Here is part 3 of this long sentence marathon:

part 3….

and one can trust Indian ingenuity to adopt and adapt alien concepts to Indian conditions by mangling them, and nothing exemplifies it better than the concept of democracy and elections that India got from the West, which is implemented in India in a different and almost indistinguishable manner from the original western form, and it makes for an interesting reading, and it has spawned many poll related industries in India, one of them is called vote banks, which means arranging to lend votes of a particular community to candidates, and then there are booth managers,who offer to manage the voting at booths,and these two industries do roaring business during any general elections, and these are the two biggest success stories of private sector entrepreneurship in India, so much so that every successful candidate in Indian elections owes his success almost entirely to the services of vote banks and booth managers, and it has revolutionised voting scenario , so much so that the western concept of retail voting ( where individuals queueue up outside a polling booth and vote individually) has been almost entirely replaced by the concept of wholesale voting where booth managers and vote bankers tie up with each other and leverage their core competancies to offer maximum advantage of economies of scale to their clients due to the seamless integration of vote bank and booth management, and the synergy of the two industries have offered such satisfaction to their clients that many clients now a day have stakes of their own in the two industries, and similarly,many of the operators who earlier offerered their services to the clients, have started to contest elections on their own making use of their own in house service providers , and as a result, we now have a large number of vote bankers and booth managers in the Parliament and state assemblies and their figures are only likely to increase in future- what with even the likes of Abu Salem coming home and deciding to contest elections and he is just one of the many skilled NRIs returning back to India lured by the growth prospects that India has to offer and it is just a matter of time before the services of Indian vote banks and booth managers will be marketed to other growing markets abroad, which is clearly good news for the sector with considerable potential for employment generation, and as happens with any industry, it has led to spin offs like kidnapping and ransom industry, arms manufacture and supply, supari etc which are evergreen sunrise industries ( unlike elections which are seasonal though they are thankfully becoming more frequent now a days)and there is constant supply of manpower in all sectors in India as one new sucker is getting born every second ( which is a 50 % growth rate over the past when one sucker was getting born every two seconds) and this is obviously good news for all organisations including BCCI and the BCCI have assessed that they will be able to fool 9% more people this year than they fooled last year thanks to their new measures such as “sending a strong message” ( which means dropping a non performer for two matches and then taking him back), “linking pay to performance” ( which means bigger the non performance bigger the pay, and juniors threatening to perform the best getting dropped), “bringing more transparacy in the board working” ( which means making their presentation using transparacies instead of power point presentations) and the Board is working on other methods of increasing their revenues and the Board officials believe that just like it is possible to remain in the team irrespective of performance, it is possible to get sponsorship irrespective of performance too, though some additional safeguards will be needed, and the Board has advised all non performers in its team to use cars with tinted glass and the board is also thinking of issuing custom built tinted glass spacesuits as cricket gears in which the Indian players will enter the cricket field and on being questioned by the umpire, the players will inform the umpire that they have been authorised by BCCI to wear the spacesuit, and the BCCI president will read out a statement in support of the Indian players before he finds himself pushed out of the range of the microphones by the Australian players and the attention of the Indian media and Indian public will thus be diverted towards the behaviour of the Australians than on the non performance of the Indian players and by the time the Indian suckers would come to their senses, the Indian players would have gone into hiding from which they would emerge only after the coast would be clear and the suckers would have forgotten about the previous tournament or series which will come as no surprise to anyone including the suckers, many of whom have been making a vow to give up on Indian cricket for the last 35 years as their new years resolution, and as new years resolutions go, these suckers forget about their vows after a few days and continue to churn threads upon threads analysing the reasons for the incompetence of the Indian cricketers, some of the bigger suckers in the meanwhile also manage to compile sentences hundreds and thousands of words long on just about any topics of their choice which few can have the patience to read and the authors of the long sentences also realise after some time that writing such long sentences is a sure shot recipe of driving people crazy and make them keep away from the thread if one wants to retain any sanity, because one’s eyesight, patience, will etc get severely tested while going through these sentences, however informative and entertaining facts may be contained in the long sentence and the fact that there were some authors who wrote long sentences and got into Guiness book of records does not mean that everyone should try and emulate them, because it is unlikely that these authors got any critical acclaim for writing such long sentences and had they written the same sentence in a more presentable form, dividing it shorter sentences, paragraphs and chapters, there would have been many more readers for their writing, and chasing the silly record is not worth it, and though I have overtaken the record of Some William Faulkner and some Molly Bloom, in is an exercise in futility to go for the record of some Jonathan Coe who one wrote a 13955 words sentence which I am sure no one would have read in its entirety, so I will put a stop to this madness after this installment, and to prove that my ramblings will have many more takers if I presented them in small and readable parts, I intend to do just that after some time and in the meanwhile I will take a break from this wordathon that has made me type a sentence than ran into over 5000 words and has taken considerable time that I could have utilised in some more fruitful pursuits like watching the paint dry or watching the grass grow or even watching the BCCI aministrators “send a strong message”, and the last option certainly would have brought more entertainment and amusement and so here I am back to the pit stop yet again at 5240 words overall, hopefully for the last time, phew …

