectacular new Camera..!!!

I have been saving up for a camera for months…Hoping to get a really good one…Wouldn’t really mind if it was second-hand and I was getting it from people I know.  What else is new? Nothing much other than that I’m living in the same old flat – minus one cat. Our cat has decided to seek wider horizons and has left us in the pursuit of new adventures. Of course, ocassionally his highness deigns to visit us. It amuses me to look back and think about why I hadn’t named the cat. Since we were shifting houses and cats – are more house-bound than people-bound – I thought it would be best if I didn’t get too attached to it by naming it. But when we shifted to our new house about one kilometre away from the old one, we found that our cat had also followed suit and taken up residence in our new abode. I was so over-the-world thrilled with it, spent many happy hours playing with our sweet little ball of fur and consequently did get too attached to it. Now that its become an occasional visitor I find that I miss it terribly and wish I had named it. It sounds so cold and formal saying, “I do miss that cat.”   Which one? ” “Oh, the ginger-brown one.” It would have been nice to have named it “Tigger”  – it did resemble Tigger from Winnie the pooh.