I’ve decided to revive this blog.

There are time when I feel like posting something to Tantanoo.com but refrain from it. A poem or a rant, something too personal or too irrelevant.   This blog will serve as a graveyard for those thoughts. They’ll be buried deep within the pages of this blog.

You can expect anything and everything to land on this blog and more often than necessary, that material won’t be worth your attention.

If you subscribe to this blog, I’d suggest you reconsider your subscription. I am not sure as to what direction this blog will now take and I think it is fair enough to warn you about the same.

Cheers!

- Tantanoo

Dear All,

As the saying goes, Planck’s constant change is the only constant in the Universe. To be in sync with the every-changing change process, I am pleased to announce that we have moved to www.Tantanoo.com.

To reduce your lifespan by several years, we urge you to show us your support and pay us a visit at Tantanoo.com. Tantanoo.com combines the stupidity of There goes a thought and the shabbiness of Comicry. It is twice as unfunny and now comes with pro-vitamin e5. Also, there is Lara Dutta in the header.

Go on. We know you want to.

Love,

Tantanoo

As usual, we on Twitter were making fun of Ashish Nehra.  Hashtags and puns were flowing around. Even Murli Vijay had come to the party. And then the tremors happened. Twitter went through the usual cycle. Updates were coming in fast. Everyone was eager to know the amount of damage caused. Some people were really shaken up by the tremors in Delhi. I don’t follow a lot of people from Pakistan but I am guessing it’d have been the same there. And while all this was happening, some jokes on earthquakes flowed in from the usual suspects and many unusual ones. Outrage followed.

People were upset with the insensitivity. Unfollows, follows and blocks ensued. Also pouring in were sympathy tweets for Pakistan and Pakistanis. People were suddenly looking for their Pakistani followers and appeared worried about them. That is when my medulla oblongata malfunctioned and I posted these tweets:

A lot of discussion followed. Insensitivity, opportunism and the price of being funny were discussed. I learnt a few things. Sadly, I missed the ‘How not to tweet when you are mildy outraged’ lesson. So I tweeted this:

This didn’t go down well with a lot of my friends. Apologies. I didn’t word it properly. I’ll try and do that now.

I have a serious problems with sudden gushes of sympathy. I was #outraged when Aircel was screaming 1411 tigers in my face. I hate it when people are moved by numbers. A bomb blast happens in Pakistan every other fortnight. People die. Do you tweet on your timeline asking your Pakistani friends if they are ok? Just because the probability of some Pakistani(and I don’t say that in a J.P.Dutta fashion) who follows you dying in a bomb blast is mathematically less than the probability of someone dying/getting hurt in this earthquake? I didn’t stop there. Posted some more.

My outrage was misguided, may be even unfounded. But I refuse to believe that every follower of mine who tweeted about the loss(am not really sure about the damages yet) of Pakistanis, was genuinely worried about them. And that is what boiled the blood. And the medulla oblongata. So I questioned. And like everything on twitter, a lot of us took it personally. They had my imaginary finger(not sure which one) looking in their direction, my bald head tilted towards them, my questioning gaze questioning(duh!) their emotions. A lot of them responded with logic. Some responded with smart-alec-ness. I apologized and made a run for it. Having @thecomicproject to talk to, helped.

I still believe that there is nothing wrong with joking about a calamity. If you can tolerate someone talking about Sania Mirza’s pubic hair, you shouldn’t have a problem with someone joking about a death. If you can tolerate the mention of the word ‘Chinki’ in a conversation or a joke, you shouldn’t really be outraged by hypocrisy. I personally believe insulting those who live is worse than insulting those who are dead. If you can tolerate one(or even enjoy it), you might as well take the other.

And that is all there is. My Wednesday is fucked and only I am to be blamed.

P.S.: Some people unfollowed me during this. I promptly went to friendorfollow and unfollowed them back. I understand your urge to unfollow. Had I been in your place, I may have done the same thing. I have a policy – I follow people because (a) I like their shit and (b) they like my shit(given they aren’t, for the lack of a better term, orkutias). The moment (b) ceases to be true, I don’t see a point in following you anymore. On an unrelated note, @daddy_san, @unnamedentity, @pranavbakliwal, @stupidusmaximus and @thecomicproject – I am glad that I follow you all. Thanks for driving reason in.

Like Kumar Gaurav’s acting career, our ‘brief’ encounter must come to an end. You have been nice to me, nicer than Congress ever was to A.Raja. I remember waiting for you with bated breath, hoping that you’ll wipe off all bad memories of 2009. Wipe off you did, all the bad memories and the good ones too, for you held more surprises than I could handle.

With the agility of Sania Mirza, you tossed me to Jaipur(and tossed her to Pakistan). You gave me the first hostel experience of my life and my mushy bottoms still bear testimony to that. You made me walk to a wine shop after a hard day at work only to find it closed. You made me buy a Kingfisher and climb a mountain to have it in peace. To this you added rain to make the experience more surreal. How thoughtful.

You made sure that we don’t have a cooler in our hostel in the Jaipur summers so that I take a bath everyday. You sly year, you. You ensured that I eat the best Malai Chicken Tikka at Take Away Kebabs, on Mahatama Gandhi road. Some twisted sense of humour you have.

You took me to Ranthambore where I had hoped to see a tiger but all I managed to see were a tiger’s behind and truckloads of peacocks. Thanks to you, I now understand why Peacock is the national bird of India. You then took me to an IPL match where I screamed my guts out and all I could ever see is a glimpse of Shilpa Shetty, fully clad that too. I, therefore switched my loyalties to Mumbai and screamed my guts out, so much so that one Rajasthan Royals supporter came up to me and asked ‘Bhaiyaa, aap log practice kar ke aaye hain kya?’.

