The Knowledgeable People say greed caused the Great Financial Crisis. Greed which made them ignore common sense.
Well, as I learnt, this isn’t a phenomenon limited to Wall Street.
I got a flyer—an advertisement for a newly opened health club in Gurgaon—with my morning newspaper yesterday. Here’s a part of it which shows the benefits they offer:
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Free soft drinks? Offered by a health club? Wah!
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In a rational move which smacks overtly of common sense, MNS cadre have bought the capital city of
Says a local level leader of the MNS,”These non-Maharashtrians were destroying Mumbai’s culture and ethos. Now you know that we Maharashtrians are second to none. So we said:’ they’ve destroyed the culture and ethos of the city; big deal! We’ll destroy the city itself! That’ll show them! Ha!’”
In a bid to prove that Maharashtrians can destroy stuff better than Hindi-speakers, MNS cadre went on a rampage in Mumbai, first setting fire to buses, allegedly because the buses did not speak Marathi. They followed that up by targeting taxis and auto rickshaws which did not speak Marathi.
The violence was not confined to Mumbai though; it justifiably spread to other parts of
“Pune once challenged the mighty Mughal Empire! Today we Maharashtrians will pelt three Pune Municipal Transport buses with stones to show how great we are. Jay Maharashtra!”, said an MNS leader in Pune, trying to incite a crowd to riot.
Taking a cue from their Maharshtrian brethren, in another extremely sensible, tit-for-tat move, Biharis have taken to destroying railway property in
“How dare these Maharashtrians inconvenience Biharis”, raged a rioter, while trying to set fire to a railway station in
The protests to support Biharis in Maharashtra have thrown the whole railway apparatus in Bihar out of gear, thus greatly inconveniencing Biharis in 
My father, while visiting me in Delhi, suddenly decided that he needed to visit the Nizamuddin dargah, that too on a Friday. Not that my father is a very religious person but I guess if he had to fill in his Orkut/Facebook profile he’d put in something like “spiritual but not religious”.
Now the problem with these places is the bloody crowd. For some reason, God and the people who get you to Him are an awfully popular lot and so it was with thedargah too. The only saving grace was that since we were visiting the place at the time of the Jumma Namaz, a large number of people had at least had a bath. The same can hardly be said of, say, a bus or a railway reservation counter.
The area around the dargah itself was a typical Muslim mohallah of the type seen in Central Calcutta. Narrow dingy lanes with a profusion of small hotals selling extremely delicious food—Qormas, Qalias, Niharis, kheeri—as long as you don’t mind that from time to time, the man roasting your kawab, scratches his kawab through the folds of his lungi.
In the background is Ghalib’s tomb which, as far as I could see, had no visitors.
For those unable to read Devanagri: The two posters are wishing people for Eid. The one on the left belongs to the BJP, while the other belongs to the BSP.
Getting to the dargah meant passing through a number of narrow galis selling all manners of knick-knacks. There were wall hangings with the first Qalma, key chains with the number 786, Urdu books on Shahrukh Khan and quite a few shops selling, what they called, “Islamic VCDs and cassettes”—as if just having a dargah wasn’t enough to make Abd al-Wahhab turn in his grave.
The entrance had, what has become a Delhi staple—a metal detector. The detector was defunct, though—a clear sign of the Delhi Police’s faith in the saint. After all if the saint can’t protect his own tomb, what good is he?
Born to a father named Daniyal in 1238, Nizamuddin Auliya was obviously destined for greatness. Moving to Delhi at the age of five from his birthplace in UP, he performed wondrous miracles which elevated him from the status of a mere mortal to a celebrated saint—cursing the city of Tughlaqabad to ruin, predicting the death of emperor Ghiyas-ud-Din Tughluq and even having a gay partner in Amir Khusrau, the royal poet of the Delhi Sultanate.
In fact, the complex also houses Khursrau’s grave which wears a rather deserted look. The only two people there were a couple of bored teenage boys, dressed in spotless kurta-pajamas, discussing the upcoming India-Australia series.
Auliya’s tomb, serviced by no less that two split ACs, was , on the other hand, was bustling with people lining up to offer a chadar to the saint, shepherded by a man who kept on shouting “beware of pick-pockets”.
The saint is obviously a lot more effective against bombers.
Note: The first picture is from Wikipedia. The rest have been taken by me.
In a daring raid (here is the staid version of the story), Mumbai police busted a rave party in the wee hours of Monday. The rave was apparently not your ordinary walk-on-the-grass with the relatives of the high and mighty of Bollywood—even Shakti Kapoor's son was present there—being involved in this heinous act of debauchery
The raid was carried out by a crack team from the anti-narcotics department who were shocked by the depravity they witnessed. Says a constable who didn’t wish to be named:” I am an honest (sic) middle class cop. Plus I’m Marathi, so what I saw there shocked me. Drugs, sex and alcohol all around. Plus I saw a young man, undoubtedly under the influence of hard drugs, doing a macabre dance dressed only in his loose striped chaddis and a banyan and carrying out unspeakable acts with his nara. The horror!”
Shakti Kapoor is shocked to hear of the raid
In what must be a rare occurrence, the Mumbai police have received plaudits from citizens for ignoring all other crimes and concentrating on the drug habits of the rich and famous.
Mumbaikar, Ravi Kumar says, “Hats off to the Mumbai police. Bombay had 212 murders and 198 rapes last year. Any lesser police force would have concentrated on these so-called “serious” crimes, but I’m proud that my police force ignores these crimes and goes for what’s really important—the morals of rich little spoilt brats.”
The police though have faced some flak from Bollywood for its “heavy-handedness”.
A police officer explains that there is “no heavy- heavy-handedness here at all. The Narcotics Act empowers us to book adults taking drugs. The problem with these “adult” Indians is that they start thinking they are actual adults. Just because an "adult" can decide who will rule the country doesn’t mean he can take decisions like whether he can smoke marijuana. He’s not adult enough to take that decision. We policemen have to take that decision for them. It’s quite a burden, you know, playing papa to these people, but somebody has to take the responsibility, I guess.”
Not a bomber in sight
The correspondent did try and speak to some of the “spectators” but most of them pretended to be sleeping in an obvious move by the government to avoid the press.
We did however manage to speak to Arnab Bondhopadhya, who quite cryptic in his answers too. When asked whether anybody prevented him from coming to the ground, all he did was nod, without taking his eyes of the match, and answer, “Yesh, my bhife”
He, however, did open up a bit during the lunch break. “This is the 363rd match played by the Board President’s XI and the 43rd time that a captain is leading them who does not feature in the test team. This is also the 89th time that the captain of the Board President’s XI has hit a century and the 47th time he has done it in the second innings. For Yuvraj Singh…”
Attempts to get any information out of him failed as he stonewalled the correspondent using an extremely clever tactic, shown above, of evading my questions.
Although the match was shown on TV to maintain a show of normalcy, the Government’s machinations made sure that it garnered TRPs less than even that of the telecast of Parliament debates on Lok Sabha TV.
The BCCI President, Sharad Pawar, has assured us that the actual matches between India and Australia will be held normally. “After all”, said Mr. Pawar, quoting Virender Sehwag, “Delhi is not like Pakistan”.
As the two images of Chandi chowk(left) and Anarkali Bazaar(above) clearly show, Delhi is not like Pakistan
