ChinmayC Blog

The newsroom of a television channel was very quiet midway to the next bulletin. The reporters and all of the staff were busy writing out or typesetting the final content. The editor on duty was having his desk computer corrected by the office engineer who was also intent on his work. All of a sudden the young engineer’s mobile phone burst out ringing. The ring tone was very short and abrupt—like a whiff of passing air released unawares. You can say the sharp string music was like ‘Tttwwee…eee…eee…eee...eee…eet!’ Though seemingly focused on work the young reporters burst out laughing. The desk editor who was sitting next to the engineer tried to act stern trying to prevent an embarrassment for the hard-working fellow, but he failed to mask his guffaw. Taking the cue more joined in the fun. Only the engineer maintained a grave countenance, silenced his phone immediately and went on working never looking around even once. And why not! He was the proud owner and probably it was his most ...

So intense was the media rage about Sachin Tendulkar possibly becoming a politician that other aspects of the same story got sidelined. The Government of India on April 26, 2012 nominated two more personalities apart from Tendulkar to Rajya Sabha (RS)—the upper house of the Indian Parliament. Rekha, the superstar heroine of Hindi Cinema of yesteryear, and Anu Aga, a social worker-writer-businesswoman, got nominated too. Rekha had been the unforgettable actress of the seventies-eighties with loads of glamor and she made waves portraying all kinds of lead roles ranging from sweet next-door girl to roles of tremendous depth and versatility. Tall and attractive, an expert dancer, enriched with a resonant voice and in-born acting skills, Rekha captivated the moviegoers of all age groups in those good old days. From the beginning of the nineties Rekha’s image of a heroine witnessed a declining trend thanks to her refusal to do character roles. Though she started doing select character roles...

The Guns of Bofors had thundered again yesterday with the former Swedish police chief, the whistle-blower in this huge scandal that hit India mid-eighties, disclosing sensational information that there was a huge Indian cover-up to protect the mysterious Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi . While the disclosure gave a clean chit to a relieved Amitabh Bachchan after long 25 years the story raged on media channels since yesterday and it created a storm in the Indian Parliament today as opposition parties got another ruse to attack the beleaguered ruling coalition. But by afternoon today everything about Bofors scam seemed to be forgotten as the news about cricket’s living legend Sachin Tendulkar came up. It was a surprise for even the hardcore and wildly speculative news channels as the Government of India suddenly announced the nomination of Sachin Tendulkar for   a seat in Rajya Sabha , the upper house of the Indian Parliament. Coincidentally, only this morning Sachin along...

Article first published as Cricket T20 IPL-5: When Gayle Broke A Nose! on Technorati. Chris Gayle, the explosive West Indies batsman who surprisingly has not played for his national team since the 2011 World Cup, did something out of the way while sending the balls of his opponent teams out of the grounds during the Indian Premiere League-Season Five (IPL-5) T20 cricket extravaganza that started on April 4, 2012. He broke the nose of a little girl!...                                                                                  Read More...  

We have maintained throughout here that the IPL (Indian Premiere League T20) is more of a cricket marketplace than cricket. With glamour and sleaze embellishing it at every step the IPL also has other unique attributes like cheerleaders, strategic timeouts that basically mean more commercial breaks than the customary breaks every over and the weirdest loyalties of ‘home’ team and ‘home’ grounds. For Chennai Super Kings the ‘home’ is Chennai in South India while the team is led by Indian skipper Dhoni who belongs to north India; for Royal Challengers ‘home’ is Bangalore but is led by Daniel Vettori (New Zealand); Sourav Ganguly is inseparable from Kolkata, but he leads Pune Warriors now, while Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) is led by Delhi’s Gautam Gambhir the ‘home’ is still Kolkata. Very tough going indeed for the ‘supporters’! Always turned off by the business and entertainment concept of IPL the best course I found for myself was to occasionally catch up with the action how the old wa...

