You have to love Peter Griffin when he finds Jesus at a record store and innocuously believes that its his second coming; or when he visits Ground Zero and postulates that the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by Saddam Hussein or someone from Iraq. Stewie, the one-year-old baby with an ambiguous sexual orientation is the headliner of the show with Brian coming a close second. Again you just can’t ignore their trip to a parallel universe where Christianity is absent and the world is 1000 years more advanced or when they make references to Walt Disney’s anti-semitism. And the list just doesn’t end over here, from Jews to Hitler, from Kim Kardarshian to George Bush, from religion to Star Trek, from the homosexuals to the handicapped, they haven’t spared anyone.

It wouldn’t be naive to reason that there is some truth behind the lampooning. Since when did the truth become a matter of merriment and joy, something you could go over and have a good laugh when you’re back from a tough day at the office.

So why can’t this ‘comical truth’ have its manifestation amongst the Indian palette. Its not that we don’t have a sense of humour, evidence of it being the myriad of ‘laughter shows’ on TV and their ever high ratings. So it probably has to do with the fact that the makers of the ‘Indian Family Guy’ might get killed by a mercenary ‘allegedly’ hired by a politician’s babu. Or it might become another debate agenda to hit the Indian Parliament with the neutrals supporting it, and the right and left wing opposing it, actuating another trust vote.

Censorship reflects the lack of confidence of society in itself; yes quite a few famous people have said this and it is true in the Indian context. The hyperglobalizers school of thought has lost out to the sceptics in this aspect, with the Indian state exercising absolute sovereignty over reviewing television content under the facade of penalising seditious activity. Family Guy stands for the ability to accept a pun, a joke or even a mistake, and move on. The state has been taking itself too seriously, its about time it had a good laugh at itself; and came back reinvigorated. Something tells me the Indian State could do with a family guy right now.

Rohan Seth
rohans@dubeat.com

We were the winners of last year’s SPREE Bits Goa football tournament and were quite confident of making it all the way this time around as well. With one team progressing to the knockouts from each of the 8 groups of 3 teams; we were put into a very difficult group, a virtual ‘group of death’. Could have been because of some stroke of bad fortune or as a planned move; but we had to face off against last year’s semi-finalists Ness Wadia College of Commerce and Goa heavyweights Chowgule College.

We won our first group stage match against Chowgule College 3-2 in a well contested game with the winner being scored in injury time. Our other group stage match was against a Pune based college called Ness Wadia and they only required a draw against us to progress to the knockout stage on superior goal difference. It was a must-win game for us; they had a fierce reputation on the field and thus sensing the difficulty our team was quite pumped up and looking forward to the challenge.

This was the day the incident took place. It was a hot afternoon when the match started, both the teams were quite closely matched. Just when we thought the deadlock wouldn’t break, our team’s top striker Sanil Makhija scored a beautiful opening goal through a bottom right corner strike. Ness Wadia was shocked, now we all know that football is a contact sport and it might get physical sometimes, but the Ness Wadia players went stark raving mad! They were fouling on every common ball, abusing and taunting us and most of it was centered around we being from Delhi. Its something I couldn’t understand. We retaliated, having toughened up veterans like Kushagra and Rohan on our team, who I might add returned the favour.

Five minutes before the final whistle, two of Ness Wadia players were sent off for off-the-ball impediment. A benign push and shove triggered into an ugly brawl and even after repeated attempts to pacify the Ness Wadia players, they went on the offensive. A bunch of people had surrounded my teammate and were stamping on him with their studs. Seeing this I rushed to the scene to stop them. We were outnumbered since they clearly had more people coming in from somewhere. After I helped my teammate, I was attacked by 2 of the Ness Wadia players. Our team consisted of 16 players and there were around 40 of them! I fended off a few attacks and had to fight back. Unfortunately I was hit either with an object of some sort or some brick. The next thing I noticed was blood running down my whole face. Seconds later, I saw one of my team mates being chased down by five of the Wadia team players with wickets, bricks and hockey sticks in their hand.

By the end of it we had to run away from there as we were outnumbered, the police was called and the security was tightened at our hostel. The Ness Wadia team was not scared of the police. I’d even jump to the conclusion that the players had some allegiance to some Sena because they were clearly disgruntled with losing to a Delhi team which was indicative in their jeers. I was sent to the medical room from where they sent me to SMRC hospital, where, to my utmost astonishment and dismay I discovered I had a compound fracture on my nose and to top it off it was dislocated. I had to have a plastic surgery performed on my nose the next day and I was admitted in the hospital for 2 nights. Thankfully I received treatment by a very good doctor and my nose is straight now (well almost straight). The after affects of the surgery were very painful.

