Tidbit

Frantically putting the finishing touches to my Spanish course I'm proofreading and the like. This means I notice that of the two verbs "to be" in Spanish, it is ser (permanent/intrinsic) that is used for bachelor and spinster hood, while estar (temporary, transient) is used to say married.

Of course this might be because the words married, divorced and separated are all participles and estar is used with participles, but it's more fun to wonder if this reflects an attitude to life. Heh.

Ack ack ack fat rant alert

So looking for stuff online I bumped into this. The photos are lovely. Really they are. But what bothers me about it is these women are supposed to be overweight. REALLY??? Okay one of them could classify as plump, but if any of them is larger than a size 12 I'll fall over laughing.

What is the matter with us?

ARGH!

Two news items in today's Hindu have provoked much argh, though one more than the other.

I caught sight of an article putting Sachin Tendulkar and Shah Rukh Khan in the same boat as being intrinsic to Indian culture. Now, I'm not arguing with the importance of film to pop culture in India (and surely they refer to pop cultura, not that I'm dissing pop culture either), but even to such a cricket non-enthusiast as me the idea of putting them on the same platform is a titch ridiculous. I can't stand SRK, but putting that aside, the man has some talent and a REALLY good sales pitch. He knows how to read the audience and give them exactly what they want. And let's not forget the PR. Sachin, on the other hand, is mindbogglingly talented and has honed that talent to such blistering skill that it leaves me fair gasping - and I don't even LIKE cricket! Subject them, I say, to the radio test. If we had no TV and only radio, would SRK be as much as a celebrity as he is? Would Sachin?

***

The second item was a heartbreaking piece on the planned and apparently now confirmed reintroduction of cheetahs into central India. The horror.

Now, any sort of environmental conservation effort should be viewed optimistically, because we are a country with limited resources and far more pressing demands, like poverty and education and so on. However, it pays to turn the occasional jaundiced eye on our efforts. There was the wonderful idea of reforesting Karnataka with eucalyptus, which isn't native, doesn't really provide much protection from erosion, and drains the groundwater so much that remaining native vegetation dies. That was stopped, mercifully.

The latest brilliant idea is this cheetah one. I'll leave the dissection of Mr. Jairam Ramesh's masterful articulation of WHY this needs to be done for later. Has it not occurred to anyone anywhere that reintroducing a powerful predator that was on the decline for several years before it finally gave up the ghost into regions that have now evolved without it might upset things a bit?

Secondly, why the North African cheetah? If you're going to spend Rs. 300 crore on a project, how about investing in some breeding pairs and trying to do something in captivity before introducing a similar yes distinct subspecies into the wild? Or maybe even do it parallel? Existing wildlife sanctuaries in India struggle terribly with poaching, and less dramatically, the spilling over of humans and livestock into sanctuary areas and of protected species into buffer areas. Why not use that Rs. 300 crore to rehabilitate people and establish a more enduring system of reserves? From what I can tell, Kanha is one of the few that succeeds and even they see some serious trouble with poachers.
(Feel free to yell at me if I'm talking through my hat.)

And now, of course, we come to the gem that emerges from the sainted lips of His Pompousness Mr. Ramesh:

“It is important to bring cheetah back to our country. This is perhaps the only mammal whose name has been derived from Sanskrit language. It comes from the word chitraku which means spots. The way tiger restores forest ecosystem, snow leopard restores mountain ecosystem, Gangetic dolphin restores waters in the rivers, the cheetah will restore grasslands of the country.”

I'm not going into the epileptic fit that grammar induced in me, and am going to lay the blame, probably rightly, at The Hindu's door. But really? We must bring the chetah back because it's name comes from Sanskrit? REALLY? THAT'S what we should base our conservation efforts on?

Cruising at 30,000 feet

and this is all I do.  An attempt to restart this blog. Bride, you want to send me tons of tags?

It's official. MinCat is a Bollywood whorejunkie. I'm sitting in a plane en route to Dubai and I'm wondering why the FUCK I didn't get around to watching Wake Up Sid while it was in theatres. Granted, I didn't know Konkona was in it, but even her stellar acting aside (oh man, I was just blown away in that scene when she's dripping form the water he's thrown all over her and he hugs her), it's such a fabulous movie. 

Perhaps it my adoration has something to do with it being shortened for a plane; or perhaps something to do with being an aspiring photographer, and being reminded heavily of college in Delhi (boasting alert, where I did work on a play with Konkona who was my senior and a total sweetie); or maybe I was just insanely amused by how immensely obnoxious Rahul Khanna's character is, having met several people who patronise other people for their tastes – whatever the cause I feel like I'm watching a movie tailor-made for me. I laughed. I swore. I giggled. I sniffled. I even cried a bit – though that might have more to do with leaving the beloved niece than the movie itself. Granted, there's no way she could afford that flat or to furnish it without a job; and hahah let's not even approach the seamless ease with which she jobs was found and passed on to him; but I think many people I know could identify with that life. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I have never had a movie-watching experience that simple incorporated me into itself so comprehensively. I worry that nothing else will satisfy on this flight now.

Edit: no, nothing did.

Zindagi ke do ghante Kurbaan.

And I'll never get them back either.

On friday, the boyfriend (also known as BBot), for reasons not even known by him anymore, went into a frenzy of excitement, because Kurbaan was out on Friday. "PLEASEPLEASEPLEASECANWEGOSEEIT???" he said, and so, against my better judgement I booked us tickets for a show on Sunday.

Unfortunately, my very favourite laugh-till-you-split movie review site had one up on saturday, and since we all know MinCat has no self control, I read it. It was all downhill from there.

I will refrain from commenting on the incredible facts of the movie, the cop shooting, the MTA subway that really looks nothing like the subway, the patheticness of Kareena clinging to Saif at the end, etc. But I cannot let the stereotypes go.

Essentially, according to this movie, if you are Muslim, and either wear a beard or a hijab, you're a terrorist.

Seriously.

In a multireligious, already tense society, full of people who think movies are real, and people who go and see the movies only because so-and-so is in it, the potential for danger is insane. Isn't there enough prejudice and violence in the world today without gratuitously adding to it? Seriously, considering the long and illustrious Muslim heritage of the male lead, and his education and general intelligence, how on EARTH did he let it happen?