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Mystery of the male lesbians

Picture this.

2 gay men meet meet at a bar (could be a regular bar or... well, an irregular one... you pick!). They catch each others eyes and instantly fall in love. They find they have a lot in common. Critically, one of their shared joys (or frustrations - depending on your world view) is that they both believe they're women trapped in a man's body (not very uncommon among gay men). They hook up and have a passionate night of love making (sorry about the graphic description, but this is integral to the mystery).... NOW...

Are they lesbians??

Whaddya think? Leave your comments. And fwd this link along to all the gay people you know (male or female). Want to get some gay perspective on this. This is bothering me.

HELP!

PS: No offense meant to anyone - this is just a random ponderance.

High on pants!

Pet Peeve - People who wear their pants around their necks. What's the deal with that? I'm not saying we all have to be at the cutting edge of fashion (I certainly am not), but there are 3 practical reasons for getting out of the high tide!

1. High pants = self induced wedgie. Wedgies are a bad thing. Even Freud (yep - same guy who thought shitting was erotic) would find it hard to draw pleasure from a well executed wedgie. With high pants, you're basically in a permanent wedgie you've given yourself. To read more about wedgies (coz I think most people who put themselves through it, don't know what one is) check this out... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedgie

2. Even worse... High pants = front wedgie. As if having at least 2 layers of garment (we hope) riding high up your ass wasn't enough, high pants, if executed perfectly, would also lead to the alienation of one testicle from the other. They wouldn't know each other very well and my guess is this might hinder team work sooner or later. Plus the general would have to be partial all the time.

3. The hairy ankles show. Since most self respecting clothing manufacturers and tailors fit their pants around the waist rather than the chest, when riding high, these pants fall short of covering the hairy ankles beneath. And no one. I repeat - NO ONE had sexy hairy ankles.

Well... somebody (can't say who) thought it might be a good idea to share this artcile as well... it's titled Men's Fashion and Grooming Crimes. Scathingly funny.

Bombay Duck / Bombay Blues

I couldn't decide between the 2 titles for this post... so I went with the power of AND!

Don't know if this is true or just my imagination, but there seems to be a deluge of books about Mumbai recently. I, for one, have read three and am going through my fourth one in the past year or so - Black Friday, Maximum City, Shantaram and now Sacred Games. The scary part is the one common element among all of these - the notorious Mumbai underworld.

Black Friday, also turned into an interesting-without-being-very-gripping movie, deals with the meticulous planning of the Mumbai blasts in '93. The fact that it's so fact based is scary.

Maximum City is probably the one I related to the most. It's Suketu Mehta's narration of this experiences and attitudes to being a born-again Mumbaikar. It's a very colorful and rich description of the pot boiler Mumbai is. It's sets Mumbai up to be a masala flick with all the ingredients - right from mudane issues like lack of sanitized water coming through the tap (yep - for us Mumbaikars this is a mundane issue), to the role of the underworld in Bollywood (I love this word - I don't give a fuck if half of filmdom thinks this is a derogatory word - I think it's cool).

Shantaram, on the other hand, is a page turner. It's a brilliantly told real story with what I think is significant (and well used) creative freedom. I'll say it - it's one of the best books I've read. I love the juxtaposition (another word I love) of a great story (escaped Aussie convict living in Mumbai slums getting involved in the thick of the Mumbai underworld and fighting a war in Afghanistan), rich characters (religeous mafia don, indian cowboy who is also our hero's man friday, slum folk with aspiration of the world and the standing babas) and philosophical detours (especially love the conversation about right, wrong and the ultimate complexity - God).

I'm now reading Sacred Games. 150 pages into this 900 page epic, it's a movie screenplay with gore, personal struggle and love as key ingredients. More about this when I finish.

Net - While I'm happy Mumbai, being the manic wonder it is, is getting it's due in pop culture, I wish we'd see more of a balanced perspective about the city. It's not all about the underworld you know! It's also about hope, millions of personal struggles everyday and basically the joie de vivre.

Let me know if you've read any other good books about a different side of the city.

3 weekends, 3 wins

This past weekend P&G Cricket Club notched up it's 3rd straight win! This is a record of sorts in the history of P&G Singapore Cricket. For starters, we've never won 3 in a row in the league. A couple of years ago, 3 games is all we won in the entire season. This time around we've won 3 of 4.

