Become an intellectual in 10 easy steps

10. Love Mother Teresa.... any person with hint of humanity can be an intellectual.

9. Have coffee at the India Coffee house of your city.

8. Lean left on all things but deny by accusing others of leaning too far right.

7. Your day should begin with finding someone to blame.

6. Now find an issue to blame them with.

5. Accuse your country and people of plotting against those who wish to wage war against it.

4. Write a novel that no one can understand except the booker prize judges.

3. Be an old fan of Jyothi Basu. Accuse Budhadeb of being the cause of all that is wrong for the past 30 years and become a fan of Mamta... it is definitely downhill from here...

2. Use your freedom of expression to accuse your fellow countrymen of being in a sham democracy.

1. Get ready to be gassed for expressing yourself to your old Maoist friends.

The 60 year EcoMani curse.

I watched 5 mins of big debate or fight something on NDTV. It had Mani Shankar Aiyer, MP (RS) talking about how every 60 years or so after birth of industrialisation or some form of large scale economic change, there was a revolution. He gave examples of French revolution, the collapse of Soviet regime and even the changes in downtown London since Oliver Twist asked for more.

I (and Mani) immediately realised that India too was close to something like this. Mani thought that this was manifesting itself in villages as Naxal attacks and that middle class should wake up to the fact before the Naxals come calling in the cities.

But I think Mani was a bit is wrong. Naxalism is how the villages are handling it. Feeling of helplessness, loss of control and the general apathy in the cities may be for different reasons but just as strong as in the villages. We have stopped bothering with participation in elections. Power is out most of the day, many middle class household send out their children to fill containers of water from the local borewell or water tankers, you need to pay a bribe for everything from getting a ration card (state government), running a shop (local police station) to government hospitals... and as far as real estate goes, children are participating in singing contests to win a house not money. Middle class is taxed heavily. Kaun Banega Crorepathi? You cant buy a house in Bangalore! Half the winnings would go in taxes and the rest in stamp duty for the house. You cant write or express what you feel as you may hurt the sentiments of the a particular community. Cant say Tamil Nadu has a point on the water sharing issue in Karnataka as Girish Karnad found out. Cant say Rajnikanth's Robot is the biggest flop since Atlantis. Everyone in city knows money is not enough. It can be taken away with a phone call from Ravi Poojaris and Dawoods. Power, control and freedom are in short supply nowadays. The situation can very easily reach boiling point. A friend of mine said Indians don't complain enough. But we sense the injustice. If we don't or aren't complaining, it is going to eat into our psyche. And it will express itself.

Revolution may be closer then we think and the enemy would be us.

Godzilla for real

I saw the dumb ass version of Mathew Brodderick starer Godzilla last week. Bits and pieces. It was too stupid. This Godzilla hardly breathed fire, didn't really bother to flatten the wonderful New York skyline and was more interested in laying eggs. Why this over grown lizard from ILM, Hollywood would come all the way to NY to lay eggs is more perplexing than the behaviour of smoked Salmon.

In order to get rid of the after taste, I have started to download the original Godzilla. The one who loved attacking downtown and sometimes uptown Tokyo. These Godzilla flicks never starred people you might know except for Raymond Burr, who made a cameo, when he thought Perry Mason was going to be canceled because TV was being introduced. No this Godzilla was real. And his growl... yes sir, crew were watching Japanese porn, when they came up with that.