Just when you thought the stock could possibly *not* go higher -

- it can play cricket! OK it can hold a cricket bat, but the visual is enough to kill me already. Dee-eye-ee.

We already know about the swims and the dances and the make-Adonis-hide-in-the-locker-room looks. There has got to be a law against a man who can talk, think, dance, play cricket AND be so UNAVAILABLETOME!

Phew. If this photo-op is a new way to pander to India, could I just say - we are pandered. All 1.13 billion of us. Very pandered. In fact, I am all for the pandering. More pandering, I say.

From Sepia Mutiny, the lovely desis who cannot get enough of the promised land. Plus - the entire slideshow is a celebration of the work of art that is Barack, so girls (and guys) - enjoy. See this is the sort of thing you never got with the Bush presidency. And for that matter, anytime in India (after Rajiv, maybe?)

Damn you, Michelle.

Mrs and Mr Federer

Knock up the girl, marry her? The cliche is almost too painful. I thought the "We're happy!" note was just a little bit repressed, but we shouldn't expect perfect expressions from tennis players - they aren't poets after all. On the tennis court maybe, but not on paper :)

But I *have* always wondered why people who live in fairly liberal environments and who've been perfectly happy just being with each other find this urgent need to tie the knot once the stick turns blue. I don't know about Mirka, but I'd feel bit a like waste of oxygen if the dude waited until my big announcement before his big proposal - I mean what the hell were you doing until now?!

Ever the Roger fan, the good N had an explanation. "He was waiting for the 14th slam so he could propose with the trophy. But some people got in his way [insert name of certain Spaniards] so he had to change plans." And knock the girl up. K and I had a different explanation, which I think is more plausible but which shall not be posted here because as I understand there are younger siblings who frequent this site :D

The good N also thinks he should go hide somewhere because the clay season's starting. And he might just have a point - Rafa was unbelievable in last night's final, though Djokovic had some pretty decent points in set #2. I had almost forgotten the magic our boy was capable of on clay, and whoever said the ATP is at its best level yet was certainly *not* kidding.

And for all the naysayers who think Roger's going to settle down and fade away, I think he'll win a couple more slams before that happens. 14 is a good number - I think he'll get it, and go all emotional and thank his newborn for it (my call is a boy, who'll be given some really grown-up name - any takers for Roger Jr? Or is that too American?).

India's voting, and we're talking

Alternate titles
How politics is about the punchlines
What to do with the CCD-vote bank that's decided to wake up
Saffron vs. No-good - hobson's choice, and
Why TV debates are really, no good at all

I was watching this show called Left, Right and Centre on NDTV, where the BJP had sent an easily excitable Sudheendra Kulkarni and the INC was represented by an overly populist Kapil Sibal, PhD in I-make-no-sense-EVER. The twenty-something audience, all of who looked like they'd stumbled into the studio while returning from neighbourhood CCD, seemed to love Sibal. To be fair, I guess the man's brand of politics does cater exclusively to subzero IQ levels - punchline, slander, 2-minute-Maggi and you-never-need-to-read-a-book-to-understand types.

So this is my fear - post-Barack, politics has become cool. All of South Delhi and South Bombay are looking for a party to register with, and there is a feeling among many that the INC is the "secular" party. And it isn't too hard to add onto that image words like "liberal", and "Obama-esque" - we are after all, a nation of delusional optimism. Contrast the visuals of Rahul vs Advani, Ram Rajya vs the nuclear deal, and send in Kapil Sibal to make some more populist statements, and the INC will have achieved what McCain/ Palin couldn't - an election win on massive populist appeal alone, no substantiation required.

And this worries me a fair bit, given especially how anyone who tries to list out the achievements of the UPA government in the last five years will not be able to go beyond

a) the nuclear deal and
b) love-the-farmer.

The first was handed to us by the Bush administration on a silver platter with chocolate on the side - we still managed to nearly mess it up. The second was more a set of initiatives - the minimum support price, the farm loan waiver, the guaranteed 100 days of work. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that most of these treated the symptoms and not the disease, and that too at a very high price, literally. Our fiscal deficit is ballooning, bad debts are looming and the public sector is being forced to lend to India's biggest vote bank that's been told its OK to not repay. The INC's manifesto - which as I understand no one really reads - lists out a bunch of achievements, none of which even comes close to helping urban India, and nearly all of which has hit our budget and banking systems so badly there is no way they'll be able to fight the recession, create jobs *and* finance these plans going forward.

I find it very disappointing that a cabinet led by Dr. Singh with Chiddu as finance minister could mess up so much. Easing FDI regulations, the insurance act, retail investment in India, tax breaks for all energy exploration, cleaning up the system even a little bit - they had five years to do it and were content riding on the GDP momentum created by the policies of the previous government. I wonder if the CCD returnees care, or even know, what they were laughing for?

===

Coming back to the show, the big issue was the BJP's manifesto, where re-building the Ram temple figured as an agenda. Sibal called it a last-ditch attempt by a failing party to get the vote out from the conservative base. Anyone who knows anything about politics in India will know that the BJP's biggest skeleton, and the reason it has never harnessed the support it needs from urban India and the minorities, has been its right-wing affiliation. Now with Advani at the helm and Vajpayee no longer in the picture, there is a very valid concern that the party might come closer to polarizing the India to the highest extent since 1947.