5240 words in all

Here is part 2 of the long sentence:

continued from part 1…..

and their righteous indignation on being regarded as anything other than geniuses, but then the old fashioned definition of a genius has gone a transformation in their minds and now a days,the ability to play to the galleries and bullshit one’s way in front of media persons is often mistaken as the mark of a genius and even people with an IQ of 20 viz Mike Tyson and Salman Khan are considered as geniuses by their adoring fans, who mistakenly believe that by biting the ear of an opponent, Mike Tyson was helping his opponent in getting younger as one (y)ear was being taken off the opponent,and the supporters of Salman Khan are firm in their belief that it is Salman Khan who should be regarded as an endangered species rather than the pavement dwellers or the Chinkaras who had no business endangering the safety of Salman Khan by conspiring to sleep in front of his car or conspiring to jump in front of his gun,and one should not forget the fact that Salman Khan is the true follower of Mahatma Gandhi, he being the only one after Mahatma Gandhi who does not wear a shirt and goes bare chested which is something no other Gandhian is known to have done,including the neo Gandhians who claim to be practicising Gandhigiri, which is all a sham because none of these Gandhigiri practicing people ever take their shirts off in public and it is such a shame that people should follow these frauds and ignore the real Gandhian that Salman Khan is, and it is the need of the hour that not only the men, but also the women should follow the example of Salman Khan, and there is one school of thought which believes that women can be much more effective in spreading the Gandhian message of Salman Khan than men by shedding their T- shirts, and this opinion has the firm backing of Beburg also known as Scud and other fellow perverts, who, when they are not discussing cricket, are busy admiring the handiworks of Bollywood villains such as Ranjeet,Prem Chopra,Gulshan Grover etc whose primary activity was trying to rape leading Bollywood ladies such as Anita Raj on screen and their secondary activity was eying the property of the village Zamindar, though it must be conceded that Beburg and others are not partial only to such low class villains, and they equally admire such classy villains as Ajit, Amrish Puri, Pran etc who do not indulge in petty crimes like this and who operate on a larger scale,and one of them viz Ajit pays the Britishers back in their own coin by mutilating English words as in pronouncing lion as loin, Border as Baarder and Helicopter as haillycaapter, and the globetrotting nature of Ajit’s villainy is typified by the fact that Ajit always talks of crossing the Border (Baarder)from his Versova beach hideout in his helicopter(hailycaapter) and reaching Birmingham a little while later,and it is such an anticlimax when the Hero upsets the grand plans of Ajit in the last reel and finally the villain and his henchmen are handed over to the Police who arrive late on the scene like an Indian Railways train running in Eastern parts of India and appeal to the hero not to take law into his own hands and let the law take its own course,and letting law take its own course means a judge pronouncing the sentence ( which is as long as the sentence you are reading now if the defendent is innocent and vice versa if the defendent is actually a criminal) in a court room and he being interrupted by a long lost character artist who barges into the court and delivers a sentimental banality which so moves the judge that he pronounces a verdict which is diametrically opposite to what he originally had in mind, and with that the movie reaches its end,the audience vacate their seats and troop out of the cinema hall,go to the nearest railway station and push their way in the crowded local trains, where people are packed tighter than sardines in cans and these people, instead of feeling frustrated with their fate of having to undergo such torture daily,actually enjoy it and think that this experience of travelling jampacked in local trains constituted the Nirvaan ( Nirvaana to the tongue challenged) that the ancient scriptures always talked of,and this naive belief is as difficult to digest as the assertion that Ganga ( Ganges to the tongue challenged) is a pure river, which is so very difficult to believe however much we try to convince ourselves, because the process of purifying ones’ sins in a river cannot be performed without leaving that impurity into the river, and this principle of conservation of matter runs contrary to the axiom of purity of the river,and rationalists rightly point out that there are much purer rivers in India than Ganga, and the reason why these other rivers retain much of their purity is mainly because people do not try to purify themslves in these rivers, and the purest of such rivers has got to be the River Narmada, and it is so amusing, not to say, shocking, to note that the Britishers called this river by the name Nerbudda, which is infinitely more difficult to pronounce than the word Narmada, and this river, though not used by people to wash their sins has been used indiscriminately for irrigation, electricity generation and other purposes, and it is mind boggling to note that nearly 60 dams have been constructed on this one river alone, and the most controversial of these dams has got to be the Sardar Sarovar dam,whose real beneficiaries have been contractors, politicians and activists, and the most well known of these activists is none other than Medha Patkar who periodically gets herself media coverage by protesting against this project, and what is not known to most couch