Guest post for Coffee Bean Musings

Excerpts from the Guest Post on Coffee Bean Musings

Newman's piano was playing in the lift. Every note was followed by an anxious silence. He stared down through the misty glass wall - at the cars parked below, trying not to think. Even as the lift opened to the fifth floor & he walked past the corridor, the music refused to leave his head. He rang the door bell, twice - knowing very well that there's no one home. Yet, in an act of denial, he rang again before fetching for the keys in his jacket. READ FULL POST

Thanks CB for selling me :)

The Banana Republic

 An excerpt. An important one

"..... for example, in India, there’s a mining company that owns steel plants, it does iron ore mining, it makes millions from it, called the Jindals. And there’s a resistance to their projects all over the place; so when you’re mining iron ore, you just pay a small royalty to the government, and you make all those millions. With all those millions, all these mining companies, they can buy judges, they can buy journalists, they can buy TV stations, they can buy everything. The CEO is a member of the parliament, he’s won the right to fly the national flag on his house with the Chairman of the Flag Foundation. They have a law school — like this beautiful campus in the heart of some kind of squalor outside Delhi — where the faculty comes from all over the world because they are paid so well, and they teach environment law, all kinds of other kindnesses. And, they recently even ran a protest workshop. They had all the activists and poets and singers coming and talking about protest and music. So these guys own everything. They own universities, they own protests, they fund activists, they have the mines, they are in parliament, they have the flag; they have everything. The Tata’s [Indian multinational conglomerate] have mines, they have foundations, they fund filmmakers, they make salt, they make trucks, they make internet cables. You can’t get away from them, and they’re not accountable. So, other than being capists and liddites, we demand that no corporation can have this sort of cross ownership. If you have a mine, stick with the mine, you can’t own a television company and the flag and be in parliament and run the universities, you can’t, you know? So, we need regulations like this, otherwise you end up like Italy where Berlusconi owns 99% of the TV outlets."

- Arundhati Roy at an event hosted at City University of New York’s Graduate Center
SOURCE: DELHI WALLA 

Singhtales Chapter - 11 - Bail out, Bengali Threat & Anthony's word

“Why is Mallya calling me?” Singh was obviously annoyed at the untimely beep on his Blackberry. Much to his chagrin was the fact that BB was disallowed at core committee meetings till the time RIM guys allowed the government to decode their fire-wall

“Oh it must be for the bail out. He was trying it with me too” Kamal was quick to assume.

“Tell him it’s not possible. It’s his punishment for not inviting Ajay Macaroni for the F1 race”

“The asshole also wants us to talk to the oil companies. How would I tell him that the oil firms are by themselves asking for a bail out!” Kamal was in mood to forgive.

“Please don’t do any such thing now. Mom-ta has already issued a post dated threat. Let’s not take chances.”

“But it’s unfair how you lobby against the southie business men. Would you have done the same to Armanis or Irlas?” PC was always vocal about the way step child treatment often meted out to men from south.

“Arre chod yaar. Chal Mithaai lele” (Oh leave all this, have some sweet) Ravi of Vayalar tried to bring in some cheer.

“What’s this for Ravi baby?” SG enquired unassumingly.

“Arre, Anthony opened his mouth on something of national importance after a full one year. He gave a tit-for-tat to Omar Abdullah the other day. It’s another thing that he was barely audible in all that lunch hour noise in the canteen”

SG couldn’t believe it. “Really, and where is our poster boy?”

I don’t know. I send him a meeting invite & his out of office reply read;

“Leave me to myself please. Let me celebrate this special day with his close family & local priests

Luv

Anthony”

Chapter 10 - Commies, AFSPA & the rich indian dogs

“Sir...” a visibly disturbed PC came barging into Man-Singh’s chamber. Obviously, something was not right.

“...this Mani Iyer is with us or with them?” he stopped to wipe the oil dripping through his side-locks.

“Them who?”  Mansigh asked, removing a dusty blue file from his shelf.

“Commies. He talks like a commie socialist. He has gone ahead and announced that our PR department is as outdated as its premier. That everything that’s going wrong starting from Hisar to 2G is all due to a terrible PR team. He has also called the F1 race a vulgar event. Mallya blasted me on the phone when I called for a copy of KF calendar”.

“But isn’t he right? I think F1 thingie stretched it too far. 600,000 litres of subisdized fuel burnt in 3 hours PC!”

“Sir! Don’t say that.”

“Alright leave all that. Tell me this AFSPA thingie, I was going through old files. What exactly is this?”

“oho... you cant remember anything other than GDP percentages right? AFSPA is  this little trick that we came up with when we couldn’t handle the public in a few states. You know, one of those pick-up & drop service for the junta. We pick them up and drop them dead. No questions asked.”

“So what’s the deal now? Why is Anthony mum on this?”

“When was the last time Anthony opened his mouth on anything of national interest? Except when he had to declare his assets? Sir that guy is useless. And he is scared of the Pathans. Too tall for him”

“I don’t understand”, Mansingh frowned

“Oye you don’t have to Paaji. Leave it to me. They will walk over your dead body, but will not have it retracted from anywhere.”

“My dead body?”

“Never mind. Did you talk to Mukesh Armani? He was very upset yesterday.”

“Why?” ManSingh had not logged into Twitter or Facebook for a long time. He hasn’t seen updates from his peers for a long time.

