Men's Lib
I pity the men of my generation after reading this. May there be more hilarious columns like these!

Specials

Come the hot season, and every women's magazine in India is flooded with swimsuit and summer specials- Wear the Right Swimsuit for your Body Type, The Best Designer Swimsuits this Summer, How to Get the Sun-Kissed Look... The list goes on.

And every such special is picked up and read with varying degrees of interest. Interest or no interest, what I fail to understand is why such magazines year after year, waste time, energy and resources on such useless features. True, less than half the features in all kinds of magazines today are of any importance to anyone, but this example just came to my mind.

It's a well-known fact that in India, women rarely wear swimsuits. The ones that do wear these revealing water-proof suits are either the professional swimmers, and just a handful are casual swimmers. Indian women don't visit beaches either, especially in swimsuits- it could be to avoid (ugly) tans, or because of the rowdy crowds, or because their hubbys don't let them.

And so, what's the practical value of having such features? None whatsoever.

And all other magazines (and newspapers and TV Channels) seem to be heading down this road of supplying more and more useless information to readers. An actor of bygone days with famous daughters had a bypass surgery- this made it to one of the news channels. What's more, the hospital was shown, and so was the great surgeon who performed this amazing operation. Every PYT in town is now wearing corsets, that made headlines too. And there's more such stuff (that would be the most appropriate word for it) which earlier wouldn't even come close to news, but now is being sold (literally) as hard-core news.

We are now dumbing down.

What they Should Promote...

Ektaaa Kkapoorr- Glycerine

Fardeen Khan- Charas

Salman Khan- Steroids

Dubya- Stupidity pills (if there are such pills!)

Britney Spears- Liposuctions

Aishwarya Rai- Coloured contact lens

Sanjay Leela Bhansali- Chewing gum

Sourav Ganguly- Nail-clipper

Couldn't think of any more!

He's Back!

Just when I thought he'd disappeared, Salam Pax of Where is Raed? came back! It's still not clear whether he's real or not, but he's got a lot of publicity- BBC, Alertnet, The Scotsman, Wired... and of course, JALS! (links via Anita)

What is the Matrix?

The Matrix is one of my favourite movies. Even though we may not be trapped in a real matrix like the movie says, I think life is pretty much a matrix- Nothing is what it seems to be.

I thought I was one of the few Matrix fans till I came across Matrix Essays, a fantastic weblog about The Matrix and its sequel. There are extracts and hyperlinks to write-ups about The Matrix from all over the web-right from the Oracle's gestures to Morpheus's T'ai Ch'i moves. What more could a hard-core fan of The Matrix ask for?