Chaos, confusion, anger, frustration and massive overcrowding all around the railway stations and railway tracks of Mumbai since the last three days leading to accidents, injuries and deaths. Over 20 million people crammed into an area of just around 600 sq kilometers exist and live with constant nightmares in this fourth most populous city of the world. The city of Greater Mumbai is bursting at the seams, and, no possible solutions in sight as ever.  Local trains or simply called locals are the lifelines of Mumbai with nearly 8 million commuters traveling every day. People of the far-flung suburbs have no option but to take a local to work or for any purpose and the struggle for earning a livelihood combined with long traveling time required keep them in a tearing hurry, always. Even on a normal day accidents and deaths are common due to overcrowding or unauthorized crossing of railway tracks. So, it is a living nightmare when something abnormal happens to the lifelines. Just aft...

IPL-5 (Indian Premiere League—Season five) started on April 4, 2012 while Bollywood movie Houseful-2 was released all over on 6 th of the same month. Both have been attracting sizable crowds since. This could be due to striking similarities between the two.  High-Decibel Noise! It would not be entirely true to say that Indians love noise, but they are so much used to it that they do not really mind it. It is common knowledge how many times our courts have to pass orders to control noise in public celebrations. Someone from Mumbai once told me that when he went to a Goa resort he was very disturbed by the ‘quiet’. So, we tend to rejoice at the license to noise awarded by Houseful-2 and IPL-5. The movie Houseful-2 opens with its characters seemingly in a shouting spree. One loud quarrel leads to louder and loudest ones. It was such a bliss, maybe the director himself was caught unawares, when one character of the movie showed a tendency to get heart attacks with increasing volumes o...

Mamata Bannerji threw the Left government in West Bengal—an eastern state of India—out of power in 2011 after its marathon rule of 34 years. She got an overwhelming majority for her party Trinamool Congress (TMC). Trinamool means grass-root and Mamata Bannerji—the Chief Minister of West Bengal—has been firing all guns to uproot what she calls Leftist ‘conspiracies’. First, the new Chief Minister got unnerved by an unceasing stream of baby deaths in many hospitals across the state. Instead of going into the root of the problem she conveniently decided to identify the Left as the root-cause. Not only that, she dismissed cases of dastardly crimes against women in her capital Kolkata as made-up ones thanks again to some leftist roots of the victims. Second, Mamata wanted to initiate an era of change in the state by dictating to public libraries to stop subscribing to newspapers linked to political parties other than hers. Disturbed by the specter of deep-rooted communism in the state sh...

Rongali or Bohag Bihu marks the beginning of the Assamese New Year from the first month of the Assamese calendar called Bohag normally falling on April 14 and 15—the first day belonging to the cattle and the second being the New Year Day for the Assamese people. Rarely, but this year the dates are 13 and 14 April, 2012. Since this Bihu also welcomes the advent of the Spring season it is called Rongali which means fun and frolic. Therefore this Bihu is also known as the Spring Festival of Assam. As nature takes on a lush green look people too go for new cloths and celebrate in unison with nature. This is the biggest of the three Bihus and one of the biggest festivals of Assam. Bohag Bihu is mainly observed for three days, but celebrations go on for one full week. First day is called ‘Goru Bihu’ meaning a day dedicated for the cattle. Villagers acknowledge the great service of their prized cows and buffaloes by taking them to ponds or rivers for ceremonial bath. They are showered...

He was on night duty on Kutarpada-Chahada road stretch of western Maharashtra that Tuesday night—the 10 th of April, 2012. He spent most of the night inside a bus and was assigned to drive a bus for the Kutarpada-Palghar route on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway early next morning. There was nothing special about the trip for a senior bus driver and he was ready like on any other day. Naushad Mohammed Hanif Shaikh  had been working in the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) since the last 18 years as a driver. He had no record of even a single accident in those years of service and there was not a single passenger-complaint against him. Around sixty passengers boarded his bus for Palghar on that morning and the journey began on a bright note. It was smooth going and Naushad was handling the dangerous twists and turns in the hilly road track quite easily with the skill of an experienced bus driver. The destination was just over five kilometers away when the pain hit h...