Anyway, we had a team of 10 and batted first against Fusion CC (a side we had previously beaten in a friendly inspite of having only 8 players). Esh (16 off 30) and I (29 off 36) provided the team with a solid foundation (54 for 0 in 10). Two quick wickets later Bakir (34 off 28) and Tapish (27 off 45) consolidated, taking the score to 122 in 22 overs. We had a bit of a slide towards the end, ending all out for 161 with 1.1 overs to go.

Fusion got off to a flyer with 11 off the first 9 balls of the innings before Nitin Goel (2 for 32 in 6) took 2 off 2 balls to peg them back. Bakir (1 for 11 in 5) and Tapish (1 for 12 in 4) were typically miserly. Paddu came in and demolished the tail to be the most successful bowler with 5 for 19 off 4.5.

Another highlight was the fielding. 9 of the 10 wickets we took were catches (Raf had two blinders, Esh had a couple of nice ones behind the wicket and Lal made his look very easy) and the only other one was a run out (took 4 people to make that happen - comedy of errors).

Next weekend we're up against Tanker Pacific - We have a 6-0 record against them but they're still a pretty decent team.

Watch this space for more and feel free to leave your comments here.

Best Blog I've seen... so far

Check out http://indexed.blogspot.com

One word to describe it - IDEA!

There's an absolutely BRILLIANT mind at work there!

The Montek Mystery

Recently a couple of guys and I have committed ourselves to the cause of uncovering the ultimate mystery of life... who really is Montek Singh Ahluwalia?

You can read about him here.... but REALLY... who is he?

Over the years I have come across many people of the Sikh faith and they're by and large very nice people. At the outset, let me state that I have nothing against the Sikh religion or beliefs. This is just a random ponderance. If you're sensitive about this kinda thing, please do not read any further (but then you'll miss the mystery of Montek).

Now for the uninitiated, the Sikh belief is that their men should have 5 K's - Kesh (hair - which means the hairdressers in Punjab are not particularly well off bar some uncompliant few), Kanga (comb - well most of them do have the hair), Kachcha (underwear - no smart ass comments on this one), Kada (bracelet - for identification in case of drastic hairfall) and Kirpan (sword - one of which might be put to use on my neck soon)... Personally I think there should be a 6th one - Kulcha (flattened bread with stuffing in it - very nice)... but my bat sense tells me this won't be well received.

Anyway - this is not about Sikh beliefs. This is about Montek. Apart from the 5 Ks and a proposed 6th one, there's another trend that has gone beyond just emerging. It has arrived. Contemporary (personally that's debatable) names which have a natural phonetic link to their traditional name. My favorite example is Harvinder. AKA Harry. Has a global ring to it. Separately a lot of these men (yes... men) are called Pinky... not sure what the traditional name for that is though.

But this is not about Pinky. It's about Montek.

So the mystery. What is Montek Singh Ahluwalia's real name?

One cracking streak of brilliance is our lead (and only) theory. His original name was Mondegar. But in his circle of esteemed economists, he was laughed at and rebuked. Often he was asked - "Oye Mondegar - Ek beer lana" (Hey Mondegar, get me a beer). For those of you who haven't made the connection - the beer comes from Cafe Mondegar in Colaba, Bombay - a very very popular watering hole frequented by backpackers, engineers, MBAs, advertising folks and gangsters. The waiters are roughly the same profile, give or take 10%.

Coming back to Montek - Now this name - Mondegar - and all it's associations - largely beer - was a hitch in our young stars fledgling career in economics and policy making. He was frustrated at not being taken seriously.

And hence the drastic step.

Now something (let's call it my bat sense again) tells me we might be a bit off the mark here. Which is why this blog entry serves as an appeal to the people of the world at large to find the answer. Leave your theories / results of your research as comments to this blog entry. Contrubute to world peace...

REALLY... WHO IS MONTEK SINGH AHLUWALIA?

21 Grams is a heavyweight

And the movie spree continues. Got home early from work today and watched 21 Grams. It's the kind of movie you want never to end.

Written by Guillermo Arriaga and directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu - the same team that made Amores Perros (Spanish - 2001 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film) - another film I really want to watch.

21 Grams stars Sean Penn (one of the best actors - watch I am Sam), Naomi Watts (2003 Oscar nominee for Best Actress), Benicio Del Toro (2003 Oscar nominee for Best Supporting Actor). The film centers around a car accident, has a lot of parallel stories, cuts from past to present to future and back seamlessly and finally brings it all together, making you want to watch more of the film. It deals with a grieving wife and mother (Naomi Watts), a reformed and religeous ex-convict (Benicio Del Toro) and a dying man waiting for a heart transplant (Sean Penn).

