Sad day in desi blogging

The Sepia Mutiny has come to an end ......... at least temporarily. Some cyber squatter has taken over and is selling junk stuff poking fun of the Indian culture.
Manish and co. if you are reading this, hang in there buddies and next time set domain names on auto-renewal.

Defacing India

Defacing India

Photo from RajeshKrishnamurthy.com

When you search for grafitti on Indian temples and places of historical importance, you really dont have to search too much. This particular photo stood out to me. I'm not sure which temple this is but seems to be somewhere in TamilNadu. Some of the writings on the wall seem to be Tamil (I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong).
When I was in India last February, there was this little feature on NDTV, which was focused on the same issue - grafitti on historical monuments particularly the Charminar. Most of the offenders they came across were college students from middle class to well-to-do families from the looks of it. Their reasons for defacing our historical monuments included a myriad of reasons - just for the heck of it, rebellion against the society and their parents in particular, professing their puppy love and, the one that struck me, they wanted to become part of history by writing their names on a historical monument!!!!
This maybe stem from my NRI sensiblities but please lets leave our temples and monuments alone. If we want to become a part of history lets do something more deserving like inventing a cure for cancer, putting man on Mars or bringing world peace.

India Mike Charlie Foxtrot

The other day I was browsing through Wikipedia and chanced upon this topic on NATO Phonetic Alphabets. It's a pretty entertaining read and highly recommended.
For instance you probably heard these in movies involving the armed forces and/or aeroplanes:
Alpha (stands for A), Bravo (B), Charlie (C), Delta (D).

From Wiki:

The NATO phonetic alphabet is a common name for the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet which assigns code words to the letters of the English alphabet so that critical combinations of letters (and numbers) can be pronounced and understood by those who transmit and receive voice messages by radio or telephone regardless of their native language, especially when the safety of navigation or persons is essential. It is used by many national and international organizations, including the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

Some usages in movies and novels include:

The NATO phonetic alphabet is referred to repeatedly in Robert Ludlum's novel The Bourne Identity. The phrase Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain is repeated, always italicised, to symbolise the messages relayed to the main character during the Vietnam war....................................

The nickname "Charlie" used by US servicemen in the Vietnam War is derived from "Victor Charlie", the NATO phoneticism for the initials of the Viet Cong, the armed insurgents in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam)............................

The term "Charlie Foxtrot" is used as an abbreviation for CF in American Military slang to refer to a "cluster f@#k" or "completely f@#ked".................

And now for the desi connection:
India is the "I" in the Nato Phonetic Alphabet.

Refer to "I" for "India"

So, if I wanted to say "I'm (I M) completely f@#ked" that would be "India Mike Charlie Foxtrot".

Family of 5 beheaded for "witchcraft"

In a modern day revisital to the Salem Witch Trials, 5 people from a family were beheaded in Assam in eastern India.

Copycat killings??

The tea plantation worker and his four children had been blamed for causing a disease which killed two other workers and made many unwell in Assam state.

About 200 villagers tried and sentenced the family in an unofficial court, then publicly beheaded them with machetes.

They then marched to a police station with the heads, chanting slogans denouncing witchcraft and black magic.

So his only known crime was that he could not cure those people. That's just sad and plain brutal.

Film on Indian math genius - Srinavasa Ramanujam

Srinivasa Ramanujam (1887-1920)

Another Brit filmmaker, another movie on a great Indian. British director Stephen Fry and Dev Benegal are collaborating to make a movie on the math genius, Srinivasa Ramanujam.

From BBC.com:
British director Stephen Fry and India's Dev Benegal are to make a film about an Indian mathematician whose ideas underpin the digital revolution.

Srinavasa Ramanujan, a poor college dropout who died aged 33, ended up at Cambridge in the early 1900s and was acknowledged as a mathematical genius.

The joint production will look at his relationship with Cambridge don GH Hardy who "discovered" him.

The film will begin shooting next year in Tamil Nadu state and Cambridge.

Now that they are finally making a movie I wish they would at least spell his name correct, its Ramanujam not Ramanujan. I guess they're confusing the name with the name Ramajuan, which is the character played by the delectable Navi Rawat in the hit show Numb3rs, who also (co-incidentally) happens to potray a math genius in that show.

The reel life Ramajuan, or did they try to spell Ramanujam?

Curious question on the subscription form on Little India magazine

As I was clicking around the form for the free (true to my desi roots) subscription to Little India magazine, I came across a weird question on the form:

Color of your Eyes: Black/Brown/Blue/Green/Other

Not being in the magazine distribution business, I'm not sure what this question has to with a magazine subscription or maybe I'm right and it has absolutely no place in that form.

