Times Of India V The Hindu

The battle of Tamil Nadu's english reading newspaper audience has began.

India's largest circulating English daily, trying to take on the Tamil King, 'The Hindu' in its own territory launched this campaign in December 2011.

 

 The normally polished Hindu was quite direct in its rebuttal in the form of this ad that it launched in mid-Jan 2012.

 The scene seems to be getting steamier!

From A Tuesday Evening To A Monday Morning

That September Tuesday evening I was in Durgapur, at my aunt's place, preparing for my 11th Standard 1st term Maths exam the next day. Had just come back from an 'adda' session with friends and customarily checked the TV once before starting to revise the chapter on Permutations & Combinations. And no, I am not making that up. What I saw on the television that evening has perhaps been shown more than any other footage in the history of televised media. Never got around to revising anything that evening. Don't remember how the exam went. Didn't feel like it mattered much that day. Here's what the US president had to say soon after the heinous attacks.



This morning, a Monday, I was at home in Gurgaon. Had just got up from sleep and was going through my Twitter timeline. Squinting at it, more like it. That's when I saw some tweets mentioning the death of Osama Bin Laden, the orchestrator of the crime theatre of that Tuesday, almost a decade back. Reports, mostly unconfirmed, were flying thick and fast, and there was some talk of President Obama making an official announcement very soon. Switched on the television and in 30 minutes or so got to see this.




Maybe today it is a lot more symbolic than what it would have been 9 years back, but still the circle is complete. the enemy has been hounded. It's a good feeling.

S. M. Krishna's Speecho Portuguesa

A lot has been written and tweeted about our Minister for External Affairs, S. M. Krishna's reading of the Portugal Foreign Minister's speech instead of the Indian one at a recent United Nation's meeting. Most in fact mentioned he went on for 5 minutes before realising it was the wrong speech. Well, as in most cases there was some fire behind the smoke, however it wasn't as bad (5 minutes) as it was made out to be!

Here's a video of the gaffe, [source thestar.com and http://jacobjoseph.com]

Times Of Turncoat

One of my favourite sources of entertainment every day is going through the country's largest English daily - The Times of India. There are 2 ways this entertainment takes place - (a) stumbling across atrocious and frequent spelling, grammar and factual errors and (b) spotting the news articles from the midst of the paid pieces.

This morning (27-Dec-2010) has been particularly fulfilling on both fronts.

Yesterday (26-Dec-2010) TOI (Gurgaon edition) carried an article on the Tau Devi Lal Stadium being rented out for a New Years bash and how this is criminal on so many counts. With quotes such as "To use a cricket ground for a dance party is a matter of shame for the government. We suspect that money has played a role in such wrongdoing" from an INLD leader. Producing a scanned copy of the article below (please click on the photo for better viewing).

TOI article, 26-Dec-2010

This morning when I opened the paper I was amused to see another article, carrying the same picture as y'day proudly mentioning 'Tau Devi Lal to host Asia's largest New Year Party'. The tone all upbeat and positive. The article goes on mention how this will help Gurgaon's district administration's revenues and also make Gurgaon a popular destination for entertainment. It specifically mentions how "the necessary precautions have been taken to maintain the ground and specifically the pitch..." Again, producing a scanned image of the article below.

TOI article, 27-Dec-2010

Well done TOI, true to your style!

P.S: This was an example of type (b) entertainment as I mentioned early in the post. Here's a look at type (a), again from today's newspaper (27-Dec-2010). There's this article about 'German bakeries' in India. The summary paragraph at the beginning talks of, among other things, how "...a lot of people, including perhaps the terrorists who planted a bomb in the Pune cafe last week, think so...". It really is too trivial that the Pune blast at German bakery took place on 13-Feb-2010, or ~10 months back and not exactly 'last week'. Oh, the hazards of copying and then pasting old articles.