Not to be outdone, you decided to take me to Mount Abu. To delight me further, you gave me a driver who had no idea of where we are headed. A driver who drove for 400 kilometers instead of the usual 110 only to land us in a land of ruthless adivasis, who as a part of drunk revelry , rob cars that cross their area. I bet you didn’t see the part where a benevolent dhabawallah will grant us political asylum at 50 bucks a night, the best dhaba food we’d had in ages and rotis the size of Dolly Bindra’s waist. Not to mention a hidden room with chilled Kingfisher.

You still had your little revenge next morning, when I had to attend Nature’s call next to a cactus bush which threatened to acupuncture me with the slightest gush of wind. But I survived. I survived your little joke and reached Mount Abu and gained enlightenment(and a picture that will come in handy as a cheesy display pic).

Remember the time when you took to me Amer fort and let me have the best Aloo parathas in the world at the dingiest shop possible? I was happy. But you just had to put in a guide who’ll talk about the King’s penis instead of the actual history of the fort and will abuse his brother-in-law instead of enlightening us on the curious practice of donating alcohol at the temple inside the fort. Remember the incident when in a crowded local bus(where you had to scream ST ST to get a student discount), you gave us the gentleman who’ll fart in our face and smile at our misery. Laugh even. Ha ha. Not. Remember the incident where we had to share a tempo with a goat to reach a multiplex to watch Kites. What were you thinking?

To compensate, you did offer a set of new friends and a few cheap thrills like doing yoga to the tune of ‘Dhak dhak karne laga’ or stopping drunk friends from breaking all the doors in the hostel or swimming almost naked in a corridor full of water. Fun times indeed.

And then, with another swoop of your wand, you decided to ship me to Chennai. You ensured that I’ll lose half my salary flying from the land of leather to the land of sultry weather. I still think that this decision of yours was influenced by the nightly visits I made to Sun TV to watch those item numbers but I also paid equal attention to the Bhojpuri item songs on Mahua TV. Why not transfer me to Bhojpur? Or were you angered by my constant cribbing about the lack of tweetups in the land of powercuts? So much so that you ensured that I met twitterwallahs at Jaipur too in what can be termed as the pink city’s first tweetup?

All your evil plans backfired anyway. My first flight was a great experience. The airhostesses were nice(go Indigo!) and one of them actually thought I was 19 years old. I also used the public loo for the first time in my life as a gastronomic catastrophe unleashed itself on me at the Delhi airport. Though the experience wasn’t as traumatic as I feared it will be but asking a gentleman to watch my bag which had my laptop and worrying about the same with my pants down did build some character.

Ever since I’ve been to Chennai, the weather has been excellent(take that!). After fighting with three PG owners and changing four houses in as many months, I’ve also managed to find decent accommodation in a building that has two table tennis tables, one basketball hoop and more air-hostesses than Kanpur airport. Thanks to you, now I also know what Chicken 65 means and I’ve also come across something called Dragon Gobhi(which doesn’t breathe fire but can give you a lot of wind if you know what I mean). Now, I can also tell a Parotta from a Paratha, kappi from coffee and Aditya Pancholi from Vikram.

I’ve also caught the intricacies of a new language. Like adding an aaaa to a word will make it a question. So Hindi terimaaa? would mean ‘Do you know hindi?’. I’ve also understood that this rule doesn’t apply to words like ‘Chumma’ so ‘Chumaaaaa?’ won’t mean ‘Will you kiss me?’. Chumma again is a superword that can be fit into any sentence and any context if you are clever enough. Its usage gives us North Indians, coming from the land of ‘Ek Chumma tu mujhko udhar dei de‘ and ‘Jumma Chumma De De’, a kind of a temporary thrill, cheap but exhilarating.

To add to my excitement, I’ve discovered the secret Bengali concoction, the Ghooseberry juice. When administered in controlled quantities, it can convert a normal man into an internet hindu and give him amazing screaming powers and the ability to write horrendous books.

Dear 2010, you have also taught me some important life lessons.

Like never to trust colleagues with action figures. (especially an Iron Man who thinks he is Amitabh Bacchan)

Or to double check the gender of a toilet before using it. For this I totally blame the owner of the pub where the aforementioned event happened. How, in my drunken stupor, am I supposed to realize that the elaborately drawn face on the toilet door is that of a lady and not a man.

Or the time that I traveled in an auto full of transvestites. In a hurry to reach office, I jumped into the first shared auto that came my way without realizing that the other occupants belong to the third gender. As expected, a wave of embarrassment followed by a wave of fear was experienced. In sometime though, shame was replaced by questions. What am I ashamed of? Juvenile jokes that my friends will crack when I tell them about this incident? An officewallah spotting me and using this as the weekly watercooler gossip? Are they as ashamed of being spotted with us as we are with them? And so on and so forth. All their clapping and mockery was dedicated towards other passerbys. They didn’t direct any of that to me. In fact, they were friendly enough to tell me when my stop arrived. I couldn’t talk to them or face them with a straight face. Maybe someday this repulsion will die a complete death, a part of it died in those 20 minutes.

With your assistance and a little help from autowallahs I have also mastered the art of dumb-charades. I am sure you wanted to test my patience when agent of yours, cleverly disguised as an autowallah, dropped me at Besant Nagar after assuring me that it is Adyar. He also offered to drop me to Besant Nagar if I wanted. It was only by the shrewd identification of a TASMAC that I discovered the treachery of the autowallah and avoided adding further injury to my insult. Of course the other autowallahs I met were more friendly and understanding. Like the drunk one who kept shouting ‘bahinchod’ every 5 minutes to anyone who could hear him because he was extremely happy to learn that I am from North India. Other friendly ones have this habit of kidding when they say ‘Not cheating saar’ or ‘Cheating nahi kar ra saar’ while quoting 3X the standard fare.

