Manish Chauhan writes about Kaifi Azmi. He lists some of Kaifi’s lyrics, but doesn’t mention the one that is my favourite – O bekarar dil (lyrics in Hindi) from Kohra.
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Plan to start digging up roads in June.

What happens is that you folks plan to start digging up the roads right after the monsoons. Naturally the planning gets delayed and you eventually start the actual digging around December. By then you realise that the roads will probably stay dug up when the monsoon starts. So you probably put in a request for more resources to be put into the task so that it can be expedited and finished by June. Naturally, those plans too take time to get approved and by the time you are able to start the expediting, it is May. So when the rains start, all the roads are dug up and we all regret not investing in amphibious vehicles. So if you plan to start in June, you will actually start in September and it will all work out fine.

Give top billing to the dialogue writer. Flash his name prominently. Display his photograph if required.

Because it struck me that they are tortured souls who believe that they don’t get the attention they deserve. So they express their frustration by coming up with increasingly florid dialogues which end up doubling the length of the movie.

Go here to see my photo online for the first time ever. It bears a fair likeness to me, so you can give it to the hired assassin when you decide to take out a supari on me. S Anand has posted pictures from the Bombay Bloggers’ Meet.

This is part of a series of posts on how I write. I am not actually starting here. I just thought I’d acknowledge a book before the start.

The book in question is Language in Thought and Action and you should read it.
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I appreciate Google’s efforts to democratise the web, but I think that finding this headline as the top news on Google News is clear evidence that it has gone too far:

Schoolgirls captivated by unidentified man in Germany

Also note the URL. It turns out that DCEAlumni.com belongs to the alumni association of Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon.

I already made it yesterday, but I need to reiterate* it.

I don’t like Wodehouse. I have read his books, but I don’t find them funny. I realised that there was something abnormal about me when I realised that everyone else around me used to read them and find themselves in splits, while I turned page after page trying to find a joke. I think I skip all the funny parts because I don’t expect to find humour in longwinded sentences. I like my jokes to be pithy.

As for what kind of humour I like, try The Importance of being Ernest by Oscar Wilde. Also try Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister

*Strictly speaking, shouldn’t it be iterate the first time and reiterate if I repeat it again?

from all the screaming that took place at the Bloggers’ meet today. We weren’t fighting or anything (though we did end up discussing about libertarianism. I wonder how the subject came up 😉 ). It’s just that the Cafe Coffee Day was too noisy and we had to scream at the top of our voices to be heard. I hope everyone had a good time. As for me, I had a Kenyan Safari. I also had an oddly unsatisfying feeling that comes from talking too much and not letting others talk. Yazad falsely claimed that Kenya was at the other end of Africa from Ethiopia. See for yourself and judge how good a liar he is.

Amit is right. This analysis is really good. But what’s with this disturbing paragraph?

This cuts both ways. The Congress won the Andhra Pradesh election of 2004 with informal Naxalite help. There are murmurs it wants to extend this experiment to the 76 Naxal-active districts across India, and call an early Lok Sabha election.

If true, this is not only shocking, it is treasonous.

Please remember to come over for the Bombay Bloggers’ Meet on Sunday. The highlight of the meet will be a duel between Amit Varma and me on the issue of Musharraf. As I have challenged him, he gets to choose the weapons. We will be shooting at each other from 23 yards. We are both looking for seconds to carry us back in case of any casualties.

The market will soon be flooded with cheap imitations of IIT graduates

This is something I am really curious about. Do our leaders know it when they are being hypocritical? I mean, take Somnath Chatterjee. He has been told that he won’t be allowed through diplomatic channels into Australia and he throws a fit. He can’t say “I am too important to be subject to frisking”, so he throws the “It’s not about me – it is the country’s prestige at stake” fit.

Do these guys know that they are lying? Or are they deceiving themselves too?