Count the Empty Seats, Prime Minister

Watching Prime Minister Manmohan Singh address the U.N. General Assembly this September, one couldn’t help but recall Peter Sellers saying “this room is filled with empty people” in the movie “Murder By Death.” The number of empty seats he addressed at the U.N. session was, frankly, embarassing. His entire visit was so boring, apparently, even the presence of Sindhura Gadde, Femina Miss India World, and Sabir Bhatia and his fiance, in community related events, couldn’t lift the spirits. As usual, the guy who hogged all the media attention was President Pevez Musharraf, who, of course, did what the media loves: Put his foot in his mouth whenever he opened it. So what do you guys like – the one who’s boring or the one going berserk?

The Terminator and
the Two Little Indians

No, that’s not a title of a new Hollywood Western starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. But it’s what jumps into your mind when you imagine Indian Ambassador Ronen Sen and Consul General (San Francisco) B.S. Prakash meeting with the gubernatorial hulk in Sacramento, California. The genteel savor faire of Sen seems somewhat mismatched by the exuberant muscleflex of Schwarzenegger, who invited the Indian plenipotentiaries to be the first foreign guests to visit the newly renovated historic Stanford Mansion. Curiously, the influential newspaper from California’s capital, The Sacramento Bee, reported that Schwarzenegger recently used the home to entertain the prime minister of India! One wonders if the Governor himself knows that he met with the Indian Ambassador and not the prime minister – although imagining the Terminator meeting the turbaned prime minister should make headliners delirious.

Rushdie’s Return to Form and Paradise

After enjoying “Midnight’s Children” if you dutifully kept reading all that Salman Rushdie dished out, you may be accused of liking laborious prose, tiresome allegories and lugubrious plots. But happily, that phase seem to be over. Rushdie’s latest novel “Shalimar the Clown” seem to have won over critics and the readers. Heralding the return of the ‘literary’ Rushide was none less than John Updike who wrote a flattering review of the novel in the New Yorker recently. The novel must go down well with the Indian readers too, what with the plot revolving around Bollywood glitter, steamy sex, religious fury and, above all, terrorism in the paradise called Kashmir. In fact, Rushdie dedicates the book to the loving “memory of my Kashmiri grandparents.” Commenting on the author’s depiction of Kashmir, Updike writes: “Sensations of a childhood spent in the high meadows and narrow valleys, among clear lakes and rivers of snowmelt, under the aspect of shining glaciers and timeless traditions, are evoked with an affection bestowed on few other of the novel’s venues.” Good to be back home, I guess.

Sania’s Moment

The lissome tennis sensation from Hyderabad has made millions of Indians, starved of sports triumphs, proud by becoming the first Indian woman to go up to the fourth round of a Grand Slam event. Sania Mirza’s talent and good looks have also made her the darling of the advertising world where she’s making moolah next only to Sachin Tendulkar. But with fame and fortune comes problems. Some little known mullah from up north apparently issued a “fatwa” asking Sania to cover up, er... stop wearing those revealing court tops and skirts. Haseeb-ul-Hassan, that anachronistic blaggard from the backwaters of the medieval world, says that she should follow the example of Iranian women who wear long tunics and head scarves while playing even raquet games. Will someone buy that b*@.%*#d a ticket to Iran where he belongs and tell him to lay off Sania, the best role model for all those women ghettoized by ‘devout’ men.