What a country we have! A country that has been worshiping the Shakti cult in the forms of Goddesses torture, brutalize and go on killing the human forms of the same cult. A country where no female is safe on the streets, on the trains, on the buses and even within the four walls of  their homes. Time to replace ‘India’ for ‘SHAME’! A country called SHAME and where people seem to be SHAMEless forever! What a society we have! A society controlled by hordes of cowardly males (like a malignant tumor) who lust for females in every field of activity and never loses an opportunity to exploit them in every field of activity, but also want lots and lots of money to marry them! They do the malignant favor of marrying a girl for a huge bargain, start torturing her for more money, burn her or kill her if insistent demands are not met and then, if a girl child happens to get born to them they brutalize, maim and even kill the babies. Why don’t the males do one more big favor—get their rate ca...

Okay, irrespective of whether you are a salesman or anybody you must be aware of the fact that God and Doctors have something very important in common. You just cannot afford to displease either. If you are foolhardy enough to make God unhappy you are likely to land up with a doctor! And, if you happen to offend a doctor you are likely to end up with God! ***** A man dreams of having… 7 Figure Salary! 6 Figure Savings Deposit! 5 Bedroom Ownership Flat! 4 Wheeler Vehicle! 3 Weeks’ Holidays! 2 Lovely Children! 1 Dumb Wife!                                                                              ...

You have to drive around in this city of Mumbai , particularly after nine in the evening, to witness rampant breaking of traffic signals. And the unabashed leader in this would be the Brihan Mumbai (Greater Mumbai) Electric Supply and Transport ( BEST ) Undertaking or Corporation—the state-run city bus monopoly service since 1947. If you are a strictly law-abiding citizen driving your car you will wait patiently till the red signal turns into green, But you are likely to be stunned by BEST buses zooming past you in gay disregard of rules. Once that happens there will be instant followers and if you still insist on observing rules you will be rudely honked out the way making you break signals howsoever loath it is to you! Not only that, the bus drivers often tend to forget the actual size of their vehicle in trying to squeeze through giving you the shivers. To make matter worse for you, they also give you the left indicator light if they want to turn right! As is their habit, if they co...

Coup in the largest democracy of the world? India going the Pakistan way? 'Impossible', 'Operationally not viable', 'Absolutely stupid', 'Alarmist', 'Absolutely baseless'— cried dignitaries at the topmost level, military experts and journalists belonging to various groups and channels all over the country.  We said a few days back bizarre happenings in a country ruled by a weak coalition are bound to continue...it has continued.  The morning cup of tea yesterday was definitely not at all a pleasant experience for the high and low of the country as they looked disbelievingly at a national daily newspaper. The story covered the full front page of the newspaper. The story was supposed to be a scoop that supposedly spooked the Raisina Hill for a monstrously possible coup. The story, kept under wraps for more than two months for the sheer implausibility of it, reported happenings on the night of January 16-17, 2012 concerning troop movements towards...

If you have already given up the smoking and drinking habits you have hardly done enough. You find yourself in a greater and debilitating dilemma about what to eat or drink or what not to from the fast diminishing options. If you thought only plain simple fats had been making you fatter all the years, now you had to worry about trans fat too. If you have loved the fast foods now is the time to go slow. Fast foods are also called junk food. You must be aware what junk food is. Well, it means foods without having enough nutritional value, but scoring high on fats, salt, sugar and calories. You must never fall prey to the mouth-watering smell and taste these foods have. The Centre for Science and Environment ( CSE) , a public interest organization of India, had only the other day come out with its devastating report on junk or fast foods. All of such foods or soft drinks marketed in India by the multinational companies contain much more trans fat, the worst kind of fat, than is advisable...

Saif Ali Khan’s most ambitious movie ‘Agent Vinod’—the title borrowed from the spy flick made in 1977--got released all over on March 23, 2012. The movie in its second week has not yet been declared a hit and its business is not overwhelming. It has earned quite a few bad reviews and caustic comments from Indian movie goers. The mood for the film seems to be biased, per-conceived and downright unworthy. In fact I too was misled by a prominent review and was happy not to have already booked for it. But a few others made me confused and I finally decided to watch the movie to judge for myself. I took the risk on April 1 st itself, but was pleasantly surprised at not being made an April fool in the slightest.My wife also confirmed the same sentiment.  Agent Vinod is a hardcore spy flick which is also a rare genre in India. Though the title is borrowed from the Agent Vinod movie made in 1977 this not a remake and there is no resemblance in the storyline or its dress and style codes. ...