“Uff... The new richest dogs list does not have his pet’s name in it. And what’s more he himself has lost a few billion dollars this year”

“Yea? Really. Man, that’s right. I have notifications pending on Facebook”.

Search for #richdogsupset on Twitter. You will see a whale of tweets about our mates.

Chapter 9 - RTI Expanding Horizon

"SG, How are you feeling now?", Mansingh enquired, the despair on his face bright as his blue turban.

"I am okay. Why do yöu ask?" S.G was upset & her retort echoed anger. She has been having a tough time covering up for the old man ever since she took her flight for a holiday in the United States a few months ago. He has fumbled on various counts and put her in a spot in more than one occassions in the recent past. That's when she set up a 3 member team, Anthony a part of that, to see if they could advise this guy out of his nonsensical reactions. Anthony, as usual forgot his brief and was found roaming among the Siachen belts 3 days later. Dug Vijay, the loyal canis, barked Junior Junior throughout, though no one cared.

"You replace me with Junior SG. Maybe I am incompetent" an apologetic Singh.

S.G was as all set to straight talk, "Your incompetency is incontestable Man Singh. No questions there. But so is Junior's incompetency. And that, my friend, is what is worrying me. I need a leader who can lead"

Pranab rushes in yelling "Man Singh! You opened your mouth on RTI yesterday?"

"What do you mean?"
Man Singh always hated Pranab. Not for anything else but his accent. But then who is complaining!

"Arre, you announced to the whole world that it's time to curtail RTI act in a conference that was apparently titled Expandig Horizon?. What's wrong with you zany old man?"

Man Sigh shed his excusatory self and riposted "Alright, before you start hopping Bengali, let's iron out a few things here. One  - I am not an old man. Two - It was your friend Ratan who was after my life to put a stop the amount of requests coming in from the Junta! He called me and complained that his agents were feeling "locked up". Therefore if you have an issue with what I spoke of yesterday, go ask your friend. I am fed up being pushed around by this fucked up bully bunch.Mongrels! " ManSingh dropped his ass on the wide wooden chair next to SG.

S.G wasincuplative "Mansigh mind your tongue! This is not a WTO conference room. Junior is sleeping"

ManSingh "Meow"

"Pranab, have you done enough?" SG asked the trouble-maker-turned-shooter.

"Ha yes..kind of.. I convinced both Timeless Now &MDTV to cover more of Ind-England cricket. Fortunately, we won yesterday. But saale, not next time eh!", his eyes fixed on ManSingh.

Singhtales - Chapter 8 - The Free Speech

Man Singh was accompanied by two men in tuxedos as he climbed the stairs to the qila. They were holding an umbrella for him. Ever since the IB informed them about right-wing extremists plotting an acid rain attack on the premier, Man Singh's security agency has been working overtime. They had even announced a cash-reward program for anyone who could stop rains from falling. A farmer association has blamed the current drought in Northern parts of the country on this experiment. Sibal re-tweeted the allegations with an ROTFL!

"Papa... Papa... Mujhe bhi dekhna hai" A child in the crowd was tucking at his dad's trousers. The man nudged his wife to attend the child. The woman obliged. Every year this day, thousands of people assemble at the qila to listen to the premier's speech. "Mummy, woh uncle chaatha apne se kyu nahi pakadta?" (Mummy, why can't that uncle hold the umbrella for himself?). The mother made a futile attempt to explain the country's feudal culture and the prevailing protocols. The child was fast asleep by the time she ended.

Man Singh entered the bullet-proof cubicle & prodded at the mike to test the sound. He cleared his throat to start.

"Hey guys & girls... what's up? All wet and all eh?"

The crowd gave out a roar in unison.

"Alright, so like always, we are all here once again to mull over the idea of independence. But this time gentlemen, let me remind you all of a profound thought that struck me last night while having butter chicken. Freedom, as we all must know, is a very notional thing. Let me explain. Nobody is free yet, in this country. Not you. Not me. We are all fighting for it. In the late eighties when we got rid of the license raj, I had assumed that independence had arrived. 20 years hence, I am still struggling to get rid of the filthy farmers who are annoyingly adamant when it comes to selling their land. All my life, I have worked towards making this country a better place for me my friends & their family. I have always dreamed of a land where every 4 miles we have a shopping mall & every shopping mall has many MacDonalds & TESCO's in it. I have dreamt of a country where nuclear plants would replace petrol pumps & everything that can be mined will be mined. I wanted to lay highways deep into the forests & get all those animals dumped into cages made of Ratan's steel. I wanted to ensure that all the water was channeled back to the city's water tanks. I wanted to set up multi-speciality hospitals so that none of those filths begging on our streets & living in those shanties ever get  treated - that they all die before their age & thereby free us of the torture. I have dreamt of a country where you, me & our-kinda people are only present, shopping & drinking all through the day & night. So to cut the big-story short, I want all of you to go back to your offices and pay no heed to the civil society dogs & lawyer bats. They are only here to pull down everything that we have dreamed about so far. None of them understands business. Not one. They are all here to drag us back into perpetual poverty & what freedom are we talking about when we can't get rid of these moralist bedbugs? Let's eliminate them with my friend's pesticide solution. Let's tell the world that we are ready to take them head on. Raise your fists  & shout -  United we stand & United we sell. Jai Banana Republic!"

The crowd roared in unison once again.

* All conversations above are imaginary. If that helps.