The Mallu Lampoon

I used to think becoming a famous and successful writer was a formidable challenge. Reading the works of literary giants does that to you. I was awed by Dickens' mastery of prose, Hemingway's simplistic elegance, Twain's humor and wit and Hesse's depth of thought. Not to forget Tolkien's creative genius and Conan Doyle's rich imagination. Closer to home, even Narayan's deceptively simple yet charming [...]

The shocking disclosure last week of our weight lifters having failed doping tests, has caused our nation a great deal of embarrassment. Indian weightlifting has been scarred by the bane of doping for quite sometime, and the present situation isn't really a surprise for those who have been following the sport in India for awhile. However, what is really shocking and surprising is the fact that in [...]

'Quick Gun Murugan' , based on the tale of a South Indian Cowboy, reaffirms the fact that we Indians are fascinated and obsessed with stereotypes. Be it the ubiquitous mallu(esp in gelf) wid the funny engleesh axe-scent or the equally ubiquitous surd(esp in canada) who is the butt of all our lame jokes, [...]

What do you do when you are well past retirement age, have nothing interesting to do and desperately need some whisky? You spend a few years writing a book on some bloke who passed away half a century ago, add some provocative statements that will get you expelled from your 'fundamentalist' party and [...]

The bard once said "What's in a name? That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet." But the sycophants of the Nehru-Gandhi family are evidently not familiar with the bard's works (assuming they are literate). According to the congress bard(or baadu) "That which we call a rose, [...]

In Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India, one lady is engaged in the remarkable task of applying Keynesian economics to revive her state's economy. That is none other than Mayawati, the most charismatic person in India after sam anderson! According to John Maynard Keynes, during a recession [...]

This is the first edition of the Lampoon Interview(LI). The LI features interviews of famous and not so famous people who, owing to their exceptional words or deeds,have been deemed be worthy of being lampooned. For the first edition of the Lampoon interview, we have with us Mugeshwaran Iyer(MI), [...]

ZERO: The average IQ of the SONY SET MAX Extra Innings team. 1:No of people who read my blog regularly.(Including me, that is!) 3:No of times Dhoni uses the words obviously/of course in a sentence. 13:Total No of people who watched the santosh trophy final. 75:Amount in lakhs spent by VIT management to be ranked 10th best engg college in India, ahead of all the NIT's 364: Duration, in days, of [...]

The Women's reservation bill has been in the news lately, and it has spurred a series of articles, debates and discussions. In principle I am against any sort of reservation, be it for women in parliament or for the backward classes/communities in educational institutions. A reservation is basically a compromise on merit, although I doubt merit has any relevance in the context of politics. Then again [...]

The raison d'etre of this blog can be explained by the above latin phrase, "Castigat Ridendo Mores", which translates to one who corrects customs by laughing at them, which is a figurative expression for a blunt critic. I believe that if one can't solve the problems of the world, the next best thing is to laugh at them! I also believe that it is futile to laugh at others if one can't laugh at oneself. [...]