Bits Goa committee coolly refused to help in the situation financially and refused to take any responsibility. It was a sad turn of events for the former champions, although we still managed secure third position. I would like to take this opportunity to especially thank my coach who took great care of me and handled everything for me.

Mahatma Gandhi also said ‘an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind’ and now I know why.

Anant Mann
(The views expressed are solely of the writer)

But what was in those headlines to cause such an outrage? Precisely this: following the case of abduction and rape of a pub employee in Gurgaon, city deputy commissioner PC Meena has issued directions to all commercial establishments in the city to not ask any women employees to work post 8pm. If women employees are on duty after that hour, it must only be with the permission of the labor department.

News channels, blogs, and discussions all revolve around how the police force is trying to conveniently wash its hands off all responsibility it has towards its citizens and that the judiciary is just aiding the police in this quest. It also is a case in point of blatant gender discrimination, restricting women’s freedom and a coercion of sorts. Women are longer free to work the way they wish to and when they wish to. Yes, this is true but why in the world is there a need for such a recommendation?

Because half the people who’re busy being outraged over such shackling of freedom are actually the letches of the country who are sexually frustrated since the day they arrived on Earth. Because these are the men who are well aware that their ‘innate charm’ won’t get them a girl on its own merit and have to resort to barbarism. These are the men who protest the loudest against girls partying in nightclubs and couples holding hands on Valentine’s Day and as soon as they have the opportunity, force a girl into a private rendezvous down a dark alley or (as is now fashion) in a moving car. These are the men who have grown up seeing women be violated in their very own homes.

Obviously, the police hasn’t been up to scratch. It has been rather sloppy in fact. In this scenario, if such recommendations are made, then what it so outrageous about them? In fact the directions also charge employers with the responsibility of providing safe transportation for women working post 8pm. In a country where every second person on the road gives you a look enough to make you feel filthy about yourself, a few precautions don’t seem all that bad, now do they?

If you can’t change your mindset, you might as well shut that newspaper and close your mouth. Now you may take umbrage.

Urvi Gupta

urvig@dubeat.com

What I love the most are the never ending chacha-chachis, mama-mamis, foofa-foofis, bhaiyas-bhabhis, and the far away ‘door ke,mooh bolein’ bhaiyaji, uncleji and auntyji and their (d)ucking questions. ‘Arey tum to bahut bade ho gaye, Medical kar rahe ho ki Engineering’, ‘No Uncleji, I plan to work in Subway. I don’t really want to be rich or famous’. Uncleji is confused, gives me a stare and walks away to get another drink.

You can’t really do a Vince Vaughn or Owen Wilson as a wedding crasher in a Delhi arrangement. The women look terrifying in the over done embellishment of their face; almost makes you believe that you’re in some Halloween or Goth party. So the crashers check out the food and the actual invitees take turns to the parking lot for some inebriation.

Big fat weddings are outright embodiments of materialism or a need for a family to conform to unnecessary social requirements. No one’s complaining if you’re a Chatwal and can afford to get your son married lavishly every year. But then you have the family that sells off its house or breaks its investment bonds to marry ‘off’ the daughter, gift the the bridegroom’s family a Santro, LCD TV and microwave. ‘The wedding should be grand’, enounce the elderly wise people.

Makes me want to say that couples should take the lead, have low profile unions and invest their money in the customary post marriage trip outside. After all charity begins at home.

Rohan Seth
rohans@dubeat.com

Marking during internal evaluation has been a much debated topic in LSR. Students often complain about the stringent hand that college deals them while their counterparts in North Campus colleges are supposedly marked rather leniently which results in them scoring higher overall percentages.

This year the sudden need of moderation of internal marks of students in the annual mode may be a consequence of uncharacteristically brilliant results of the students under the ‘glorious’ semester system. While some students believed that moderation may help stabilize their marks as different teachers have varied marking patterns others opined that the delay in returning the answer scripts to their rightful owners was merely because teachers hadn’t corrected the answer scripts in time. However, the truth remains that the students of the English department of LSR had not received the answer scripts of the mid-term examination that they appeared for a month ago till very recently.

Sakshi Ghai, a 3rd year student of Philosophy was a recent victim of this sadistic mechanism. “After having scored 91 in my one of my papers I was shocked to hear my teacher contemplating reducing 4 marks in each question post moderation.” she said. It is important to note that it is only students studying theoretical subjects who would be affected by moderation. Meanwhile, students who chose to tread the path of ‘ignorance is bliss’ were delighted with the delay in knowing their impending fate.