I am sure you didn’t plan the joyride the first taxi in Chennai gave us when he did a James-Bondish car stunt on a flyover in a Black Ambassador. Or when my office cabs turned out be gorgeous White Ambassadors. Or when we had coffee at an empty Marina beach on a rainy afternoon. Or when that cute girl got the seat next to me on the flight thus breaking the ‘curse of the ugly co-passengers’. Or when that beautiful girl came and sat opposite to me at the KFC outlet on Delhi airport.

You had your share of laughs the day I washed my hair with a facewash or when I went to watch A-Team in Devi Kala theatre on a 7.5m screen or when a speeding carwallah gave me a middle finger when I was trying to cross a road or when I wasted 2000 bucks on a Burberry perfume. I bet you laughed yesterday too when you saw my three digit account balance.

But I also think you felt sad for me when I had to spend my birthday on a shitty bus traveling from Delhi to Kanpur, unable to take any calls or messages. Felt annoyed when I told myself that I’ll buy a DSLR on the first day of every month and spend all the money by the 15th and then crib about it. Felt my pain when I accidently formatted my hard disk with the Pictures folder, losing all the precious memories, some of them lost forever.

Dear 2010, you have been a curious year. You have been the proverbial roller-coaster, pepping up my life with the ups and downs and rounds and rounds. You have given me new friends, some of whom have altered the course of my life in their own little ways. You given me opportunities to win and fuck up and I’ve made the most of them both.

As I move on to new things, a new blog, a new year and a new calendar, I wish you luck and happiness as you ascend into Calendar Heaven. You’ll forever be remembered as the year that gave us Dolly Bindra, Rakhi ka Insaaf, Radia ki Kahani and Sheila ki Jawani. You’ll go down in history as the year when ‘Munni badnaam hui’ and ’2G spectrum scam hui’. The year of the iPad and the iShqiya. The year in which ‘Sir U made lakhs’ and Aishwarya Rai proved that she is better in Wax.

Dear 2010, Fare thee well.

XOXO or something like that.

Tantanoo.

(This is going to be one of the last posts on this blog before we move to Tantanoo.com. So it is a farewell of sorts for the blog too. *sniff*)

Clearly, I’ve been watching too much Friends.

Anyway, it has been a while since I’ve posted something on this blog. Infact in 2010, I’ve treated this blog with the same indifference with which I treat Uday Chopra’s movies. Apart from a faking news post here and there, or a comic-idea at thecomicproject’s blog or a presentation for a slideshare contest, I solemnly swear that I haven’t been upto much good this year.

I’ve experienced the benefits of retail therapy and have decided to apply the same to my blogs. If you follow me on Twitter(and care to read the crap that I post), you’ll remember that I’ve bought tantanoo.com. In the days to come, I’ll be moving TGAT to tantanoo.com. To continue my blog killing spree, I’ll be shutting down Comicry.org and moving the comics that I like to tantanoo.com/comics. As of now I am struggling to setup Comicpress on tantanoo.com but I hope I’ll figure that bit out soon. I’ll also be needing some SEO gyaan(fokat ofcourse) so if you are an SEO-expert-thingy, drop some good words in the comments. Also any suggestions regarding tantanoo.com are most welcome, including the ‘you suck, stop blogging’ hints.

Tantanoo.com is an exercise in narcissism that I’ve been dying to try. Shutting Comicry down is a painful decision though, considering that it had gained a lot of publicity(not adsense revenue, mind you) in the last few months thanks to some journos. But I’ve always doubted my comicing abilities. Now that I look back, of the 100 odd comics that I’ve made I hardly like some 8 or 9 oddd comics. I don’t have a special style like say FLF, TVI or Chuck, no consistent characters and no themes. I’ve tried everything from memes to venn diagrams to toondo comics. It is because of this inconsistency that I’ve turned down offers to make comics for magazines and websites. Those jobs have gone to more worthy, deserving candidates. So instead of a separate website for my comics, I am going to club that with Tantanoo.com which should make them look like little lab experiments of my own.

Whether this is the right thing to do or not, only time will tell. But as of now, Imma gonna go forward with these plans. Yalgaar ho!

From the moment that I left office, at seven in the morning, drenched in rain from head to intermediate body parts to toe, I had a feeling that this day was doomed. When I woke up at 2 things were pretty straightforward. Skip bath – Eat dabba – Find clothes – Wear Them – Run.

Run, because we had to catch the 3.30 show of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 at Devi Cineplex. Run, because Ratatouille was on television and we had wasted 20 minutes watching it while doing the straightforward things mentioned above. And we ran. Ran to Thiruvanmiyur MRTS station, took two tickets and ran to the first floor, only to miss the local train by some seconds. The next train was at 3.30 and we weren’t carrying our wands. So we took an auto who assured us that he’ll drop us at Devi before 3.30. However, true to every autowallah’s word, he remembered mid-way that his auto needed petrol. It started raining again and we were in two minds now, whether to go late into a movie or to stay and enjoy the weather at the Marina beach. In the end, Emma Watson won. Our autowallah dropped us at a turn, pointing to some building at the end which was supposed to be Devi Cineplex. We ran(rather we swam) in the rain only to discover that the building was some bank. Another short run and a few turns, took us to another building which turned out be another cinemahall. In our third attempt we were able to locate Devi Cineplex, after exhausting the choicest north-indian(and marathi) abuses and after being drenched in rain from head to blah-blah to toes.

At 3: 50 we took our seats and Harry kissed Ginny.

Now, let it be known that I love the Harry Potter series. I’ve read the books umpteen number of times(even between semester exams) and somehow the whole concept of the world being divided into Magic and non-magic folk intrigues me a lot. And one day I want to own(or rent) a Castle like Hogwarts(or at least a house like X Lovegood’s). So as a fan of the series, it is disappointing to see the books treated so shabbily, like they did in the last movie(the half-baked Half Blood Prince). I had heard from friends that this movie is far better than the last one and my expectations were pretty high. I was, unfortunately(or therefore), very disappointed at how the movie turned out to be.