potatoes is that Medha Patkar does not protest at the site of the dam,rather her protests are staged invariably at New Delhi where all types of mediamen are readily available in full strength to cover her,and recently she protested against Singur land being given to Tatas, and her protests were, you guessed it, not at Singur, a remote village in Bengal, but at New Delhi, the capital of India, and thus she proved her credentials as the champion of the underpriviledged and the exploited- in front of privileged and exploiters- in the national capital, though to be frank, she is not the only such person, rather she is in the august company of hypocrites like Arundhati Roy and M.F.Hussain,who are blindly supported by misguided leftists who regard themselves as intellectuals just because they are familiar with the names of some Marxist authors and foreign revolutionaries,and they never tire of dropping these names at the drop of a hat, to prove their depth of knowledge of leftism, using high sounding worlds like proletariat, bourgeois,reactionary,comrade etc in every sentence that they utter, and regard themselves as true leftists even though leftism is dead in the place of its origin, and considering that leftism in India is synonymous with shirking work and staging strikes, their belief that leftism has come to stay in India has merit, as it has indeed found its true home in India in general and in Bengal and Kerala in particular, which is one reason why all strike calls given by any Tom, Dick and Hari anywhere in the country is successful in Bengal and Kerala, even if the strike call evokes little response elsewhere,and therein hangs the tale of a nation with lopsided development thanks to the ideologies that different people in different parts of the country believe in and practice, in that Gujarat and Maharashtra people are at the forefront of industrial development whereas many other states which are ruled by either communists, or casteists or communalists or separatists( take your pick from the various types of evils)have no industry to speak of and as a result no employment opportunity to offer to their people, who then migrate en masse towards greener pastures( which can only mean towards the states which have encouraged industrialisation), and this brings us face to face with another kind of hypocrisy where some states do not encourage industry and then accuse other states( encouraging industry) that the migrant workers from the former states were being harassed in the later states,thus passing the buck totally on the other states instead of doing introspection and encouraging industrialisation in their own states to avoid the mass migration to other states,and this is a problem which rears its ugly head periodically in various parts of the country like Assam, Maharashtra etc, and the sufferers are invariably Bihari migrants,and this problem can be addressed not by the present day method of sending Bihari politicians to the concerned state on state expense, but by creating job opportunities for these workers within the state itself,which no politician is prepared to do,and instead of addressing the root cause of problems, everyone is happy with quick fix solutions in every field, including the sports field, which in India mostly means the cricket field, and it is amusing to see that everyone who watches cricket on TV has an opinion about the Indian cricket team, and his opinion is often based on non cricketing considerations, and in the past, when there was no TV, the fans at that time also had an opinion on Indian cricketers based totally on what they heard in Radio commentary of Ravi Chaturvedi and Sushil Doshi,and it was only much later that the fans realised that the cricket commentators were more clueless than many cricket followers themselves, in the sense that the fans at least had some idea of cricket, but the commentators, especially the Hindi commentators were Hindi teachers and like Ajit,the Bollywood villain mentioned earlier, they were on a mission to mutilate cricketing terms to suit their own convenience, and thus we came face to face with terms like “pagbadha” for LBW,”chowka” for “four”, “chakka” for “six”,”saajhedari or Bhagedari” for “partnership” etc,but one must admire the Hindi commentators who at least coined easy to understand and easy to pronounce Hindi cricketing terms,there were government departments which introduced such complicated Hindi terms that the Indian secret service did not need to encrypt their top secret messages,and all they had to do was to use the Aakashwani grade Hindi to send their message across without the fear of the eavesdroppers being able to make any head or tails of the secret message,and come to think of it, not just the enemy,even the recipient of the message were all at sea to decode the message,and this fact was used very creatively by imaginative government beauraucrats, who, on receiving any audit objections to their objectionable ways, would send their reply in Hindi, and the audit department,unable to make sense of the reply, would drop the proceedings, and thus the concerned beauraucrats would be allowed to go scot free, who would celebrate his reprive by going to a scenic locale travelling by pratham shreni yaan ( first class coach) in loh path gamini ( Railway Train) sapariwaar ( viz along with his family)on public expense,and having thus recharged his batteries, the beauraucrat would be ready to face some more audit objections in his patented way that incidentally happens to be just one of the ways, and there were many ways of wriggling out from tricky situations because the rules were so framed that they invariably allowed some loop holes that could be made use of, when required

