At the prodding of friends I’m contemplating on whether or not to post a photoessay, a travelogue, or some convex combination of the two. But I don’t know if I have the time and/or the energy for it.

So if you’re reading this, tune in next week - there may be some good stuff to look at.

In the seventeenth chapter of “The Voyage of the Beagle,” Charles Darwin turned to the mating habits of the giant Galápagos tortoise. “When the male and female are together, the male utters a hoarse roar or bellowing, which, it is said, can be heard at the distance of more than 100 yards,” he wrote. This is also the most accurate description that we possess of the duet performed by Mick Jagger and Christina Aguilera in “Shine a Light,” Martin Scorsese’s documentary on the Rolling Stones. [link]

Mr. Lane is - as usual - on the money.

And that’s also why I have some extra time to feed the ever-increasing belly of The Great Ganesha.

Just FYI…

“Driving, driving, driving. Our work, a little bit difficult. Driving, a little bit tiring,” Sastry said as he steered his sky-blue BMW — license plate PRIEST-B — around the Capital Beltway from his Ashburn home to the Ellicott City housewarming, a ceremony considered most auspicious if performed before sunrise. “But this is a respected thing,” he said.

Freelance priests are bountiful in India, but just seven serve one of the Washington region’s largest ethnic communities. Census data from 2006 indicate that 105,000 Indians live in the area, about 60 percent of whom are immigrants; most have settled in Fairfax, Loudoun, Montgomery and Howard counties. To those who regularly call upon them, Sastry and his counterparts become trusted family priests, akin to family doctors or accountants. [link]

Had I only known this, I could have avoided an entire trip to India to get married for the second time (to the same person). Fly Mr. Sastry down, perform the ceremony and voila! We are married the Hindu way. We are happy to have avoided wedding-related trauma drama hungama costs. The ever-increasing-in-religiousness elders are happy since we are officially married the Hindu way. And Mr. Sastry is happy with anything we pay him. So I would have only given him $1 + expenses (I’m Ahmedabadi, after all). Everybody’s happy.

Sastry declined to discuss his fees, saying the payment is up to the devotees

My “suggested fee” wouldn’t cut it. Especially since this priest takes his kids to Disneyworld!

Clients said they typically pay $150 to $200 for a ritual of a few hours. They also pay his expenses, including mileage — “IRS rate,” he said, chuckling. It is enough for a tidy townhouse and a yearly vacation with his wife and two sons, 11-year-old Vignesh and 8-year-old Pavan. Last year, they hit Disney World.

Disneyworld? What kind of a Hindu are you, Mr. Sastry? You should - at the very least - take your kids here. If they’re lucky they’ll get to spot B-list actors in blue paint. And strings are $2 per. I kid, of course. Mr. Sastry can take his kids any where he damn well pleases. Or where they damn well please. Either way.

At any rate though, the one thing that bothers me about this is the license plate. “PRIEST B”? WTF? Something creative would be good. Like say, “SWAHA MAN” or “PUNDIZIT”. What say?

Firstly, thanks a lot guys (and especially you, CK) - it means a lot.

But I wasn’t planning on shutting things down here. Because it’s so crazy teaching here,  I’ll just be cutting down the posting just for a bit. It’ll take a lot more than that to shut this baby down! And the first minute I get to blog about a des-related offbeat story, it’s going up here. That’s a promise!

Thanks again, guys.

The FDA (after a few years of debate) says that food from cloned animals and their progeny is safe to eat. Looks like this thing has been on the back-burner for a while (pun intended, I apologize, I couldn’t resist).

“This is a huge milestone,” said Mark Walton, president of ViaGen, a leading livestock cloning company in Austin, Tex. [NYT]

Well, Walton would think that, of course. I would too if I owned a leading livestock cloning company. But there’s more.

Farmers had long observed a voluntary moratorium on the sale of clones and their offspring into the food supply. The F.D.A. on Tuesday effectively lifted that for clone offspring.

Voluntary, huh? I wonder how many clones and clone-offspring have slipped into the market already? You know, now that I think about it, the beef that I bought yesterday from the grocery tasted exactly the same as the beef today. It’s a conspiracy, I tell you!

“When you buy a box of Cheerios in New York and one in Champaign, Illinois, you know they are going to be the same,” said Jon Fisher, president and owner of Prairie State Semen in Illinois. “By shortening the genetic pool using clones, you can do a similar thing.”

I knew it! And what kind of a company is Prairie State Semen, anyhow? A sperm bank? Never mind that. Getting back to the point, it looks like clone-offspring can be sold, but not clones.