TOI article, 27-Dec-2010

Mayawati - A Statue of Interrupted Power

One of the few unblemished characters in our political saga, Ms. Mayawati, the chieftain of Uttar Pradesh, has brought out this full page ad on the leading national daily, Times of India, proudly proclaiming that she will do everything to ensure '...interrupted power supply' to her people. And of course, this is 'an significant step...'. Maybe the frequent interruptions in her access to power, thanks to Mulayam and his ilk had something to do with this promise?

Just in case she joins the bandwagon of hypocritical politicians and changes the honest and sincere promise of an interrupted power supply, I scanned the ad and uploaded on this blog for posterity.

P.S: Definition: Freudian Slip - a slip-up that (according to Sigmund Freud) results from the operation of unconscious wishes or conflicts and can reveal unconscious processes in normal healthy individuals

Affairs Of Our Externally Affable Minister

If Twitter were to look for someone to endorse their product in India, they needn't look beyond the suave  and charismatic Junior Minister of External Affairs of the Government of India - Shashi Tharoor or @shashitharoor as he is more commonly known nowadays. With 7 lakh plus followers (as of today) Tharoor is a more popular 'Twiterrer' than any other Indian, including megastar and power Twitterer Shahrukh Khan (2.68 lakhs as we write).

However, over the past one year, since he became a Minister, the media and tech friendly Tharoor has been drawn into more controversies than he would like to remember, and ironically most of them were somehow or the other linked to Twitter! Here's a low down on the Tharoor-Twitter relationship.

September 2009

This tweet by Tharoor, in response to this question by Kanchan Gupta (senior journalist with The Pioneer newspaper) started off a massive debate over what's holy and who's a cow and the sanctity of the cattle and class. It reached such a level that the Prime Minister of India had to issue a statement to calm things down!

September 2009

Just as the cattle class controversy was beginning to die down, Tharoor and his boss, S M Krishna, found themselves in a '5 Star' controversy. This was a time when the Congress government had made a big pomp of show of it's 'Austerity Drive' and during the same time it was discovered that Tharoor & Krishna were staying in 5 Star hotels in Delhi, supposedly because their government accomodation wasn't ready. This didn't go down well with the Congress and the Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee asked them to vacate the hotel rooms, which they promptly did. Tharoor insisted that he paid his hotel bills with his personal credit card. Of course this claim was made over Twitter.

October 2009

His next Tweet-roversy was on the birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation. After attending Gandhi Jayanti function he expressed his views with the following tweet (reproduced below)

"Gandhiji said ‘Work is Worship’ and we enjoy holiday on his birthday"

"In V’nam, Ho Chi Minh’s birthday is a working day and citizens are expected to put in an extra effort at work to honour him"

 However this was not taken in the desired light and gave rise to yet another controversy.

December 2009

Coming up next, after almost a 2 month gap was the Visa tweet-controversy. There were some discussions about making the Indian visa regulations more stringent and our EAM had the following to say on Twitter, which for obvious reasons were not well accepted by one and all.

"My only role is to object to them strongly. MEA (ministry of external affairs) officials are discussing them with MoHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) which imposed them"

"Dilemma of our age: tough visa restrictions in hope of btr (better) security or openness & (and) liberality to encourage tourism & goodwill? I prefer latter"

 And in response to this provocative tweet from zookybeans, Tharoor sent this as a reply.

January 2010

The new year didn't leave Tharoor's Twitter woes behind. The first controversy of 2010 involving him was about certain statements that he made about Nehru at a book release. He immediately countered the same by blaming the media of having misreported the facts. He put up the official statement on his blog, and obviously tweeted about it immediately. 

February 2010

This was without a doubt the most 'inter'esting brawl of them all. During Manmohan Singh's visit to Saudi Arabia, Tharoor accompanied the PM, and after the talks were over, made a benign statement that Saudi Arabia could be an interlocutor between India & Pakistan. The phoentic proximity between 'interlocutor' and 'intermediary' caused a lot of heartache all around. Given that most politicians in our country aren't even 'inter' pass, coming to terms with one who not only knows the word interlocutor but it's meaning as well was hard. And Tharoor cried himself hoarse trying to become an English teacher.