Cartoon strip from LittleIndia.com

A glaring inconsistency in Lagaan

Maybe I missed this if it happened, but during the final cricket match, not one person was given out LBW. In fact, there was not a single appeal for LBW. Seems very unlikely.

Real life Mr. and Mrs. Smith

To quote some cliches:
Fact is stranger than fiction.
Real life imitates reel life.

This Mexican couple tried to cut, shoot and blow up each other after a marital spat got out of hand. Wonder what the argument was? Did the guy forget to put the toilet seat down?

Poster made from Scarface Script

Nothing related to India or desis here but I thought this was really cool. This dude made a poster that lists every single word in the script of the movie Scarface.

The black and red background is actually text

Scarface is one of favorite movies of all times. Of course, Amitabh Bachchan starred in the Indian adaptation of Scarface, Agneepath.

India - where modern technology fuses with the traditional

This picture may be unusual to anyone not originally from India. Shown above is an elephant wandering a busy bazaar in Mumbai. This picture was taken with my brother's cellphone camera, which are sold along with clothes, groceries and vegetables in the same bazaar. The poor pachyderm was rambling along the streets on a hot day probably on his way to be participate at a circus or a local fair or to be displayed at a temple.
It's just amazing how people were going about their business without making a big deal of such a huge creature in a crowded place. Of course, I was fascinated by the whole scene, probably the NRI in me.

Happy Holi

Spring Break - desi ishstyle

Mural in the Men's Room

At least they did not include a chick with magnifying glasses.

Marauder's take on the Oscars 2006

From CNN: The big winners Hoffman and Witherspoon

Last night's Academy Awards Ceremony was a big snoozefest. Jon Stewart was good but you had the feeling he was not letting go, maybe because of all the problems these big events had with the FCC recently. The audience was probably reeling from the all the pre-Oscar partying or saving themselves for the parties later. The musical items and photo montages were perfect for the perennial insomniac.

From moviepie.com: The surprise winner from last night "Crash"

Crash was definitely the big winner and a surprise at that. But it was the movie yours truly liked from the list, so go figure. Sure the movie was not considered "Oscar material" because of its improbable storyline. But it was extremely well made and held your attention till the very end.

From Oscars.com: Ang Lee's big moment

Ang Lee definitely deserved best director. I think this may be the first award in that category by a man of Asian descent. Imagine that - a Chinese dude making a movie about gay cowboys in 1960s Wyoming!! Here's to having a desi director holding that award one day and yelling something in Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi, Marathi or some other language from the sub-continent.

Shyamalan: A "commercial success"

Talking of desi directors winning Oscars, M. Shyamalan made quite an impression with his American Express commercal last night. The Manoj Shyamalan AmEx ad was one of the bright spots in an otherwise uninspiring "yet another awards ceremony" night. I'm sure I'm not the only person who was tricked for a moment into thinking that this was one of the photo montages or a preview for one his upcoming movies. The fact that he wrote and directed this commerical himself is a testament to his versatility.

360 degree panaromic shot of Paris at nighttime

Click here

Bush in India - Inappropriate "Ghandi" joke on Letterman

Does this gentleman look like Osama to you?

My pet peeve with most American writers and media - if you are referring to a great leader please take the pains to at least spell their name correctly. It's Gandhi not Ghandi.
Letterman is usually pretty funny when he cracks on people and leaders. I've no problem when he was picking on how Bush landed at the Delhi airport and complained to airport security about "all them suspeesus people in turbans" or Dr. Manmohan's name or Dr. Kalam's hairstyle. But then he went over the line when he made a joke about Gandhi and Osama. On the last night's show (2nd March 2006), Letterman was doing a spoof of and hour-by-hour account of Bush's timetable in India. That's when he made the cracked the joke on how Bush looked at Gandhi's photo and asked "when did Osama lose his beard".
He read that from a sheet of paper, then paused for a second, shocked. Does he even write his own material? Then he said something to the effect of "lets not go there" and continued with his item. Maybe I'm being an oversensitive brown dude but I really doubt if Letterman would have the balls to make a similar remark about Martin Luther King Jr.

The ultimate upset - FSU over Duke

SIFY.com - NSFW

The web content people of Sify.com would certainly do better to mark some of their content NSFW.
For instance they have a thumbnail image on Elisha Cuthbert on their home page under the section titled "Gallery" (see below image).

Warning: Clicking on this image may be NSFW

When you click on that image, it takes you to a nice body shot of Elisha in a swim suit. I dont know about most workplaces but in these days of harassment law suits this is certainly not suitable for my workplace.