…the Agriculture Department, asked farmers to continue withholding clones themselves from the food supply, saying the department wanted time to allay concerns among retailers and overseas trading partners.

Well, it looks like Walton doesn’t seem perturbed by that, though.

“That doesn’t cause me any particular heartburn,” Mr. Walton said of the extended moratorium.

Heartburn! Oh lordy, lordy lord! These meat-cloners, I tell you, they’ve got some sense of humour!

Global index provider Dow Jones Indexes and Dharma Investments, a private investment firm, today announced the launch of the Dow Jones Dharma Indexes measuring the performance of companies selected according to the value systems and principles of dharmic religions, especially Hinduism and Buddhism.

The series includes the Dow Jones Dharma Global Index and four country Indexes for US, UK, Japan and India. The indices are designed to track financial products such as exchange-traded funds and other investable products that enable investors to participate in the performance of companies compliant with dharmic traditions. [BusinessStandard]

So what constitutes as “dharmic”? Well, it’s easier to start with what’s not dharmic:

Excluded from the index are companies from sectors that are deemed unacceptable due to the nature of their business activities and operations. Excluded are also companies that have exposure to unacceptable business practices. Some examples of unacceptable sectors are aerospace and defense, brewers, casinos and gaming, pharmaceuticals, tobacco. Some examples for unacceptable business practices are alcohol, adult entertainment, animal testing and genetic modification of agricultural products. [AlBawaba]

It seems that touting your company as “socially responsible” is a big draw for investors all around the world. I suppose that’s a good thing.

Worldwide, socially responsible investing (SRI), as it is known, has taken off in a big way with assets increasing from $639 billion in 1995 to $2.29 trillion in 2005. In the US, SRI assets represent over 10% of the total assets under management. [BusinessStandard]

So being listed on the Dharmic Index would mean that your company can adopt a holier-than-thou attitude towards the competition. The Economic Times has a quote from the CEO of Dharma Investments, with an interesting typo.

“The Down Jones Dharma Indexes bring together a combination of environmental, social, governance and traditional sin sector filters.

As such, the index is unique and will not just have appeal to the religious, but to a far broader audience as well,” Dharma Investments CEO Nitesh Gor told the media. [EconomicTimes]

What exactly is a “traditional sin” anyway? And what’s a non-traditional one, for that matter?

Now, this does not look like a swimwear shoot to me. Look where his right hand is, for crissake! Looking closer (purely intellectual interest, mind you), I read the caption, and saw that there was a URL typed in there, without a link - theindianplayboy.com. With the pursuit of knowledge in mind, armed only with my research background, I soldiered on. I manually (what dedication!) cut-pasted the link into my address bar and…

The amazing story of a Corporate Finance Executive with a passion for Film Making who had had the guts to risk it all by making a quality erotic film in Los Angeles! Now on DVD with an embedded E-Book that answers all your questions and provides you with all the juicy in side information that you have always wanted to know!

…

It is both an interesting Biography and a “How to shoot a porn/erotic film” combo. Nothing comes close to it. [link]

Ok, sardonic quips about the TOI(let) aside (these pics are categorized under “Foreign Fashion Show”) - what the hell? A desi making a movie about the making of a porno? Why doesn’t he just make a porn? Or maybe he already has. Who is this character?

Richard Menon who has previously directed “Miss 2” a film on model aviation that made it to the New York International Film Festival 2004 and an adult film under the Ecstasyvision Inc banner conceived the idea of “The Indian Playboy: Anatomy of a Porn Film” Documentary Film + Book. Since he is the subject of the film, he decided to entrust Steve Clack/DP with the Directorial Assistance. [link]

Richard Menon (48) hails from Trichur, the cultural capital of Kerala State, India. He graduated from the University of Calicut in 1979 and … had his formal film production training at the famous Hollywood Film Institute. [link]

A mallu from Trichur, based in Jersey City, going to LA not just to make porn films (mind it!), but also documentaries on the making of porn films. Hmm. Several comments are flying through my mind right now, but I think the humour intrinsic to that thought is enough. Hell, the concept is a movie in and of itself (starring Johnny Lever). It suffices to say that I’m sure glad he entrusted Steve Clack with directorial assistance, because I’d definitely be distracted when shooting something like that. Unless, of course, it was at gunpoint or if I was doing it out of purely intellectual interest.

Now, it’s back to my research for me…

He was 88. [link]

I had the honour of meeting him once and, awed as I was, his smile alone was enough to win me over. He was an inspiration, a great man and a gentle soul. He will truly live forever with some of us.