Celebrating the Bambaiyya gift to world culture: those heavy-breathing moments when the story pauses, the plot ceases to exist, only the pursuit of pure joy via naach matters.
With the sights and sounds of the streets swamping our angrezi shows, we now live in the timepass times of a brand of livewire funnies modelled on 'the other Indian'
His is rough and ready wit, and none of it mugged up from antiquated how-tos a la Sidhuisms. They are home-grown, rustic and fulsome as milk from a cow's udders.
Making babies is fun, having them is not. Of all of life's events, becoming parents is the most conservatising. Any pretensions to radicalness are the first casualty. But...
Apologies to the gent who sent us our Gujarat opinion poll cover. As for the rest, here they are, Sardarji jokes, Laloo jokes or whatever—this one time, we plead not guilty.
We're one but we're not the same. North, South, East or West, we cling to our identities and our cardinal directions like we cling to our vices. Party pieces from Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and Bangalore.
In John Osborne's celebrated play Look Back in Anger, the cynical and morally disengaged hero, Jimmy Porter, laments, "There are no good causes left." Happily, that is not true of India 2003.