Definition of Interlocutor: a person who takes part in a conversation


April 2010

And the latest addition to the never ending saga is the @lalitkmodi v @shashitharoor full blown war on Twitter. Among other things Modi divulged the details of the ownership of the newly formed Kochi team in the IPL, and that includes a certain Sunanda Pushkar (video), who is apparently slated to marry Tharoor. Any guesses where this revelation was made? Yes, Twitter of course! It has led to both of the high profile Twitterers going silent on the medium for more than 24 hours, a death threat to the minister and the gagging of the cricket supremo. You can find all the details about the incident here. Also, Tharoor's official  statement on the allegations can be found here.

Here's what @lalitmodi's Twitter timeline looked like on Sunday, 11th April, when he made the 'revelations'.

Specifically when someone asked him 'Does @shashitharoor owns (sic) something?' here's what @lalitkmodi had to say

What's most interesting is that @shashitharoor in spite of having 7 lakhs+ followers, follows only 32 people, and as of now (15th April, 2010 3:20 AM) he is following @lalitkmodi)

Similarly, @lalitkmodi with 640000+ followers, follows only 24 people, and yes, as of now @shashitharoor is one of them

All this thanks to a micro blogging site! What more can we ask for? If Tharoor ever tweets to know whether we want him to continue here, I'm sure the unanimous response will be 'Yes, Minister!'.

Pictures courtesy: Indiatimes, Times Of India, Indian Express, NDTV & ESPN Star. All screenshots are taken Twitter home pages of Shashi Tharoor, Lalit Modi and others.

P.S: This illustration by @sudhamsu throws more light on the Tharoor-Modi controversy than all newspaper articles put together.

Cashing In The Terror

If there was one thing we required the least amidst the 60 odd blasts in 5 months in India, it was mindless politicizing of the issue. But not expecting our favourite sport to enter at a time when the nation is at it's most vulnerable state is like wishing cops not making some money out of a quick snort.

The veteran Congress leader Digvijay Singh should have known better than making statements like 'Blasts happen whenever BJP is in trouble'. Maybe we should A Wednesday to all these irresponsible leaders. But then again in the land of the Mahatma that doesn't sound quite right. Anybody who has the solution please feel free to leave it as a comment. It will be most appreciated.

Sorry Sir, Didn't Mean To Kill You!

This is one 'gaffe' our forever ridiculed police department could have done without. I mean what do you say when you just kill someone 'by mistake'? The bumbling avuncular (Mama in Indian) cop image now got a sinister tinge to it.

With incidents like this, implementing POTA (which maybe a necessary evil in these times) just becomes that much tougher, and we keep playing the guessing game of which city will be the next target.

'Smash' Hit!

Looks like all that hoopla over the riches and spoils of the IPL was misplaced afterall. From what we could glean from the various media reports it seemed like these young players could rest on their laurels for the next five years at least and had the markets not crashed then some sane advice and smart investing could have provided them a life with no work and enough income forever.

But either the media, as always, exagerrated or greed is not only unlimited but illogical and violent as well. Or else, how do you justify a player of the IPL winning Jaipur team beating up a truck driver and running away with the truck and fifteen thousand rupees? Yes, a mere fifteen thousand rupees!

Okay, there is one last piece of the jigsaw which can put things to perspective. The cricketer's father is a personal assistant to a state cabinet minister. And now that we have a cocktail of politics, cricket and alcohol I guess things are all fine, we don't need to get worked up.

Relationship Status: It's Complicated!

We all love the rags to riches to stories, sympathise or frown upon the riches to rags ones depending upon the circumstances and if it's a rags-riches-rags-riches yarn then it takes the cake or the bread as you put it.

But this news item perhaps beats them all! Childhood buddy, married at a whim and quickly divorced in 55 hours (smells strongly of some poker bet loss) and now offered a job of a butler!

Maybe it's because of people like Jason that Facebook has the 'It's complicated' option as a relationship status.