Making a movie out of a 700(or something) page book isn’t easy. Making two movies out it, isn’t easy too. Because a book, like a movie, has a climax. You cannot divide the climax into two and make two movies. So one of your movies will tend be less exciting than the other. I understand that.

What I don’t understand is Mr. Yates habit of cutting scenes and not taking things to a higher level. I felt this in Half Blood Prince and again I suffered from the same. He takes a scene, builds it well and then lets it go. Which is very disappointing. Very. And this is my major grudge(and maybe my only grudge) with the movie. You may say that this is best of the lot, because this adheres more to the book and any of its previous counterparts. But that doesn’t make it a good adaptation. Not even close. I loved the First and the Fifth part of the series but this one didn’t live up to my expectations.

Warning: Spoilers and rants ahead.

Since I didn’t see the opening sequence, I won’t comment on that. My worries began when they omitted the altercation between Harry and Scrimgeour. There was zero emotion in that scene, all of them appeared so fake. It was Dumbledore’s will being discussed but there was hardly any hint of surprise on the Trio’s face. And why did they omit the shuffle between Harry and Scrimgeour? That’d have set the pace of the movie perfectly. Talking of fake emotions, Mad-Eye’s death doesn’t come as a heartbreak to any one of them. JKR has described that scene pretty vividly in the book, but the actors fail to live the emotions.

Again, Harry Potter goes undisguised to Bill and Fleur’s wedding? When they land up in Tottenham Court Road(I guess the movie uses some other street), Harry still doesn’t use the Invisibility cloak. Deatheaters march upto the coffee counter, with their back at the trio, when they could easily have stunned them while entering. This isn’t a cowboy movie Mr. Yates.

When Deatheaters stop the train(in a very X-Men-ish sequence), we get a glimpse of Neville and Ginny and then, snap. Mr. Yates doesn’t linger around in scenes where a few extra frames could have made all the difference.

And again, the trio’s plans for infiltrating the ministry aren’t given any footage at all. It appears totally out-of-the-blue.

And my biggest grudge, HOW in the world can Harry Potter walk out of the Ministry without an invisibility cloak or without being under the effect of a Polyjuice potion? Ministry guards do not attack them – why show them when they are redundant(and absolutely useless)? Only one Deatheater tackles them, the rest of the junta is just a mute audience to the show. Can  you be any more stupid? Simple logic, Mr. Yates – Please read the book carefully next time around.

There are more loopholes. How does Bathilda Bagshot know Grignewald? What happened to Peter Pettigrew, why wasn’t his death depicted? No mention of Phineas Nigellus’s painting. Hardly any mention of Snape. Hermione picks up Harry’s wand and still manages to break it. And the list goes on.

</Spoilers>

However, this isn’t a bad movie. It has its comic moments(which on most occasions are genuinely funny) and its grim moments.I was particularly impressed with some scenes. The Horcrux’s behavior before being destroyed, Hermione’s torture, the snatcher chase and Nagini’s sequence. They were visually stunning and well crafted, especially Nagini’s attack on Harry. I was almost startled on one occasion(Take that, Mallika Sherawat). So was the story of the Pervell brothers: the animated ‘The Tale of the Three Brothers’ adds a different flavor to the movie. The locations are handpicked and feel very exotic, pleasant and menacing at different points in the movie. But Mr. Yates will get some brownie points for two special sequences, which are the only things that I’ll carry home from the movie. Harry and Hermione’s dance(which isn’t a part of the book) was a worthy deviation from the book. It could have been executed better, I feel but nevertheless, full marks for trying something different. JKR would be happy. And the scene that stood out in the movie, is that of Dobby’s death. Executed to perfection. "It’s a beautiful place, to be with friends". That, Mr. Yates, absolves you from a lot of your mistakes.

</Rant>

I won’t say that this is my favorite Harry Potter film but as a sequel to the Half-Blood Prince, The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 deserves a lot of praise for setting things right. And I know without a doubt, that the second part will be an outstanding success irrespective of how Mr. Yates treats it. Afterall, all isn’t well yet.

The friend who accompanied me to the movie, hadn’t seen most of the previous movies. He kept referring to Hagrid as Voldemort till I gave him a piece of my mind. However, he did make an interesting observation.The Doe Patronus sequence, he said, reminded him of Ramayana. Ofcourse, the patronus was more well behaved than Mareecha ever was, but interesting analogy I must say.

Should you give Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows a watch? – If you are a fan, you must. If you aren’t, you can.

And yeah, Emma Watson – We’d like to have the cute avatar back, so pliss to be using some Parachute hair oil and growing ghane mulayam baal.

Disclaimer: This is not a review, this is a rant-cum-reminisces post. We’ll call it a not-review. All opinions expressed are mine(in case you hadn’t figured this out already). Also troll comments on this post will be ‘Obliviated’.

Here is a quick poll to save this blog from the drought of posts. We’ll call it a Quickie.

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The best thing about confusion is that it confuses you.

That is perhaps the worst first line of a blogpost. Ever. Anyway, a lot as happened over the last few months, something that can run into a blogpost as long as Shilpa Shetty’s waistline. But something, that over time, has refused to transform into a blog post at all.

To cut a long(and crushingly boring) story short, I’ve been too busy to post to this blog. I’d like to thank all 46 subscribers of this blog and some 80 odd people who decided to stay loyal to Comicry and weren’t tempted to unsubscribe. I’d also like to thank all those random men(mostly) who landed here searching for Sania Mirza’s balls and Hermionee Granger’s toilet habits. This blog’s PR update is all because of your unconditional love for the opposite sex(and sex in general). I love you all.

