Striking gold at the Delhi Book Fair 2009

We were at Pragati Maidaan at the Book Fair last night and struck gold at the Diamond Publications stall.

We now own every Chacha Choudhary vs Raaka comic book — all 15 of them. Are we really cool dorks or what?

No, I’m not lending them to you!

Omkara Revisited

Please tell me this song isn’t about performing a BJ.

Vacationing In Tirupati, And What I Like & Dislike About Organised Religion

I’m wary of crowded places, hot weather and long queues.

Add ill-mannered security guards. And priests who’d make Atilla blush. Blend them, and you get Tirupati.

Yet I had to go. Family tradition. It’s something we do after marriage.

I kept pushing it away for two years. And then, the trip materialised and our family headed for the seven hills.

It was my sixth trip to the place. I don’t remember going to another holiday spot – religious or otherwise – as many times.

At first, there’s much to like about the place: the climate’s pleasant, the locales are clean and green, there’s spicy, piping hot, slurpacious Andhra food. And the datacard works too.

Then, the darshans happened.

There are several types of darshans you can make at Tirupati.

The cheapest option will leave you standing in queues several kilometres long. The slow, painful barefooted drag to the lord’s chamber takes many hours, sometimes more than a day.

Then, there’s the VIP queue, where you have to pay a higher-than-usual ticket price. But you are spared the queue and taken straight to the sanctum sanctorum.

Right before they reach the business end of the darshan, all these queues merge. Then, another wave from this sea of skinheads prepares to hit the lord’s chamber.

There, just as the devotees reach the chamber and get a second’s worth of his glimpse, they’re pushed away by the security – swiftly, rudely – to keep the queue moving.

All those hours in the sun.

For one second’s worth of darshan.

Two seconds, if you’re lucky.

Three, if you hold your ground and don’t let them push you.

It doesn’t stop there.

After this, people queue up again to make donations to the ginormous Tirupati hundi.

This queue is much shorter. But one thing doesn’t change: right after you’re done dropping your money in the hundi, the guard – probably fully aware that your donation helps pay his salary – pushes you away. All over again.

After this, you pass a gallery where overweight priests sit behind a glass wall with currency notes strewn around, waiting to be counted, or be pinched.

I’m an atheist. But what I truly like about organised religion is that it’s a fantastic, recession-proof, all-weather business model.

Its consumers fear abandoning it. Its proponents milk it for its dogmatic worth. And the product itself – The God – has irreproachable manners of pleasing or displeasing its followers.

My heated back-and-forth with some priests and guards would mean I’m not going back to any place of religion in a hurry.

However, if I can, I’m definitely going to set up a temple in every corner of the country.

My First Strand of Gray Hair

My Xth CBSE Hindi syllabus had this chapter about a middle-aged man expressing his bittersweet feelings after he noticed the first gray strand on his scalp.

His feelings got my goat. I was 15, and had already begun graying.

My first gray strand appeared when I was 14. The second didn’t take too long after that.

At the peak of my hormonal pandemonium, just when I was supposed to experience the highs of youth, I was dealing with my first sign of aging.

I don’t know — it was probably the hard water. Or my diet. Or maybe that I think too much. Way too much.

By 18, it was a full-blown epidemic. The temples, the scalp, the back of the head — the grays were gaining ground.

I might have been 19 when I had my grays coloured black — something I resorted to, once in a while.

What made matters worse that my hairline receded too. From worrying about premature graying, now I was thankful to have hair at all.

After college, I was admitted to a journalism school. Before I joined, I thought it’d be best to get my hair coloured to look my best for the first day.

A month after a joined, when the colour faded away, I realised half the class was gray.

That’s when I knew I was at the right place. And I never worried about my grays since.

What is the difference between Hamas and Hummus?

Just in case you’ve been confused like I was.

What are they?

Hamas: an acronym for Harakat al-Muqāwamat al-Islāmiyyah, meaning Islamic Resistance Movement.

Hummus: a spread made from minced chickpeas, seasame, lemon juice, salt, garlic and spices.

What is their origin?

Hamas: created in 1987 by a group of Palestinians to kick Jewish ass.

Hummus: has its origins in midieval or even ancient Middle East, though it’s not clear where or when.

What do they go well with?

Hamas: Islamist imperialism, Israel-bombing, Jew-hating, America-hating, terror-mongering, Gaza-capturing.

Hummus: bread, hard-boiled eggs, falafal, chips, crackers, salads and if your name is Zohan, you eat spoonfuls of it for no particular reason.

Who loves them?

Hamas: Arabs back them. Jews hate them. Canada and the US hate them. Even the Norwegians and Japs hate them.

Hummus: Jews love it. Arabs love it. Africans love it. Asians love it.

What do they look like?

Hamas:

Hummus:

No prizes for guessing which one I would prefer.