The suspense created by the examiners was a heady one although anticlimactic in nature for many. “The hue and cry about moderation was for nothing as it hasn’t reflected in my marks at all.” Confessed Adilah Ismail, a 2nd year student of English Literature.

The moderation mayhem may have affected students of various departments differently but it has taught them an important life lesson which is to approach life with a tinge of irony instead of heroism or despair.

Pragya Lal
pragyal@dubeat.com 

In such a scenario had Salman Rushdie’s impending arrival in India for the Jaipur Literature Festival not caused a stir, more than just a handful amongst us would’ve sat up and taken notice. Why should his return be such a cause for concern though? We’re all fully aware that India as a country does not dwell in the past and always believes in looking forward; therefore, to find the answer we must go back to the year 1988 when Mr. Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses was released.

Another exercise these mullahs are particularly adept at is misinterpreting any written statement, be it from a novel of from a cookbook for that matter. So it didn’t come as a surprise when they mistook Mr. Rushdie’s choice of title to imply that the Quran itself was being touted as the ‘Satanic Verses’ or when translated in Arabic, ‘verses from evil’.

Anybody who is familiar with Mr. Rushdie’s writing and appreciates it would not run screaming blasphemy to the nearest police station knowing fully well that Satanic Verses is meant to be a fictional piece of work. But that is exactly what happened. The supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, went to the extent of issuing a fatwa against this modern Islamist. The fatwa called upon Muslims to execute this heretic for he must ‘incur the wrath of God and be unsuccessful in his quest towards maligning the Prophet’. It also served as a warning to those who might be foolish enough to insult the ‘sacred belief of the Muslims’.

Considering the novel was written in English for a Western audience and was much appreciated for the literary skill it displayed, the book along with its author was banned in several countries including India. Moreover, that wasn’t the end of the atrocities. A reward was announced for the one who would ‘terminate that anti-Islamist’. Apart from several assassination attempts on Rushdie, bookstores were bombed, copies of the book were burnt, several translators and publishers were attacked and quite a few were killed.

Whatever the time period, to say the furor was justified would be pushing things more than just a wee bit. This reaction which gave fanaticism an entirely new meaning took half the world with surprise. The concept of freedom of speech and action became the hypocrite’s fable and mullahs were pleased.

Although the fatwa has been withdrawn and Mr. Rushdie has paid a visit to India in 2007 causing not more than a few excited whisperings, elections and a controversy are quite a potent combination. While BSP has turned the EC ruling of covering up Mayawati’s statues to its advantage, the Samajwadi Party in an ingenious move has sought to turn the Rushdie advent as its own trump card. The fact that the Doeband Seminary has demanded that Rushdie be not allowed to attend the Literature Fest later this month has therefore come at the most opportune time. Obviously, since Muslims account for 18% of the vote bank, their sentiments have to be taken into consideration.

What these Politicos and the Fatwa-issuing Mullahs have failed to grasp however is the fact that we are no longer living in the 90s! Much to their dismay the youth, be it Islamic or non-Islamic, condemns this ideology of banning any work of art or culture that may be bold. A shielded atmosphere is regressive and banal in the extreme.

I have a feeling that this year’s Lit Fest will see the maximum turnout. Not because of the literary greats that’ll be gracing the Festival with their presence this year but because of our tendency to revel in the scandalous and the sensational. The hype will make it all the more worth it.

Urvi Gupta
urvig@dubeat.com

Next thing you know, I was the ‘Bihariii..’ at the ground; if I dropped a catch, if I fell in a pile of mud, if I miraculously scored a run, everyone employed that phrase to ‘address me’. I was the midget at the ballpark, and so when the hoary grandad asked, ‘Why is your friend so short, usko bolo latka kare‘ , the yappers were quick to point out my rumoured allegiance to Laluland. Yes that perfectly explained my midget-ness, they thought. I didn’t take much of a liking to that name and saw it as an insult, a contemptuous ‘epithet’ that was thrown at me every single day of the week and I wanted it to stop. I always thought of myself as a Delhiite and tried my heart out to make the boys at the park believe that I wasn’t from Bihar.

Of course my mates at that time didn’t really know what they were talking about, it had to have trickled down to them from the elderly. At first I could not understand this frivolous prejudice or racism or whatever name you could give it, but then at the second thought it occurred to me that it was present everywhere. For me, discrimination on the basis of economic wealth is as condemnable as being partisan on race or colour. Even though we have our ‘colour’ issues, the predominant mindset in the country is that ‘Hey I’m better because I have the more money, so what if I just work at a call center and you work to save children in Darfur’. May be all of us are racist then- but that doesn’t justify randomly hurling out ‘Bihari’ like its a pejorative.

