The Great Ganesha

Picture by Flickr user racoles

Protesting monks gathering at the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon
Okay, this may be a tad too cynical, but take a little Buddhism, add a military regime, throw in a Nobel Peace Prize laureate (imprisoned) and you get something which is just begging for a Hollywood celebrity to make it their cause du [...]

[Read more →]

What do Jessica Lange, Naomi Watts and Ganesha have in common? This question has plagued humanity for centuries. In fact, it kept me up for practically the entire night just a few days ago. But that was before I was alerted by ChapatiKid to our friend Ravi’s pics. Then - and only then - was [...]

[Read more →]

Today’s NYT is chock-full of articles about aamchi Mumbai. Well, not quite chock-full - that’s my Bombayite exaggeration surfacing - but there are two of them. Both pretty elaborate and interesting. Here’s a synop-analy-sis (remember - you heard this word here first!).
The First Article
The first is in the Travel Magazine (called T) by Alex Kuczynski. [...]

[Read more →]

Well, the Ganesha Festival fervour is on in full swing (but thankfully, tinny music playing is still banned at night) and the ten-day visarjan date is only a few days away, on September 25th. While the statues get bigger, more elaborate and quite creative, the Arabian Sea gets more polluted.
Picture via Flickr user chinese_fashion

A “creative” [...]

[Read more →]

“O Mighty Lord Ganesha, will you accept this can of generic diet cola nestled in my crotch, in return for just one box office hit? Please? Pretty please?”
A buff Bollywood actor (whose half-naked pic I have gratuitously posted for the viewing pleasure of our thus inclined readers) decides that he wants to visit a Ganesha [...]

[Read more →]

Was in Los Angeles for the weekend, and it’s mandatory to lunch at Pioneer Blvd in Artesia, and raid the well-stocked cupboards of Surati Farsan Mart after that. For the uninitiated, that’s where LA’s ‘Little India’ is located.
So, after doing the rounds, we start walking back to car. While waiting for the signal, [...]

[Read more →]

Today’s WSJ has a front-page write-up about Azim Premji and his “muslim-ness” (or lack of it, thereof). His secular stance is pissing off a lot of imams, but the article also highlights how imbalanced the Hindu-Muslim equation is, in terms of employment and opportunities for education. Here are some excerpts:
Mr. Premji’s rise is already inspiring [...]

[Read more →]

A friend forwarded me an email about two guys (Andrew Lipson and Daniel Shiu) who recreated Escher’s 1953 lithograph Relativity using Lego blocks. It’s their fourth such endeavor for an Escher work and - I have to say - a damn cool hobby. Lipson even has a Lego rendition of Rodin’s Thinker.
Take a look [...]

[Read more →]

Was browsing through last week’s Economist when I came across this full-page spread on page 84:

This is what the first paragraph reads:
The State of Maharashtra is the third largest and the most progressive and industrially advanced state in India….Mumbai, country’s leading financial, trading and service centre warrants aviation facilities of highest order. To [...]

[Read more →]

[Originally on Desicritics]
Was in New York recently, and whenever I’m there I try to catch an off-Broadway play, or a decent Broadway one, if that’s possible. Well, this time I was way off Broadway - on 59th between Park and Madison, in fact - at the 59E59 theaters. The play was Michael Hollinger’s Opus [...]

[Read more →]