Posts from — September 2006

A Congress delegation will meet Maharashtra CM today, to ask for tax exemption for Lage Raho Munnabhai.

The problem is… the movie has already been declared ‘Tax Free’ with effect from today!

I know that The Daily Show isn’t the place for serious talk, but the way Pervez Musharraf has been going on a “yes-I-said-this-no-I-didn’t” trip regularly these past few days, this was worth a chuckle for me.

Everyone and their dog knows that Musharraf appeared on the The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Tuesday night. Jon Stewart blasted him with a poker-faced question out of the blue to start off the interview…

As a gesture mirroring Pakistani hospitality, Stewart welcomed Musharraf with a cup of jasmine green tea, and offered the more American delicacy of a Twinkie. Musharraf chuckled and thanked the host, though Stewart promptly changed the subject.

“Where’s Osama bin Laden?” he asked suddenly.

“I don’t know,” replied Musharraf. “You know where he is? You lead on, we’ll follow you.”
[Source: The Norman Transcript. Emphasis mine.]

And this is what Musharraf had to say in an interview. And it was on the same day as the appearance on The Daily Show!

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has said he believes fugitive Osama bin Laden to be hiding in Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan, and has rebuffed French intelligence reports that Laden died of typhoid in Pakistan.

‘It is not a hunch,’ Musharraf told The Times, London’s correspondent in New York
[Source: Rediff.com. Emphasis mine.]

As the saying goes, all in a day’s work for the back-stabbing General!!

Well ok… there’s no such saying. But there could be! ;)

After looking jaded and out-of-sorts in their DLF Cup campaign, Team India and it’s coach are being panned for too much experimentation and too few results and almost no imagination.

Fair enough, I say! Nothing succeeds like success or fails like failure. If Chappell’s way had continued to produce results as it did for the first half of his tenure so far (India was winning nearly 76% of its ODI matches during that period), everyone would have been gushing about the very same methods that are being trashed in the media right now. So I won’t say too much about Chappell’s methods. But I will say this… that Chappell ought to be more receptive of criticism and suggestions than he is. Closed minds rust away to nothingness, however great the ideas inside them!

[Read more →]

Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf’s memoirs seem to be little more than an election campaign filled with fabrications, insinuations and self-serving tripe. This view is based on the opinions expressed by ‘experts’ on both sides of the border.

Also in the book is Musharraf’s apparent disillusionment with Indian PM Dr. Manmohan Singh’s leadership and imagination. And he has some advice for the good doctor…

He has this advice for Singh: “I feel if a leader is to break away from hackneyed ideas and frozen positions, he has to be bold. He has to dominate the establishment, rather than letting it dictate to him”.
[source: IBNLive]

Isn’t that precious!? Perhaps someone should remind Mush that we have something called democracy in India. And it functions slightly differently from the dictatorship he is used to, in Pakistan.

And in any case, Musharraf’s four-point “out-of-the-box” solution is anything but “out-of-the-box” or imaginative! It’s just a rehashed proposal that Pakistan has been trying to push for ages, and one that has been consistently found unacceptable by India since it involves partitioning J&K along religious or sectarian lines.

Inside a Chinese paper lamp. However, I like to think of the spiral as the thought process of our brain. Starting from the outermost spiral, the thoughts slowly crystallize as we travel inwards. When we reach the innermost spiral, the bulb lights and we have our idea!

Just an old photo I felt like posting today! :)