How can you malign the people of a land which is of great historical significance, has fertile plains and contributes immensely to the food production of the country. Bihar was rated as one of the best administered states in the country during independence, but dammit.. who knew Lalu Prasad Yadav’s appetite for cattle fodder and antics in parliament would cost me so dearly in childhood.

Turns out my paternal side is from Punjab and my maternal roots from Sindh, my father spent his childhood in Jharia(which was then in Bihar) and in spite of living all my life in Delhi, I still prefer to call myself a ‘Bihari’. My Bhojpuri skills are getting better by the day and so is Bihar under the rule of Nitish Kumar.

Rohan Seth
rohans@dubeat.com

Beaches
If you’ve heard Bette Midler’s unforgettable ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’, Beaches is where it came from. The story talks of the friendship shared by struggling singer CC Bloom (Bette Midler), a free-spirited Bronx Jew; and the uptight posh San Francisco Protestant Hillary Essex (Barbara Hershey) through thirty years of highs and lows. The realistic evolution of a relationship between two starkly opposite people where they build their own middle ground in the midst of the inevitabilities of life gives us something to relate to at every step and thus makes Beaches highly memorable.

Calvin & Hobbes
Calvin and his (toy) tiger Hobbes share a peculiar relationship, with Hobbes providing the voice of reason, and Calvin the twist, in the relationship. Best seen when on being handed a ‘friendship contract’ by Calvin, Hobbes points out that “people are friends because they want to be, not because they have to be.”

Harry and Hermione
Harry Potter’s relationship with his other best friend, Hermione Granger has the elements of a typical brother- sister relationship. Hermione is the head of R&D of the Harry Potter Adventure Inc., and her friendship with Harry helps both of them see things from a drastically different perspective from each one’s own viewpoint. One wonders if Harry could have emerged victorious, had it not been for the unflinching love and support that he got from Ron and Hermione.

Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn
An unlikely friendship for the time, Finn, the wild ‘un, and Sawyer, the quintessential city slicker. Their mutual fascination for the other’s way of life was the core of their friendship. And being friends in the late 19th century didn’t mean chilling out at pubs, it meant boat escapades down the Mississippi, rescuing slaves, and escaping from bloodthirsty bandits!

Jai and Veeru
There were a lot of memorable characters in the masala masterpience that was Sholay, but none quite endeared to the public as much as the duo of Veeru, played by the hot headed Dharmendra and Jai, played by Amitabh Bacchan (save for Amjad Khan’s badass Gabbar act though, duh). Probably the most famous celluloid friends to ever have been, Jai and Veeru have since become a cult icon, and the fabulous “Yeh Dosti” almost an anthem. Theirs was a friendship of legend, and nothing quite says brotherly bonding like chasing after hot maidens together and royally kicking the ass of the most badass bad guy of all time!

The Little Rascals
Childhood days – the fun and frolic, the innocence and the sense of being carefree. This movie is all that and much more with a bunch of neighbourhood urchins showing their penchant for go-carting and “women hating.” A take on friendship in its most innocent form: the movie has spunk and charm and a fair share of slapstick humor with Alfalfa’s attempts to charm ‘the girl of his dreams’ while Spanky sabotages it all to Butch and Woim’s antics to steal the go-cart. Catch it for its guilelessness!

FR.I.E.N.D.S
Any mention of friendship is incomplete without the iconic sitcom, Friends. Love it, hate it, you have to admit that it has its moments. The ritual of the six whiling away time at Central Perk, the complicated relationships and the job woes were amusing. And everybody needs a Chandler for those witticisms!

How many times have you sat around, scratching your head and wondering which emotion that bunch of brackets, dots and dashes is supposed to convey? With new smileys and rude-ys and disgust-ys and the like entering the cyber scene every other day, the time has come that someone devised a smiley dictionary. So here we are, DU Beat to the rescue as usual. Presenting – The Definitive Emoticon Dictionary!

: ) The smile emoticon. Used when the cute guy says something funny but it’s not quite the LOL moment. Variations include =) :> =] :-) C:

: ( The sad emoticon. Attendance beyond hope and no balance to crib about it to friends? Sad emoticon is happy (very very little happy, keeping his nature in mind though) to help. Variations include =( :-( =[ :< :C

:@ The angry emoticon. Ye kya? Canteen aunty gave you stale toffees instead of change again? Nothing better to express your fury than this emoticon buddy! Variations include :X >: X-(

8) Cool emoticon. So you have a cool new phone. What better way to show off than send this little guy in a text msg to your friends? Variations include B) B-) 8-)

:o Surprised emoticon. What? Proxy system works, man! *insert surprised smiley here* Variations include :-O :0 :-0