Apparently, the film was shot in chronological order, but they mixed it up on the editing table. The film is called 21 Grams after some experiments that have proven that we lose exactly 21 Grams in weight when we die - this is assumed to be the weight of the soul.

Another must watch. Head to Amazon!

Black Friday.... follow up...

Following my thoughts about the ticking time bomb of the racial divide in India, check out this speech by Robert Kennedy after the assassination of Martin Luther King.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPYNb4ex6Ko

Bob baya - thanks for sending this through.

Also - In connection with this, try and watch Bobby. It's a story about the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the events leading upto that. It's unique in that it takes us through the life events of a bunch of disconnected ordinary people around the time of the assassination. Very nice film. Apparently it got a 7 minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival last year!

Another weekend, another win!

P&G CC made a killing this past weekend again. We beat Singapore Management University by 8 wickets with 11 overs to spare (that's massive in a 30 over game)!! This sets us up nicely for the rest of the season with 20 points from 3 games. Caveat - we're still not at the top of the leader board yet! In fact we're 16 points behind Polaris (current leaders and unbeaten in 4 games), albeit with a game in hand. There are 3 other teams with more points than us, but they've played 1 or 2 games more than us as well. It's going to be a hot season.

They batted first on what was the hottest and most humid weather I have ever experienced (and I come from Bombay!) and restricted them to 141 for 7 in 30 overs, largely due to miserly middle over bowling, especially from Tapish (2 for 16 in 6) and Bakir (0 for 19 in 6), good catching from Matt and a stunner from Paddu. The weather did a turn-around when we started batting and it looked like it would rain any minute. With none of us having any idea about Duckworth or Lewis, we decided to go for the kill. We got there in 19 overs and with only 2 wickets lost. Sriram came back with a bang to score 38 not out in 40 balls and Paddu with a quickfire 29 in 20. Mr Extras top scored with 53 (more than a third of the target!!! (Thank you SMU).

Another highlight was some heated exchanges - one of the fielders got himself into trouble with the umpires for having a go at me and then Sriram got into a bit of an exchange with the keeper.

Check out the scorecard here.
2 parting thoughts...
- Next opposition in 2 weeks is Tanker Pacific. A team we've beaten a 100 times. Having said that, they beat the team that beat our 8 man team in the first game!
- I'd love to play a friendly against a Division 2 team. I think we're good enough to get there on current form. Let's see if we can pull that off this coming weekend.

Trois Couleurs - Review

Continuing with my movie spree this weekend, watched the French trilogy - Trois Couleurs (Three Colors). All three films (Bleu, Blanc and Rouge - Blue, White and Red) are true masterpieces.

The trilogy is the work of Polish-born director Krzysztof Kieslowski (any relation with Rafael Scislowski has yet to be established!).

Bleu deals with liberty. It's a story about a famous composer who dies in a car crash but left a major musical piece commissioned by the European Council incomplete. The wife (Juliette Binoche - English Patient, Unbearable Lightness of Being) sets about completing the piece. In the course she has to deal with a discovery about her dead husband's long standing mistress and his assistant's love for her. Brilliant film. Beautiful art direction.

Blanc deals with equality. It's a dark comedy about a hairdresser (Zbigniew Zamachowski - Proof of Life) whose life falls apart when his wife (Julie Delpy - Before Sunset, Before Sunrise, An American Warewolf in Paris) leaves him. He sets about putting things back together while plotting an outrageous revenge. Super narrative and brilliant casting on this one.

Rouge is about fraternity. It's about a young woman (Irène Jacob - Incognito) who runs over a dog, returns it to it's indifferent owner (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a retired, lonely, voyeuristic judge and how their unique relationship develops.

All in all a must watch. In Singapore it's available at HMV. Otherwise you can get it from Amazon.

An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind

That's how Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday opens. Finally saw it after all the hype, hoopla and the overtime wages paid to the censors' scissors.

I was fairly young during the 92-93 riots and blasts (all of 14), but I remember looking out our window on the 27th floor, at bombay burning, and even at that young age thinking - it's never going to be the same again. I was right. Sadly so.

Coming back to the movie... I've read the book and was significantly more moved by the book than by the movie. But I'm guessing that's partly a function of what the censor's did with the movie.