Like I said, the last three months have been crazy. A lot of water has flown under the proverbial bridge. Now, sitting in an air-conditioned Shatabdi express, occasionally peeping outside the window, trying to act all busy and intellectual, we must ponder over the last three months of our lives and document the events for future reminiscence.(Third person talk is fun). To keep in sync with the first line of the second paragraph, let us put bullet points to good use:

• God’s obsession with throwing me to places that end in ‘Pur’ continued as he tossed me to Jaipur.
• March marked the end of the ‘unemployed’ phase of my life but it hasn’t marked the end of the ‘Still poor’ phase.
• I had always wanted to stay at a hostel and this stint in Jaipur facilitated that wish of mine.
• I realized that while Internet Explorer has been Microsoft’s worst mistake, Solitaire and Minesweeper have redeemed MS of all its sins(except Windows Vista perhaps).
• Tea has been served – I’ll be back in a moment.

(I have this major dislike for air-conditioned coaches. Most of my train journeys have been Darwinian struggles. More on that later. But the opulence of Shatabdi express always takes me by surprise. Though the tea isn’t half as good as its poorer counterpart, I get to charge my laptop and thus finish this blog post. So, Anyway.)

• I’ve mostly stayed off Twitter in the last three months, which in Twitter terms can be classified as #fail. But I’ve been reading tweets and not posting any which makes me a borderline Twitter stalker. I did catch a few hashtags though, enjoyed a few of them. All in all, my Twitter karma has been at an all time low and I need to fix that asap.
• I attended the Jaipur tweetup, happened to meet @pathfyynder and @ankit_A apart from @rupalimk(who still doesn’t know how to use a hashtag) and @kabloooie (I was sure the handle belonged to a girl till a guy with 70% of his face covered in facial hair showed up).

(I should have had a bath.)

• Wanderlust hit bigtime as I managed to squeeze trips to Mount Abu, Udaipur, Ranthamborel, Pushkar and Ajmer into my weekends. (Dear Jodhpur, Jaisalmer and Barmer, see you when I have a DSLR).
• Which brings me to DSLRs. I was saving for a DSLR since I got my first salary. But wanderlust got the  better of me. A DSLR is still very much on cards(especially after I felt (apologies for the sexual overtones and the nested braces) @pathfyynder’s Canon EOS 450 D. Oooh.) On a totally unrelated note, I am still at a loss of arguments when it comes to justify the need of DSLR, any help on that front will be uber-appreciated.

(Ah! Sunshine)

• Weekends are precious and I’ve wasted two of them. On Kites and Rajneeti. Prakash Jha and Rakesh Roshan, where ever you are, you’ll suffer from a terrible hiccup right about now. *waves wand* I’ll write detailed reviews if possible, going through the nightmares again is a dreadful thought and I have too many dreadful things on my to-do list at the moment.
• To quickly wrap this, God’s obsession with throwing me to places that end in ‘Pur’ has ended. Chennai(or Madras – I love the sound of it), here I come.
• Also, I am supposed to fly for the first time on 15th of this month. I hope everything goes well and I don’t end up becoming ‘Breaking News’ on India TV. *crosses fingers*

With that we come to the end of this broadcast. Thank you for your ears and medulla oblongatas.

*And my bladder tells me, this train needs more toilets.*

Cross posted from: Faking News 

Gandhinagar. In a surprising series of events, a bookseller from Gujarat performed surgery on himself, after being inspired by a book. Panna Lal, owner of Jai Shri Krishna book stores in Gandhinagar, slit his wrist after reading management guru Arindam Chaudhuri’s bestseller – “Discover the Diamond in you”. Panna was hoping to find some diamonds inside him, an embarrassing reality that he was initially reluctant to admit.

The incident came to light when Panna Lal went to a doctor’s clinic to get a wound in his arm stitched. When he couldn’t specify the cause of the injury the doctor became suspicious and called the police. After being grilled by the Police, Panna Lal revealed that he believed that there were diamonds in his body and he wanted to find them.

“I could feel them at various places in my body but the book didn’t tell me anything about finding them”, Panna Lal told the Faking News reporter. So he began his treasure hunt by getting his body scanned. In one USG test, the reports revealed the presence of three stones in his kidneys.

“That day I was convinced that my body is a diamond mine”, he said. However when the kidney stones came out after painful deliberations, Panna Lal was heartbroken to discover that they weren’t diamonds. In fact, to his horror, the stones didn’t even have any astrological worth.

At last, in one desperate attempt, Panna Lal tried stitching diamonds to his body. “If you can’t find them, fake them”, he said “I had just read Abdulmutallab’s story and I thought it was a good idea”. So he bought some diamonds, cut open his wrist and tried sewing the diamonds in. But he didn’t have any previous experience with sutures and he couldn’t access Google because his internet connection was down. So when the blood loss didn’t cease, he decided to go to a doctor and thus his deeds (and diamonds) were discovered.

When asked for his comments, Author and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri said that he was surprised that his book could have such an effect on a person. While Panna Lal has been sent to Government Mental Hospital for further treatment, Faking News advises its readers not to go ‘by the book’ on every occasion.

Disclaimer: All in good humour and in case you didn’t realize, this is a fake news.

Related post: Volkswagen runs into a rough patch, sued by Indian Company

Not related but read it anyway: Daaru Pradesh – Gawd’s Own State

When I first saw the ‘Save our tigers’ ad on teewhee, I rubbished it, you know, like we rubbish everything from Save Haiti to Save Hockey. That way. But having 400 friends on Facebook does have its disadvantages especially when sending invites to stupid clubs is the favourite pastime of some of them. But when some of the ‘sane’ friends also sent me invites to join ‘Stripey the club’, I was sure something was amiss.

