India, This Past Fortnight

By Niyantha Shekar 5 March 2009 259 views 12 Comments

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) recently barred¹ two Indian Cricketers, Sachin Tendulkar and Dinesh Karthik, from playing in an exhibition game in New Zealand. The reason given was that they could not play alongside Hamish Marshall, who is part of the un-sanctioned Indian Cricket League (ICL). My sources in New Zealand tell me that the BCCI also forwarded a 4 point document to the Indian Cricket team that they have to strictly follow:

1. Must not eat at the same restaurants as other ICL players.
2. Must not acknowledge the presence of another ICL player.
3. Must not apologize to an ICL player if you accidentally bump into one.
4. Must not accept that Kapil Dev, Chairman of the Executive Board of the ICL, ever played Cricket for India.

The Indian Cricket Team was never known for having a vibrant or even remotely interesting looking team uniform. It used to be light blue, with the team sponsor’s name smacked right across the center of the t-shirt. Now it is dark blue, with the team sponsor’s name smacked right across the center of the t-shirt. It so happened that this change in uniform coincided with India losing both their Twenty20 games against New Zealand. As expected, out-of-work Indian astrologers began to attribute the color of the uniform to India’s falling fortunes. Other Indian fans felt similarly too, with one especially intelligent one saying “Let’s not bring any superstition into this. The dark blue has prevented Indians from thinking clearly.”²

Yes, it’s always nice to hear sound logic.

Recently, musical genius was acknowledged on a world stage when AR Rahman won two Oscars for his work in Slumdog Millionaire. It was, however, clear that Rahman had not spent too much time on his acceptance speech. He started off with a joke that fell flat (”Before coming, I was excited and nervous. The last time I felt like that was during my marriage”) and then quoted a lame dialogue: “Mere paas Maa hai”, from a lame Hindi movie. But then, I will never be able to delight billions of people with astounding music.

So I should probably shut up.

Staying with music and the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack, the Congress party in India has acquired the rights to use the song ‘Jai Ho’ in their campaign ahead of the general elections³.

At least their empty promises will sound better to the ear now.

It’s quite clear that the Congress wants to ride the Slumdog wave. They’ve even gone on to take credit for its tremendous Oscar success - “All this has been possible because of the conducive environment and good governance of the UPA.”⁴

Hmmm, have they seen the movie?

A US collector, James Otis, recently decided to auction some of Mahatma Gandhi’s possessions. This led to an uproar in India, and there were requests made to the Indian Government to bid in the auction and make sure that the possessions returned to India. Apparently, the Indian Government made an offer to buy the items off Otis. This was declined by Otis who, when queried about the magnitude of the offer, had this to say, “It was financially so small that I would not like to repeat it.”⁵

Good news is that Russell Peters now has new material for his stand up.

To read more ‘India, This Past Fortnight’, click here.

Footnotes:
1 http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/nzvind2009/content/story/392501.html

2 http://cricket.ndtv.com/cricket/ndtvcricket/storypage/ndtv/id/spoen20090085017/story.html

3 http://www.hindu.com/2009/03/04/stories/2009030460191000.htm

4 http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1233648

5 Economic Times

Photo Courtesy: ali_pk, lensmate, kaushik, Fox Searchlight, AlbinoFlea

12 Comments »

Aditya said:

Funny stuff Neon!

[Reply]

# 5 March 2009 at 1:29 am

mrinalini said:

hey! deewar is NOT a lame hindi movie. the dialogue however was quite out of context and silly. ‘mere pass maa hai’ - and there is mother’

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# 5 March 2009 at 1:35 am

Rohan said:

funny stuff neon…I liked the 1st, 2nd and 4th jokes, didnt get the 5th one and was offended by the 3rd one.

Deewar is one of the classics…and calling it lame is outright ignorance. Also, the dialogue itself isnt lame…whats lame is the way it is overdriven.

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Niyantha Reply:
March 7th, 2009 at 3:51 pm

To each his own, and I don’t know why my opinion of a movie should offend you.

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# 5 March 2009 at 1:50 am

Ravi said:

hilarious niyantha.

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# 5 March 2009 at 1:59 am

Amas said:

I have become your fan. ‘Must not accept that Kapil Dev, Chairman of the Executive Board of the ICL, ever played for India.’ very funny!
Amas

[Reply]

# 5 March 2009 at 2:05 am

Girish said:

Another good one!

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# 5 March 2009 at 3:26 pm

Nimisha said:

At least A.R Rahman didn’t come prepared with a Santa-Clause-wishlist sized catalog of all the people he wanted to thank for his oscar. And the fact that he wasn’t the ‘runaway-groom’ at his wedding says something about his dedication.

Otherwise, funny as always!

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Niyantha Reply:
March 7th, 2009 at 4:08 pm

And he spoke in Tamil at the end, which I so did not expect. Too cool.

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# 6 March 2009 at 7:42 pm

shakthi said:

so funny!!
The comment the UPA made on slumdog millionare.. lol! Did they really say that!!?
And thank god vijay mallya bought gandhiji’s possessions himself.. its a shame tat india offered such meagre price..while spending so much for elections! such an insult to “The Mahatma!!”

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# 7 March 2009 at 12:44 am