The Maanga

Avataram once wrote,

Every now and then someone comes along, so keen to change the world for the better, so intelligent, so beautiful, so devoid of guile that I find the immense cynicism with which I usually operate unnecessary, and a mark of someone less than talented.

I am not as well read and I certainly am not as self assured. Therefore, I look at the opposite end of spectrum. That is, Dilip. Who, unlike Power, shows how cynicism is a measure of relative intelligence.

In other words, I’d rather puke and feel smug.

YV Reddy. His jokes are so bad; he can actually write for The Maanga.

I don’t know how true this is for other cities — but Madras has an acute shortage of young adults who as students ate cream bun everyday. Braving the April sun, I walked almost an entire kilometer to find cheri gumbal at McRennet eating non cream bun type cakes.

There is a certain class about a well baked cream bun — with its not so smooth edges that gently overflow and yet are well contained within the bun. The cream having distinct railing on it is a mark of the finest from the lot.

I also notice, for some reason, inflation has a perverse impact on class equations. Things that are wonderful are forsaken to the masses who make messes.

I have now decided, this chick is hot type.

Watching the campaign unfold, I saw how the press gravitated toward a narrative template for the campaign, searching out characters as if for a novel: on one side, a self-described 9/11 hero with a colorful personal life, a former senator who had played a president in the movies, a genuine war hero with a stunning wife and an intriguing temperament, and a handsome governor with a beautiful family and a high school sweetheart as his bride. And on the other side, a senator who had been first lady, a young African-American senator with an Ivy League diploma, a Hispanic governor with a self-deprecating sense of humor and even a former senator from the South standing loyally beside his ill wife. Issues that could make a difference in the lives of Americans didn’t fit into the narrative template and, therefore, took a back seat to these superficialities.

Now you know who wrote his two Americas speech.

There was Barkha Dutt discussing India’s new disease called Affluenza. There was IPL and substandard football. A Vijaykanth padam and Karan Thapar. Along with Wolf Blitzer celebrating his 10 years of Sunday Talk.

Then, there was The Battle of El-Alamein.

I wanted to write something very clever here. Then, I realized my random tags are much like the dear old Random Variable. Not so much a variable but a function. This.

Success is achieved by defining it.

The argument of the proponents of public schools, I am assuming[1], is: the voting power is with the poor since India is largely a poor nation.

That may or may not be true — but this post does not address that assumption.

[1] — If that argument has not been put forward already, assume I am doing it. And also, I argue, that may work because there are two layers: the rich will demand services and will know how to pull levers; the poor will have the power of vote. In theory, that sounds alright. In practice, it may not work for practical reasons such as how the rich and poor live in terms of neighborhoods — but that is a different story and I assume people who put forward this idea are true bleeding heart types who want to live in a slum to prove a point.