THE INDIAN COMMENTATOR

Teaser: Back-cover preview of the paperback. Cover release will be on 1 July 2013 June 25 th was a Tuesday and I was required to visit the college I work at, in order to attend a meeting there. My classes only began on 26 th . I teach English, and English classes are required only for the first year students. The college was dedicated to applied sciences; therefore, there is no English major course at the college.   I still remembered from the previous day’s call from the college that the meeting started at 3 pm. I was required to reach there only at two in the afternoon. That was quite relaxing, since I always had a peculiar distaste towards the hurly-burly for being late. I woke up at eight in the morning, took a long time for morning chores, and sat down in front of my computer. (My home computer, which everyone in my house uses, I mean. I do not own one personally, yet).   The paperback printing of my book had already begun and Amazon had asked me to upload...

Image Courtesy: The Atlantic.com I wrote a very romantic piece on Monsoon, towards the end of May, by which time Monsoon had just started to make its presence felt. Rain clouds were arriving in the sky in bundles. It suggested the end of the rudeness of summer. However, I could not publish the article. Why? It was too romantic, for the reality that followed. The following reality necessitated the pondering of the pre- and post- Monsoon social life in India. I realized that as the saying goes, the Changaran, who climbed the coconut palm, was still on the palm. No one brought him down, yet. This is an old adage suggesting procrastination, changelessness and corruption (popular in Malayalam language, in Kerala, southern India). Monsoon is not just a natural phenomenon. Culturally and socially, humanity has responded towards this phenomenon, and assimilated it into the varying spectrum of cultural experiences. Still, each year, in Kerala, the land of Monsoon, once the rain...

Image Courtesy: N Y times.com Movies with moderate sounding titles don’t do much business. Or so do I think. Of course, I am no Stephen Hawking. I can’t churn out universal principles from my study. So maybe they do well, sometimes. Admission , however, even with that unnoticeable title, came to me like a surprise. It was like finding chocolate in a pack of Milk Bikis. Who would choose a title like ‘Admission’ from a pack of DVDs with titles as sexy, delicious and violent as ‘Sex and the City’, ‘American Pie’, and ‘Dark Knight Rises’. Reluctant, though I was, in trying Admission , on a lazy Friday evening, its label, which read, humour, prompted me to take a shot on this one. It’s a universal story, told with an American point of view. Admission to college or university is one of the most important moments in any individual’s life. The movie takes this event as its background in telling the story of an admissions officer in Princeton University, Portia Nathan. In this R...

Statutory Warning: This post has nothing to do with Superman. But hell, why don’t you understand, he interferes everywhere.  Image Courtesy: Google Sreesanth , the fast bowler, who once, was part of the Indian Cricket team, whose alleged relationship with bookies put him behind bars for weeks without trials, who hails from Kerala, the South of India, who is the tangible example for the North Indian bias towards anything and everything southern, got bail. At last, the boy came back home and ate homemade pickles. Image Courtesy: Google In fact, cricket has lost its grounds based on this degraded controversy, at least, in my eyes. I do not watch cricket on TV any more. Moreover, I do not think I would be alone in this tryst. However, the masses, that I see watching the game in galleries, make me think about cultural addiction and social dementia. We forget that in the name of the game the managements and players played fraud. We forget better things in life, like he...

Have you met Lit Pet , yet? Meet Lit Pet here . Here is a guest post from our dear friend, Lit Pet .    Boww…wooww….I stood by a telephone booth, half expecting someone to pick me up. The day before yesterday, the day of my birth, I realized that the world is a hard place to get on with. Therefore, I decided to find a way to get connected with the inner me, the self. You might think I want to achieve some self-realization. Hell, no! Boww..woowww….The only way I could tolerate the hideousness of this world is through finding something else to look at and focus. It helps in diverting my attention. A great deal of diversion was music. Then, occasionally, I listened to Adale, and started crying. That was why I decided to find something else. Well, so I searched and wandered the streets. Up the northern side, near the   thattukada , was a telephone booth. A left turn from that telephone booth could lead you to the ‘police ground’. There was no polic...

Image Courtesy: Google Hi, It’s Monsoon season; authentic, natural and purifying shower of heavenly life. The rain symbolizes life and creativity. During the pagan past, people  worshiped  rain as a demigod. In literature, writers wrote about rain in half astonishment and half reverence. This reverence and astonishment sometimes, gave way to fear and uncertainty. This perhaps, is the reason why rain becomes the background for so many action sequences and mysteries, in movies, and sorrowful events, of course. In our current social life, we pretend to heed not the charm and mystery of this companion phenomenon. However, with an occasional  whip-lashing   it rains down and washes away shacks among abodes and skyscrapers alike. At that point, at least, we do the proper service at the altar of attentiveness, on the arrival of this heavenly phenomenon. I decided officially to inaugurate monsoon, to respect, to admire, and to observe, this manna of earthly r...

Warning:   Preferable only for 18+ readers. Explicit language used; readers discretion advised.  Image Courtesy: Flickr.com Something is not right. Monsoon had already blessed Kerala, but load shedding is still on, saying the dams, which produce electricity have not enough water level. A serious case of fever, with names including dengue and malaria and rat fever is sweeping the land, killing people, already slaughtered by the price hikes in rice and fuel. There was only one hope; Sreesanth, but he is in jail, for charges in spot fixing. Every street, village, and city is populated by waste, dumped from factories and butcher houses. When it rains, the rainwater washes the rubbish from roadsides to the main streets and chunks of shit reach your toes, touching them, flowing away, touching them, flowing away again.   Image Courtesy: Google In news channels, all the interesting news has given way to Narandra Modi and BJP. Some channels do make it a ...

Air Strikes in Iraq Image Courtesy: Google In 2010, a young soldier decided he should do something about the war. Many of the powerful nations on the earth were in Iraq, making it even with another murderer. The nations that were at war included his nation too, The Unites States of America. Many people were murdering many others in the name of justice, punishment, and sovereignty. Nevertheless, nothing made sense when he saw what the war led them to. Prison cells were teaming with humans without cloths, food, water, and dignity. When the cells were full, they shot some of them, not just, because the budget for ammunitions was large enough to afford it, but also to make more room in prisons. Many lost their lives this way. Many were still alive in the hope that one day their religious leaders would negotiate for their lives. When no one came for them, they all lost hope and turned insane. There were others, who held on. However, they did not get fair trials. Finally, they sho...

Image Courtesy: Google In the morning, I had some ideas about what should appear in this article. But as the day wore on, night came and I felt spent and tired, unable to move on a centimeter. Writing requires tremendous energy, especially when it is about such a hot topic as ‘spot fixing’. As usual, I should warn you from misunderstanding the article to be a piece of investigative-gossip journalism or a piece of shitty morality. From whatever I understand, as much as I try, there appears a limit in knowing what takes place behind the closed doors of the police quarters where Sreesanth and other players “were played” against themselves. Who knows what happened. The latest news surprised us, Keralites, to a very humongous extent. They took our Sreesanth to Tihar Jail! “That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery.” * Delhi Police validated the case against Sreesanth by playing with the deluge of evidences, the whole world watched on Tel...