But there was a question asked by one member of the audience which I thought pretty much summarized a lot of people's thoughts on the flip-side of this argument. He said how as a Hindu, he was forced to vote BJP because the INC took the majority for granted - reservations everywhere, etc - could the INC defend its almost anti-majority stance? And I thought Sibal was a jackass for dismissing him with a non sequitor punch line- ("I am a Hindu, and part of the INC - did you think you were the only Hindu in this room?") - obviously the audience roared with laughter - how funny, he just made a funny! Haha. Now I think that was a bold Q to ask, and it's a pity the moderator - who's JD for the day, possibly from Barkha Dutt - seemed to have been kill-the-saffron, did not push Sibal for a straighter answer for this.

I was also reminded yet again why in the debate vs. discussion bit I always choose the latter. Debates are almost always about the punch lines and the easy laughs, you never dig into the topic or analyze the merits of the other party's argument. I knew that this problem wasn't restricted to university debating, but to see it almost symptomatic of the sport itself was a pretty uneasy realization.

It's been known for a while that India doesn't fight elections on issues. But the upcoming elections - this show being a poster for the issue - has brought about a couple of hard truths about the system:

1. Democracy votes with a weightage of one. It's a numbers game, and if the folks who vote happen to be farmers, jobless gomers and CCD-goers, well that's who you'll need to cater to.

2. Drawing from the point above, it is a pity the BJP is going back to colour politics. Their 2004 manifesto - India Shining - focused on development: infrastructure, regulation, development to ride on what India had achieved in the last 5 years. Nariman Point stayed home on election day and the farmer had no idea how the fancy terms would help him, and went to vote for the aam aadmi agenda. It makes perfect (and disgusting) sense that the party would go back to the things that bring out the foot soldiers this time around - ram rajya, temples, and Varun Gandhi

3. Speaking of whom - Mayawati is probably going to win a lot more seats than had actually been projected, thanks to Gandhi Jr Jr. She's done the big thing by slapping an NSA order on the kid and is currently in a catfight with the mother. Already-victimized voters of the minority community are thinking: M's our girl.

In other words, the election season is here, and you know what I'm going to be doing both at work and outside :)

PS: On a lighter note: headline after the BSP decided to contest all the seats on its own: Mayawati - she's single and happy!

Oh, colonial beauty

I seem to be on a roll about my favourite things. A weekend away showed me three absolute must-go places right here in my own home town.

I've always loved Fort Cochin. Come to think of it - what's not to love about it, right? Palaces, churches, beaches, food, lovely homes and a naval base :) If you have no saffronised insecurities, and are willing to absorb colonial culture as being a part of India's history, make sure you head here the moment you hit Cochin. And when you do, make sure you go to:

1. Dal-Roti. I have no idea which street this one's on, but the food is amazing and the decor is simply original. It is one of those run-down homes that's been converted into a North Indian restaurant, run by this strikingly cheerful couple, who insist on serving the food and seem only too happy to chat - the last bit very much sealing the deal for me. We went here for dinner and the place was pretty full - with families, backpackers, tourists, couples and random groups like ourselves.

The food is *very* heavy though; you'll hardly be able to stuff more than two parathas. And if you go there in the height of summer (like we did), I highly recommend their lime-ginger drink

2. Teapot - The tea shop. Now how can you possibly *not* like a place that calls itself this?! This one's on Borticelli Street. We went here for after-dinner drinks and then again for breakfast. They serve brilliant waffles and eggs-on-toast, which we ate rather pretentiously before asking if they had some real food, please? Turns out they serve pretty good chaat as well, so we were really quite happy. Their tea menu is just out of this world - I had my usual dose of Earl Grey, and was thoroughly impressed.

And finally -

3. The Brunton Boatyard - This is a Casino Group (CGH) venture, and is therefore a something-star hotel. For those new to the state CGH are a heritage hotel group with a knack of projecting Kerala's most beautiful places in their original form. If you want to see Kerala and have some good money to spend, don't stay at the Taj, go to a CGH hotel - Marari Beach, Spice Village, and the Bangaram island resort - pick one, they're all lovely. This time around they've taken this huge bungalow that used to have a boatyard behind it, and converted it into a hotel. This place is clearly very expensive compared to the restaurants I spoke about earlier, but if you're a fan of the state and everything that's great about it, make sure you drop in at least for a drink :)

So as it turns out Fort Cochin is even more beautiful and stylish than I remember. It also seems authentic and rather proud - all the homes have been well-preserved and nearly every place I went to was a converted home with little or no makeover. The beach is not anywhere near swimmable, which is a pity. But the next time I'm in Cochin, you know where to find me!

Home

Home is where the heart is
Home is where you have people to talk to
Home is where the fridge is always full and its doors have random things stuck on
Home is where there are pics of people you love with lots of in-jokes that only your pals get
Home is airy and the floor is always cool (I don't know why, but it always is)
Home is where the sofas are comfy and there is always enough space to crash in the living room
Home is where you can call over the people you love, and just those folks
Home has DVDs of the West Wing
Home is awesome