parotechnics

One Women's Day, many years ago, my friend Jabeen and I went to a Women's Day dance party. It was really a superb thing - it was in some pub type place in Mahim, the entrance fee was reasonable, the music was not bad and there were lots of women there, mostly who identified with feminism in an organised way, but perhaps some friends and fence sitting types also. On the whole we had a lot of fun and it seemed like a really nice way to celebrate Women's Day - different than the same old Women's Day marches. But as often happens, this sort of thing goes to the other extreme. I yearn now for those mixed up marches. Jabeen and I again went to a club on Women's Day along with our friends Anjali and Nidhi. It was a fund raiser, with rock bands. It was utterly depressing. It was expensive. A long line of people who looked like they had wandered in from tryouts for extras parts in Sex and the City stood outside. What is this with the FROCKS??? There was no connection with Wo

Despite my best intentions I never do manage to update this blog on time and I somehow think it's not nice to neglect it - not sure why, not sure if others feel that way about their blogs. Yet Facebook has become such a default page and often you leave out friends who aren't on there in your news and sharings. I really don't like that - conformity to an interface should not determine social exchange surely. And there is a strange passivity about all that social networking stuff, whereas somehow this requires a little more involvement. You have to at least MAKE a post, and there is something meditative and respectful about that. Meanwhile after a very very very very hard working year I took a small vacation (much to everyone's shock). Just 4 days on a quiet beach. Slept a lot, swam a lot, read a lot. I'd like all of life to be like that. So that weekend the column was obviously about the pleasures of traveling alone - the necessity too maybe... And here's the b

So for the last three months life has been one long slog. I can't remember when I've just been in such a tunnel of work and nothing but. Anyway the result is a new film - more about that in another post. Meanwhile for Spacebar and others who've scolded me for my slackness in updating columns, this is a list of links to all the ones I've written since Mr. B's below. I think I was so thrilled that he had complained about it that I felt, chalo, ab ho gaya. To list them, will no longer have a vulgar feel because unlikely subjects will then appear together, instead of a week apart, but here goes. On the snobbery of some cult fictions (sci-fi, say) over other pulp (Mills and Boons) On the strangeness of identity and the stranger still Unique Identity project On Koffee with Karan and the episodes with Deepika/Sonam and Anil Kapoor/Sanjay Dutt On censoring films On girls liberated from one thing, but perpetrators of another On the absence of hobbies among Maharashtra MLAs

My column in Sunday Mid-day about Amitabh Bacchan's desire to copyright/patent his voice. There's no point asking how much money is enough - none of us know the answer to this question. But have we got the pitsiest public figures in the world or what?

My column on watching Bigg Boss - or rather not watching it.. with a mistake, poor Deepak Parasher got called Pankaj Parashar (although the latter may also feel he is a poor thing) Of course now there is a stay order, so I am still not saved but hanging somewhere in between

Today's Sunday Mid-day column, about t he pleasures of libraries , maybe the necessity. What I couldn't expand on in the column but which people can check out from here are two excellent online library ventures - they will send and pick books up! www.friendsofbooks.com And this one just for comic books www.leapingwindows.com

Today is my father's birthday and I am continuing my effort to write something about him as I decided to in 2008 and then managed to in 2009 and here I am now, writing in 2010, but at the 11th hour as he would have said :). When my father was small he had very fat cheeks. His cheeks were so fat that if you slapped one cheek the other used to wobble. So his two older sisters loved to call him over and then slap him, and laugh to see the other cheek wobble. This exemplifies the love of Punjabi women, as many will know. They really did love him, as I saw over the years - he was the apple of their eye - and accordingly they had their own petname for him: Labbu - from Laabh, a blessing luckily gotten. In all my years with him I never heard anyone actually call him that, although my aunt in Bombay would sometimes lovingly say: he is my favourite, I used to call him Labbu. My father always laughed and loved to tell this story of cheek slapping. He loved telling stories of his childhood