A victory for Indian women?

Figurehead position or not, congratulations are in order for Pratibha Patil, the new president of India. Patil is India's first woman president (though the subconty is not unfamiliar with women leaders, such as Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi).

(And, of course, obligatory mention of how ironic it is that India is by and large perceived [in the U.S.] as oppressive to women, while we Americans struggle to wrap our heads around the potential election of Hilz and default to either calling her a bitch or a lesbian.)

There's no justice like mob justice ...

... especially when a newspaper publishes the results of a survey that you find dissatisfactory.

Tamil daily Dinakaran wrote a story summarizing the poll, which, among other things, apparently touched on who would be the political heir to Karunanidhi (who you may know as the guy in the sunglasses in the ad I just blogged about). Karunanidhi has three children, one of whom was pegged the overwhelming winner -- which so insulted the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (a political party) that brigands burned the offices of the newspaper, as well as Sun TV, ultimately killing three people. (Hindu story on the incident.)

Why? Why do these things happen with such frequency? I'm glad that (from reports I've seen) the rioting was rather isolated; then again, am I really finding a silver lining in a totally senseless act that ended up costing lives? How does one try to reconcile the image of multibillionaire technocrats with the embers dying out in the Dinakaran rubble?

So self-serious

I know I'm supposed to be saluting a great true politician, but I can't stop thinking this is a promotional for Half Baked. (Click on the image for my witty [puerile?] reimagining of the ad, which ran in several national English-language newspapers.)

A quick and dirty guide to whipping up sentiment, illustrated by West Bengal governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi

First: Pick your tragedy.
(For GG, the death of 10-year-old ragpicker Susmita Sarki, who died while she was sifting through garbage and a landslide of filth buried her.)

Next: Dig up your purplest prose.
(According to The Hindu, "Mr. Gandhi regretted that a 'rose like life' had been 'smothered under a load of filth generated by humans.' The girl ... was 'martyred to our callous excesses and neglect.'" Later in the same store, he adds, "We live for the present moment ... and leave this beauty spot having drawn everything Darjeeling has to offer, but giving nothing to it in return. Except empty packets of crisps and gutka, apart from the water bottles and other plastic containers.")

Then: Wait for newspapers and bloggers to parrot your story.

Finally: Smile in smug satisfaction that you have safely skirted actually addressing the problem by talking about martyrdom and introducing similes equating life to some thorned flora.

9/11: Officially carbon neutral

Now, I'm not too political, but it's worth noting that more of my countrymen (and women) have died in Iraq (2,974, at last count) than did in the Sept. 11, 2001 (2,973), attacks. Does the number mean anything? Well, if you're trying to weigh it against the political justification for entering Iraq, one might say that the two had nothing to do with one another, and if you're trying to build an argument about the need for us to withdrawal, I might support you.

But if you're me, it means that your brothers (and some dudes you knew in high school) have been deployed to the Middle East about a half a dozen times in the past five years, and you're more than a little (selfishly) thankful that they are not among the bodycount.

I am allergic to being too serious, but this hits home. Luck doesn't last forever, and as much as my family jokes about the boys entrepreneurially selling sex toys to their comrades in the war against terror, it is pretty fucking frightening to have two people you really care about repeatedly risking their lives for a cause that is so....opaque. Here's to a hope that in the new year, a miraculous solution to this whole conundrum will be birthed from the soil, just as the baby Jesus was delivered to the Virgin Mary. Uhhh...totally.

(Insert slogan shouting ['Bring them home! No war for oil!'] and yellow ribbons here.)

Hu are you talking about?

Hu Jintao, as imagined by the art department of Outlook magazine, meet Eugene Levy, actor, riband, he of huge eyebrows. Or have you already met?

(I'm just saying, resemblance much? And also, how awesome would it be if Hu Jintao sang songs about terriers and literally had two left feet and danced in circles?)

Best. Story. Ever.

Ashok Das, I salute you, for "Politicians and their wild campaigns" (Hindustan Times, Tuesday, October 24), is a certified masterpiece.

I quote:

"Politicians are never known to be civil while dealing with their rivals -- not even in the best of times.

After incidents of leaders having a go at each other during assembly sessions comes the latest from Vijayawada, the erstwhile political and cultural capital of Andhra Pradesh.

It all started about 10 days ago, when Telugu Desam Party [TDP] activists in Guntur decorated a buffalo in Congress party colours and hung a placard around its neck which read: 'I am Rajasekhar Reddy. I am thick-skinned and insulated to criticism. Do whatever you like, I will not resign.'

The buffalo was taken around the streets of the town as part of the TDP's statewide campaign to force Reddy to resign in the wake of a Supreme Court order quashing the pardon granted to a murder convict.

The Congress hit back. They got a donkey decorated in the TDP's yellow colour, which, like the TDP's buffalo, carried a placard saying: 'I am Chandrababu Naidu. I speak lies and utter lies. I change my stand to suit me. I betrayed my father-in-law for the sake of power." The donkey led a procession of slogan-shouting Congressmen through the streets of Vijayawada.

Congress activists though the TDP hadn't been hit hard enough. So two days later, they took out another rally with a dog in TDP colours. This time, the placard read: 'I am Chandrababu Naidu. I only bark.'

The battle had just begun. They got a man to look like Rajasekhar Reddy and paraded him through the streets with a group of seemingly irate women chasing him and thrashing him with chappals, broomsticks, rotten eggs and tomatoes.

What were the police doing all this while? The drama was too good for them to interrupt [...]"

Disclaimer: This picture is from Vaarttha, a Telugu paper I found on the Interwebs. I'm not sure it's a picture of the incident (since I don't read Telugu), but it's from the paper's Guntur edition on a date near that mentioned in Das' article.