The Mallu Lampoon

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 before you know it, your exorbitantly priced book,which would have sunk without a trace otherwise, is a bestseller!

Although I am no admirer of Jaswant, I must admit that it was brilliant strategy on the old geezer's part. Of course his party colleagues who helped engineer his 'expulsion' must be commended for their fine acting. However there was one crucial flaw that gave them away; they stated that they had gone through the entire book (and subsequently found that it went against 'core party idealogy'), although the book was released only on the 17th evening and Jaswant was expelled on the 19th morning.And we're talking about a 650 pages long book written in english!

Moving on, the recent protests by IIT profs have created quite a stir, at least on the news channels. Their greivances are genuine, unfortunately, and this is indeed one of the biggest problems afflicting our education system(or lack of it). If the IIT's have difficulties recruiting competent faculty wing to lack of adequate compensation, then spare a thought for all the lesser colleges out there.

Most people who do their engineering from the tier 2 and 3 colleges don't really have too many options. They can either join an IT company, go abroad for further studies(if they can afford it) or try clearing exams like GATE,CAT,GRE or even the UPSC exams, failing which they will be forced to join similar tier 2 or 3 colleges for their ME. A substancial proportion of the students end up pursuing the last option and are faced with a very bleak scenario, for save the IIT's and a few other decent instis, graduate engg programs in our country are pathetic and woefully inadequate.The best amongst these grad students(merely a handful) take up research or join core companies. The opportunistic ones join the film industry, while the lowest common denominator enters into politics. The ones stuck somewhere in between join colleges like IIPM.The rest become teachers.

Which reminds me of an adage that is especailly relevant given the present scenario, "Those who can do, those who can't teach".

PS: Kaminey seems to be the most talked about movie these days. So much so, that everytime someone yells 'Kaminey!', the first thing that comes to my mind is Shahid Kapoor!

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, if called Nehru ji/Indira ji/Sonja ji/rahul baba would definitely smell sweeter".

You should try the Nehru Gandhi tour of India. Arrive at the Indira Gandhi Intl airport, perhaps watch a lousy football match at the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium(the delhi one, not to be confused with ones at kochi,chennai,pune,goa,indore and guwahati) then proceed west to catch a glimpse of the Rajiv Gandhi sea link and perhaps spend some time at the Nehru planetarium or else proceed east toward the Rajiv Gandhi Indian Insti of Management(or maybe visit one of the 50 odd instis names after him). A trip north to Mount rajiv is definitely recommended.If you want to proceed south try watching the Nehru trophy boat race in kerala during august-september. If you miss that you can always watch the Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi boat race, which are held later in the year. Also visit the Rajiv Gandhi and Indira Gandhi wildlife sanctuaries(not to be confused with congress district headquarters).And you can leave the country via the Rajiv Gandhi Intl airport. I know I've missed out on a few hundred Nehru Gandhi places but you get the picture right?

These blithering idiots have named just about everything after some prominent member of the Nehru Gandhi family.I realize that Nehru, Indira and Rajiv were all great leaders(at least by Indian political standards), but one must draw a line somewhere. Lack of creativity coupled with a single digit IQ isn't really an excuse for such a system of nomenclature, although it may be quite close to the truth.But I guess we should just look at the bright side. At least they have limited their system of nomenclature to buildings/stadiums/roads/educational instis/awards/schemes/blah etc. If only these crazy chaps were given the task of alpha taxonomy. They would probably have ended up categorising our species as the Gandhius sapiens(who evolved from the Gandhius erectus(no pun intended)) or something!Sigh! Perhaps I should rename my blog as the "Gandhi Lampoon"?