Critically speaking, I saw 2 improvement areas in the film....
THE USE OF LIGHT, COLOR AND SHOT LENGTH - this kind of a dark story can really be helped with the right treatment. The director's used a blue (like tungten but not quite) screen as a device for a lot of scences, but it's flat. I'd have a lot more one sided light to drive contrast and a lot more close ups. There weren't nearly enough tight shots of actors - again critical in this kinda film.
BETTER FILLER ACTORS - it pisses me off how some of the hawaldars (police constables) act in some of these movies. They have one or two lines and they deliver them so badly it just shits on your fim watching experience.

Now I'll get off my high horse and stop acting like I know everything about making films... the film did bring 3 other things to mind...
THE ROLE OF CENSORSHIP IN OUR LIVES - It's the toss up between free expression and ensuring mass media is responsible for their actions and opinions. The more I think about it, the more I believe artists (in this case film makers) should be allowed to express themselves. If they receieve a public backlash (not via violence though) for their work/opinion, then that's their liability. Simplistic view - I know. But it's what I think.
THE SHIT THAT GOES ON IN THE SYSTEM - Breaks my heart to see some of the realities of the Indian judicial system that were depicted in the film. The blasts happened in 1993 and has resulted in the BIGGEST CRIMINAL CASE EVER in India. Of the 122 odd accused, 100 were convicted... only in 2003!!! The mastermind - Tiger Memon, is still a free man, probably laughing at the Indian police. Police atrocities. But what choice do they have - what with all the political pressures and human rights watchdogs.
WE'RE BUT ONE FLASHPOINT AWAY FROM ANOTHER COMMUNAL RIOT - We've seen this time and again. What're we doing to prevent it (apart from hoping)?

Look Ma... we won!

And how!

P&G Cricket Club (P&GCC) beat the living daylights (and crap) out of ANZA4 in our 2nd game of the season in the Singapore Cricket Association (SCA) League. This is the 3rd straight year some of us are playing in the league and I've never seen anything like it!

Batted first and scored 182 all our in just under our allocated 30 overs. By no means a massive total. Bunch of us got into our 20s and got out. Was relieved to get some runs on the board finally... topscored with 27 off 28 balls (of course I'll mention that!). Raf, displayed his penchant for some rearguard action and got 23 off 17 to give us a semblance of decency. The massacre came after that.

We got them all out for 38 in just over 12 overs!!! The other Nitin of the team (and the more talented one) got 3, as did Tapish. Bakir and Paddu got 2 each.

Check out some random photos from the game. Watch this space for more news on the progress of P&G CC in the league.

Also - check out the scorecard.

Smoking Pod

Bought a new i-Pod last week. 80GB. The works.

Over the past few days I have discovered podcasts and a few thoughts come to mind...

1) Oh... How the world has changed... Probably an understatement of a very high order, but I can never say it enough. Let's take news for example. First (and I'm talking really long ago) there was no published news about the world at large. Then came the printing press and eventually the daily newspaper. Still only local. Then came the telegraph and more global news. Then there was a revolution. Television and the 9 O'Clock bulletin changed the world (on a side note - it's scary to think I grew up in a world where we had only 1 TV channel - oh... how the world has changed). That eventually led to a multitude of TV channels dedicated to giving you news that you might want to hear, customizing for scope (global or local), subject (business or sport) etc. Then the big mama - the internet. News about just about anything is available instantly. Highly customized. Highly immediate. Podcasts are just another delivery mechanism of this highly customized gratification of my quest for information. And what an idea it is.

2) An Apple a day... and you'll be a millionaire. Let's give it to Steve and his troops. They have taken the pants off a lot of bigger, richer corporations that probably had the right to win with portable MP3 players. Sony should win this game because of the Walkman heritage. Microsoft should win this game because I'm using microsoft software to type this, Creative should win this game because they have a better product technically. But no - the guys making the computers that only the real geeks and designers use are actually making a killing. How? Geek designers of course. It's simple. It's minimalistic. It's just fucking beautiful. And with apologies to Henry Ford... you can have any color as long as it's white (well... to be fair - it's also available in black now!)

3) One inning ahead. And while the world catches up on MP3 players, my new 80GB i-Pod is a lot more than just that. I can watch videos, use it as a back up for my hard disk, listen to the radio, play games and generally be anti-social. What an idea!

All it takes is an idea. And of course, a mad belief that it will work. And of course some crazed resilience to make it happen.