It happens so that ‘Stripey’ is an innocent tiger cub whose mom ventures out in the forest and doesn’t return. You know, like women venture out in Goa(or Delhi or Bombay or <insert Indian city>) and don’t return. But let’s not digress. So Stripey’s mom has been killed by some poachers or so the commercial says and it then punches a figure of ‘only 1411 tigers left’ in your face. Very poetic. Figures always move people. You know, when anchors were screaming the number of Swine flu victims on news channels, people were scared shitless. Similarly this 1411 figure brings a sudden horror. Add to it a cute tiger cub and you have a win social initiative. Good job Aircel. Not.

Save the Tiger – www.saveourtigers.com , in my honest and unwanted opinion, is a very poorly executed social initiative. I am not sure if this has brought any mileage to Aircel but apart from creating some buzz, the initiative hardly does anything worthwhile. It lacks the soul and resolve that a social initiative requires. It applies armchair activism to an issue where its effect is debatable, and the extent of change that can be brought is extremely limited. Let’s do a quick post-mortem of the initiative.

1. The Videos:

The only saving grace of the Save our Tigers initiative is the promotional video/ad. A lot of people apparently find the tiger cub cute, most of them are distressed to see its fate. This ad also had a significant effect of kids. My mom tells me that every kid in her school now knows that there are only 1411 tigers left in India. This video is followed by some pleas by Dhoni, Baichung and Some other dude – The less said about this, the better. Shahrukh does a better job in convincing me to use face wash, than them. But that is just me.

2. Roar Online:

On the home page you get an option to Join the Roar. It is basically a wall thingy where you can pledge your support, reserve a pixel by adding your name to it, and a tiger-jigsaw-puzzle-thingy finishes as more and more people join up. You have to enter your name, your email id and if you wish, your mobile number. Which is a very good way to form a mailer list and build numbers. But once you join the roar, the website fails to tell how to roar, or even purr.

3. What can I do?

When you click on this link, it gives you five sweet options:

• Roar Online
• Be Informed
• Speak Up
• Donate
• Lead the Change

We’ll comeback to the Roar online thing later. Let us click on Be Informed.

It gives you links to three pdfs. The awesome part? They are scanned copies of news clippings. One TOI and two HT stories, scanned. Are you informed enough? A Google search on Save Tiger will give me more information than those clippings. The page doesn’t even mention other sources of information. No links, nothing. Not even links to WWF’s articles. Not one mention of Project Tiger. This is where my faith in Save our Tigers took a big nosedive.

Next, Let us Speak Up.

Write a letter or an email to editors of popular newspapers and magazines, asking them to support the cause and highlight the urgency to save our tigers. The more people we can reach and inform, the stronger our roar will be.

That’s it. Two lines. How short of ideas/content were you when you prepared this webpage? Two lines? They don’t even make sense. I mean, isn’t your ad already showing up on all popular newspapers, magazines and television? This is your idea of speaking up? Of making noise?

By this time, I had lost all hope in the campaign but for the sake of analysis, let us tread further.

The Donate page is another excuse of a page. A few lines and a link to WWF India’s donation page. No pleas, no requests. Remember you are asking those people who most probably didn’t donate a penny for the Haiti earthquake(barring a few ofcourse). You are asking people who generally don’t spend anything to help humans, to shell out money for animals. At least make a good case for the cause. Tell them where the money goes, how is it utilized, why is it needed. But no, we made this website in a hurry, we had to save Stripey you see.

Then there is a Lead the Change page, which tells us to:

• Spread the word
• SMS: Dear Aircel, How about donating some money to WWF, everytime an sms is sent on your network?
• Write to editors – as if the majority population reads editorials and this considering the fact that they already have print ads.
• Donate: Okay, we’ll ignore the recursion. But they ask us to donate clothes for forest guards. I am not sure if that makes sense but I’ll give it the benefit of doubt.
• Volunteer for our Tigers: Finally! A brainwave. But where do we begin? Any pointers? A list of NGOs perhaps? Profiles, list of training courses, opportunities? Nothing. They have a list of wildlife sanctuaries plotted on India’s map for visual pleasure but they couldn’t make a list of NGOs where people can volunteer.
• Preserve our Natural Resource: Ha!
• Be a responsible Tourist: Double Ha!

I can ramble on, but let us have a quick look at the Roar Online page:

• Youtube: Where you have all the ads in one place
• Twitter: 3000+ followers but only 17 tweets. Hell of a difference that made. Listed at 51 places, following only WWF but a whole lot of opportunity blissfully lost.

I’ve been on Twitter long enough to understand its potential. I’ve seen several campaigns being pulled off with amazing ease on Twitter without a corporate backing. Be it people chipping in funds for the welfare of the girl child on Diwali or people coaxing others to donate for Haiti, Twitter has been a very strong medium for translating arm-chair activism to something worthwhile. Sadly, Aircel with all its mighty powers fails to understand and put Twitter to good use, even moderately effective use. 

• Facebook: 99000 fans and counting. 253 Links, half of which are updates linking back to saveourtigers.com – which as you all can see is a storehouse of information. Stripey ofcourse says a few cute things once in a while, like “I can hear 50,000 roars for me and all the tigers of India! I feel this is only the start of good things to come.”

Good and bad. Good because the photos section has loads of photographs some of which are brutal and can bring a change of heart. Good because there are loads of discussions.

Bad because no body is moderating. If you read a few discussions you’ll know. Even the participants are confused because there is no plan of action. They lament the fact that the website is outright lame. There isn’t much information. Still some of them are meeting on Valentine’s day I hear. Some are trying hard to pull something together and I wish them luck. But the candles will burn out, like they eventually do and this will just be another protest. Our memories are short. Aarushi anyone? 

