The Issue: Not Going To Work

The Soundtrack: Santa Monica

I did a strange thing on Monday. I didn’t go to work. It wasn’t as if I had planned a picnic or a Dilli darshan or a long lunch with friends (most of whom had a chhutti thanks to Guru Govind Singh). [Read more]

The issue: Nehru-Edwina

The soundtrack: Tainted love

So the proposed Hollywood movie on the love affair between Chacha Nehru and Edwina Madam will never be out in a cinema near you. [Read more]

The Issue: Climate change
The Soundtrack: It’s too darn hot

It was nuclear disarmament when I used to wear shorts. Now that I wear boxers (as overwear only!), it’s climate change. Every generation gets its heave-ho with some global danger topic or the other. [Read more]

The Issue: The sainthood of Obama

The Soundtrack: Spirit in the sky

The Mayurvihar Bengali Post-Puja Cultural Association (MBPPCA) was toying with the idea of awarding Barack Obama a lifetime achievement award. Now it seems that the Nobel Academy has pipped it to the post. Which is a pity because the MBPPCA, after portraying the asura being impaled by Durga during the Pujas two years ago, had run out of ideas by which its members could show the ‘war-mongering, hegemonistic, so-what-if-he’s-a-friend-of-India?’ George W. Bush as the embodiment of pure evil — and thereby showcase their own sense of goodness. [Read more]

The Issue: Passing out
The Soundtrack: Tubthumping

Sometime in the very early 90s, I first passed out in college. It would be only in the little later 90s that I passed out of college. To be quite specific, I had, after an evening of merrymaking that involved guitar-playing (a passable rendition of Nirvana’s ‘Rape me’ from the band’s final studio album, In Utero), cycling round and round, and destroying a mosquito net (the holes seemed way too small), I had felt incredibly tired and, with my head swimming, closed my eyes. Since I didn’t open them again till the next morning, this act was officially deemed as ‘passing out’. [Read more]