Mayank's Blog

The other day I was at my friend's house discussing the flavor of the season - The Commonwealth Games mess. My friend was getting animated and brought on the topic of falling of the false ceiling. His grandfather, a typical Haryanavi tau , who was listening intently to our discussion suddenly spoke, "What's a false ceiling?" On hearing our  explanation , he was shocked, "Why would anyone use such flimsy materials to construct ceilings! They ought to fall down. In our days, houses built with solid stones would last for centuries unlike the apartments you live in."  His comments made my memories flood back to the days when my grandfather would proudly show us his decades old Usha ceiling fan. "Not once has it been to a mechanic's shop and still working fine as new." As if to support him, the fan would merrily continue on its slow-motion journey. Another thing that my grandfather was very proud of was his Godrej almirah. It was so heavy that it ...

I am not a Salman Khan fan because of his excessive theatrics and silliness. So when the lights inside the theater dimmed , I just prayed to be able to sit through the movie. Boy, was I surprised and how!! Dabangg makes its intention pretty clear with the first scene itself - its not an "intellectual" movie. Its sole intention is to entertain and that it does through  large doses of Chulbul Pandey (played by Salman Khan). Chulbul, a corrupt cop with a golden heart, rules the badlands of Lalganj, Uttar Pradesh. He does so by fighting off tens of armed men through his sheer muscle power while dancing to a caller tune. It doesn't make any sense, and that's the beauty of it. Rajjo (played by débutante Sonakshi Sinha) is the love interest of Chulbul. He manages to romance her even while fighting off Cheddi Singh (played by Sonu Sood) and waiting for her drunkard father to die so that he could marry her. When her father finally commits suicide, Chulbul doesn't waste...

Roll over wheel, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is now the Facebook's humble "Like" button. The creators of this button would never have thought that it would lead to such mind-boggling revenue and precious data generation for Facebook. Nor would they have thought that it would be used for anything else other than showing your approval for somebody's status message or link. The Like button now encompasses all the colors of emotions; love, jealousy, anger, frustration; you name it. There are various websites urging you to "Like A Like" completely oblivious of Shakespeare turning in his grave on hearing this. The Like button enables you to deconstruct a person's entire psyche if you go through his/her likes. It has served as tool for flattery (in case of your boss) or impressing (a boy/girl).  Some likes are philosophical - "I want my lyf 2 b a book so dat i can tear those pages whch i dnt want". Never mind the fact that no on...

In the backdrop of US arm-twisting India on the Dow issue , it becomes extremely important that the government remains much more careful while passing the Nuclear Liability bill. Alas, this is not the case. Manmohan Singh and Co. seem determined to sell Indian lives at throwaway prices for benefit of US companies. India has an ambitious and indigenous nuclear power program to achieve the goal of 20,000 MW electricity produced by nuclear energy by 2020 which will be further increased to 60,000 MW by 2032. Thus India will produce 25 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants by 2050. To meet these projections, India would need a major FDI in nuclear energy. This would be provided by US companies like  General Electric and Westinghouse by way of supplying and building the nuclear power plants while the operator will be government controlled Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited ( NPCIL ). All over the world, the Nuclear Liability bill (or its variati...

Now that the FIFA World Cup is over, I finally summoned up the courage to write this article. If it offends sentiments of any of my readers, let me be clear, I was not talking about you. ;) "Who are you supporting - Spain or Netherlands?", I was inundated by numerous chat messages when I logged into my laptop on the eve of the FIFA World Cup finals. I had a tough time convincing my friends that I was not supporting anyone (gasp!) and that I do not even watch football (more gasp!). My only knowledge of football is at most limited to Paul, the octopus or  Larissa Riquelme promise . Before you fall off your chair unconscious by my brazen honesty, I will explain you my reasons. I was not born in any of these two countries (or for that matter any nation playing in the world cup) and also I have never visited them even once. I do not identify with their culture, food or language. I don't have any friends or family in those two countries. This makes it kind of hard for me to h...

(Thus is my first attempt at writing fiction. Hope you like it.) “But what if there are civilians inside the bus?” Charu hesitatingly asked. “They will be martyrs in our freedom struggle. You should not worry about them. That’s a price every one of has to pay if we are to end the years of injustice and oppression by the Indian government”, Krishnaji thundered. “Don’t you remember the day when you first joined our movement?” How could Charu forget that fateful day! Charu was the elder of the two brothers that lived in a sleepy village of West Bengal with his widowed mother. They were very poor just like everyone else in the village. However the only thing that separated them from other children in the locality was the fact that his mother made sure that they attended the neighbourhood government school every day. From childhood it became clear that Sona, his younger brother, excelled at academics while Charu struggled through even the basics. Even the school’s only pan-chewing teacher...

When I came across this poster for a new Hindi movie, the title of the movie confused me. Now I know that ‘Luv’ is clearly misspelt, but ‘Storys’ got me thinking. It took me over a minute to clarify my doubt. This brings me to the point - what were the producers/directors thinking when the named this movie? Is normal, correctly spelt English just not cool enough? Or were they having a space crunch trying to fit in all the words in 160 characters? This SMSing of English leaves me baffled as it just not stops here but has percolated into our schools and offices. We all know about email signatures – the “Thanks & Regards” ones which no one really means but writes anyways. It is just standard practice. But there is a senior manager in my office who abbreviates ‘Regards’ with just ‘R’. Now if you don’t have the courtesy to even type out the entire word, then why insult the recipient of your mail with that letter ‘R’. It’s like saying “Oh! I don’t really regard you but I am going to mak...