• Stripey’s Blog: Two Posts. One with 2100+ comments, another with 21 odd comments as of now.

Immense potential. Down the drain. Two posts. Just two. I went through 19 pages of comments. Scanned some 1000 odd comments looking for blog posts, bits and pieces. The levels of trolling are limited, not like say the godlike Rediff or even Youtube. But believe me, it wasn’t easy.

I shouldn’t comment on grammar and spellings, being a usual offender myself. But it often got out of hands. Some myths that featured regularly in the comments are:

• Almost everybody thinks that stating the fact that Tiger is our National Animal is unique. Almost every Indian (apart from a few who take part in Splitsvilla and Rahul ka Swayamvar) knows that Tiger is the National Animal.
• Everybody wants to ‘join hands’.
• Everybody thinks ‘Its High Time’
• Everybody wants each other(or India) to ‘wake up’
• Some go off in the preamble mode – We the citizens of india….
• Some think that TYPING IN CAPS LOCK WILL PROVE THEIR URGENCY AND DETERMINATION
• Others pass the responsibility – Plz save the tigers..
• The opinion is divided – Some blame Indians, others blame humans.
• Most want to save tigers because they want their children to see them – I am assuming most of these are the same people who haven’t taken their kids to the zoo and think the Discovery channel and Playstation are better teachers.
• The religious kinds offer a Jai Mata Di in the comment.
• Then there are the Orkut kinds who leave a ‘Plz reply me’ in the comment.

 

But there were some real gems in the comments and the blog posts that I read:

• A guy had an acronym ready –

T-TRULY
I-INDIAN,
G-GENERATED,
E-ENTHUSIASTIC,
R-RACE……

• Another fellow announced an NGO giving a link to his blog.
  

  SAVE SAVE SAVE THE TIGER

  DON’T LET THE VOICE DOWN
  I AM OPENING N NGO FOR TIGER PROTECTION
  join now when u join u help save the tiger
  I need 2000 members there will be 15 main members.be the lucky ist 15 members or be 2000 strong volunteers.

• Then this:

we must do at least a bit 2 save this priceless organisms
togetherly our single bit would 1 day form a huge contribution
PLZ REQUEST UR SOUL NOT 2 MIND ABOUT DOING THIS JOB

• And the most outrageous thing that I read in a forum:

Aircel has recently launched a campaign to save tigers in India. I hereby, writing a post to do my bit. Well, there are only 1411 tigers left in India. This number is too less to keep an ecological balance. and if not protected, this number will go down soon. How much do you thing should be proportion of Tigers as to humans? Though there is no perfect answer to this, I think it is around 1:10. How did I figure it out? Well, a sheer judgement. Now some people might not agree to this proportion. For them, lets apply a factor of safety of 10. So this proportion is now, 1:100. This means there should be 1 tiger per 100 human beings in india. Now India’s population is 1.1 billion (110 Crores). So there should be 1.1 Crore tigers in India. and how many have we got? One Thousand Four Hundred and Eleven. Now look at that huge difference. So we are short of 1,09,98,589 tigers. One Crore, Nine Lakhs, Ninety Eight Thousand, Five Hundred Eighty Nine. God, Where do we get those many tigers from?
Now, look carefully at the picture of cubs of tigers, above. Look at the grace on their face. This genetic gift of nature will be completely and permanently lost if tigers are not preserved. We will never be able to see that beauty again.
Now I want you to tell the best ways and means to save tigers. Let me start here by telling one. Let them live on themselves with zero human intervention in their territory.

Tigers = Maggots? Though I do agree with his bit that we must leave them alone.

I have some 12 pages of comments that I can quote here. People who think the tiger is on the ‘virge’ of extinction, it is a symbol of our ‘bravory’ and we must stop the ‘cheep people’ (read: poachers) by giving AK-47s to our guards. There was someone who wanted us to ‘defeat the battle’ for ‘survive tigers from extinct’.

Bad grammar or typos isn’t my point. The point is that this comment section isn’t moderated. No body is separating the wheat from the chaff. There is no grading of comments. I found of a lot of good comments, NGO descriptions, links, even some blog posts by bloggers that I know. But no body is aggregating them, reposting them as blog posts. All the information is blissfully wasted.

On top of it the second blog post says:

“I’ve read all your comments and it’s really great to see everyone not just stopping at showing support, but also giving ideas and suggestions to help us. With more people joining us every day, I hope you’ll spread our message far and wide.
And I’m really excited to see the discussions on my Facebook page too (Stripey the Cub).

With people planning events, discussing ideas and actions to help us and getting actively involved, it gives me hope that this is just the beginning of great things to come.
I can’t wait to hear more suggestions and see the people of India lead the change!

Looking ahead with pride,

Stripey”

If they keep ignoring the info that is being oh-so-totally ignored in the comment section, I’m sorry, I won’t look ahead with pride. The pride thing almost reminds me of Neo’s post on being a proud Indian. Stripey dear, you are wasting all the buzz that you’ve gathered.

I want to suggest a lot of things here. Put a list of NGOs there. Tell people to work, volunteer for them. Urge them to donate. Tell them why. Tell them about Land encroachment deals that the government is approving thereby clearing the Tiger’s habitat one by one. Ask people to file an RTI. Tell them how to do it. Most importantly tell them WHY it is so important to save Tigers. But that will be useless. All that is already mentioned in the comments and the facebook discussion forums. If only they had the good sense to put it to use.

I am not sure why I am even bothered. So, in typical TGAT style I’ll offer them a few out-of-the-box-into-the-dustbin suggestions and a comic:

#1: Change our National Animal:

I once tweeted: ‘Whatever we want to screw officially, we call it a National symbol.’

I really feel the National tag carries a curse. One look at Hockey’s condition or River Ganga’s plight or Peacock’s population will give you an idea. It is time we abolished the National Animal/Bird thing and chose a National Icon.

