From shadows to the stars

Time for some rantin' and ravin' folks! This week's targets are some stupid Indian advertisements. The essence of the Santoor soap ads is "How to be a MILF". But because we Indians don't like to be so straightforward in our terminology, let's term it as "How to be a Santoor mom". The problem with these ads is not that Santoor is marketing itself as some sort of magic tonic that would instantly make you more beautiful/ young or whatever.  It is that the age of the "Santoor mom" depicted in the ads is decreasing constantly.  Earlier, people in the ad would look at the Santoor mom and think that maybe she was a young professional lady. Now, they think that she is a college student. In a future Santoor ad, will we see a girl who the people in the ad think is in the eighth standard, but then a two year old kid comes running and screaming "Mummy!"? Staying with ads, have you seen some of the new fairness cream...

RO #1 In India, your importance is directly proportional to the extent of traffic gridlock that you can create. RO #2 "I've started my own firm recently", is the rich man's way of saying "I'm currently jobless". RO #3 Why is it that while water tankers seems to empty half the water they are carrying on the road, oil (petrol/ diesel) tankers do not even leak a single drop? RO #4 If there is one thing that suggests that the 'enlightened' men (or indeed the ones who wrote them) about whom we read about in most of our oldest stories were not really enlightened, it is the fact that they always seem to be craving beautiful women. Do superficiality and enlightenment go hand in hand? These ancient enlightened sages and saints knew the secret to happiness, realised materialistic things were did not provide true happiness and could even practice plastic surgery (if you believe the Indian right wing), but were not smart enough to understa...

If you have read some of my recent posts on the blog, you may have noticed that the tone has altered. One of the founding principles of this blog was that it would mostly deal with trivial, humorous and even nihilistic topics. While I did touch upon 'serious' issues here and there in the earlier posts, I tried to avoid it. However, recently I have been using the blog as a platform to voice my opinions and thoughts on more serious matters ( Ram Rajya , The All Encompassing Nature of Caste , Lecherous Leching  and Indian Culture ). Does this represent a change in the founding principles of my blog? I do not know. I still like very much writing posts on matters that are not of any particular consequence. I enjoy a tinge of humour in my writing. I do not think I will completely abandon writing such articles. But certain circumstances in my country right now mean that I cannot ignore writing about more serious matters. If going north represents writing humourously and going e...

Let me begin by relating an incident from an ancient Indian text, the 'Natya Shastra' which deals with the performing arts (theatre, music and dance, but also extends to other forms of arts like painting). The Natya Shastra is believed to have been written between 200 BC and 200 AD. In the Natya Shastra, the origin of plays is explained. The gods wanted an 'object of diversion' for the common people, which would have both visuals and audios, and both educate and entertain. They went to Brahma and asked him to devise this object of diversion, who thought up the concept of a 'play'. The subject of the first play was to depict the defeat of the asuras (demons) by the devas (gods) led by Indra. The devas and many others were among the audience. While the actors were performing the play, the asuras, who were there (apparently uninvited), were 'offended' by the way they (the asuras) were being depicted in the play. "We shall not tolerate this dramatic...