How about a pigeon? We already have pigeon anthems like Kabootar Ja Ja Ja and the Atariya pe lotan Kabootar re or the recent Masakali(which is a dove but most people think its an albino pigeon). Pigeons breed well. No need to demarcate sanctuaries, you’ll find enough of them in Bombay. This will also justify their shameless loo practices. You’ll be proud when the national icon poops on you. This move I think will save the tiger definitely. No National Status, no assassination.

#2: Redesign the Food Chain:

I think the Tiger being the at the top of the food chain has a lot to do with the threat to its existence. Being at the top of any chain brings a lot of pressure and accountability – look what it did to Ramalingam Raju.

It is time we constituted a scientific committee that proves that the Tiger isn’t actually at the top of the food chain. In fact we humans are at the top. It is widely known that Scientific studies can prove anything. So taking this burden off the Tiger’s shoulder can go a long way in solving this problem.

#3: Made in China Tiger Products:

Poaching is prevalent because I hear there is a huge market of Tiger products – nails, teeth, hide etc. – in Tibet and China for uses in traditional medicine. Now borrowing China’s concept, if we can start making ‘fake’ Made-in-China-or-Japan-or-Taiwan-or-Ulhasnagar-Sindhi-Association Tiger Products, we can save the tiger. You know, fake medicines, fake nails made out of plastic or fibre and so on, with a ‘Maa Kasam Made in India’ Tag.

So the poachers don’t run the risk of confronting a tiger and the tiger also survives. Win-win situation.

#4 Shift all tigers to zoos:

This idea has actually been borrowed from Indian politicians and Bollywood movies. You see, whenever there is a threat to a politician’s or criminal’s life, they surrender. They are taken to the police station and are safe. Similarly if we move the remaining 1411 tigers to zoos all across the country and keep them in preventive detention, there won’t be any losses. They’ll slowly get used to the environment too, seeing the pathetic way in which other animals are treated in the zoo. They’ll eventually fall in line, fall in love with a tigress maybe and give birth to more Stripeys.

#5: Build Tiger Statues:

I think Tigers have suffered a huge inferiority complex with Mayawati ji’s Elephant Statue programs. It is a ‘mammoth’ insult to the Tiger kind. They’ve been pwning the elephant population since ages and still elephants get statues while the Tigers get gunshots. Unfair. I feel the Supreme Court must pass an order that all Elephant statues be taken down and remodelled into Tiger Statues.

#Bonus:

Rahul Roy must be made the brand ambassador of Save our Tigers project. Considering that he was brutally killed for turning into a WereTiger in Junoon and his career was also brutally murdered although for difference reasons, I think he deserves to be the face of the Tiger. Also the keyword ‘Rahul’ works wonders these days.

With that, I guess, I’ve done my bit for Save the Tiger. Yeah, go save some Tigers now. or like @oldmonkmgm says: Don’t save the tiger, it is better to save the Tiger Project. 

Disclaimers:

Apologies for the extremely cynical tone through this post. Initially I wanted to do an analysis of this campaign in a very unbiased manner. But somewhere down the line, the half-hearted-ness of the whole thing disturbed me a lot. Apologies again for mentioning some comments in the blog post. After spending close to two hours on comments on that blog post, trying to extract meaningful comments and links, I was too frustrated because the amount of trash and repetitive sentiments were overwhelming. If you find these offensive, mention that in the comments and I’ll take them down. But I’d like them to remain there because they prove why asking people to blog isn’t always a good option for a social media campaign. Especially in an Orkut-infested country like ours.

Again, I’ve seen both sides of the coin – I’ve participated in Armchair activism as well as activism on the field. I’ve worked with an NGO trying to ‘save’ another national symbol – The Ganga river. We’ve fished out dead bodies from the river, cleaned ghats, held rallies, struggled to collect funds etc. – so I know how difficult it is to bring about even an iota of change. I am not trying to ridicule the intention or the cause. I am complaining about the laxity in the effort. This is an issue that needed attention, maybe five years ago. We are late and even when we are, we aren’t doing it the way it should be done. It is as good as remaining silent and waiting for 1411 to decrease to two digit figures.

Links:

I picked up the following links from the comments section. Some of them are blog posts, others are comments. If you have time on your hands, you can try going through them.

• http://www.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/tigers/tigers_threats/tiger_trade/
• http://tripamit.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/how-much-does-it-take-to-care-save-our-tigers/
• http://leaping-pyre.blogspot.com/2009/01/tiger-tiger-burning-bright.html
• http://sharmilasays.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/the-story-of-my-life/
• http://10yearitch.com/?tag=bandhavgarh-national-park
• Hitchy’s post: http://hitchwriter.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/man-the-ugly-animal/
• http://possibleperchances.blogspot.com/2010/01/were-just-like-that.html
• http://ami-vagabond.blogspot.com/2010/02/baatein-hain-sab-saali-baatein-hain.html
• http://pushkalshivam.blogspot.com/2010/02/mighty-sher-khan.html
• http://saveourtigers.com/blog/?p=1&cpage=19#comment-955
• http://saveourtigers.com/blog/?p=1&cpage=19#comment-985
• http://tikulicious.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/bloggers-for-tigers-save-the-tiger-campaign/
• A NGO: http://www.srushti.org.in/activities.html
• http://www.wildlywise.com/index.htm
• http://www.mid-day.com/news/2010/jan/250110-tiger-poaching-arunachal-pradesh.htm
• Posts that I found via. Twitter: Chetan’s post and IHM’s post
• On an unrelated note: http://www.flickr.com/photos/anuragyagnik/sets/72157604092157170/

If you actually read the entire 3300 something words, send me your mail id, I’ll send you a Valentine’s greeting.

Till saner times return, Roar!