4041 words in total, to be continued…

“Some facts about long sentences

* Jonathan Coe’s novel, ‘The Rotters’ Club’, contains a sentence of 13,955 words. This is generally considered to be the longest sentence in English literature.
* One of Molly Bloom’s soliloquies in James Joyce’s epic novel ‘Ulysses’ features a sentence of 4,491 words.
* The Guinness Book of Records lists the longest proper sentence as one from William Faulkner’s novel ‘Absalom, Absalom!’ (1,287 words).
* Some ancient languages, such as Sanskrit and Greek, did not have any punctuation. So all their sentences were long!
* A Polish novel, ‘Bramy Raju’, contains a 40,000-word sentence.
* There is a Czech novel, by Bohumil Hrabal, called ‘Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age’ which is one long sentence. “

So we had a competition among us to see if we can write long sentences without any full stops.The sentences were supposed to be meaningful. As is my wont, I am always a sucker for such challenges. I too participated, and posted three loooong sentences. First of my long sentences was 2067 words long.

Here is that first sentence of mine

Long tongue twister names tend to get shortened and modified suitably by those who cannot pronounce them in their original form, and thus we have the mortification, or may be the convenience, depending on which way one looks at it, of witnessing modified names which may or may not make sense to those familiar with the original names, and look no further than the people of Bengal who will vouch for the point that I am trying to make, that it was the inability of Britishers to pronounce perfectly meaningful and not so long native names like Bandhopadhyaya, Chattopadhyaya, Mukhopadhyaya, Gangopadhyaya, and even Thakur, that led to these names getting anglicised, read corrupted, to Bannerji, Chatterji,Mukherji,Ganguly and Tagore, which is ridiculous, to say the least, as the first four modified names have little in common with their original version, whereas the fifth name has the same number of letters as its anglicised version, which makes one wonder as to what kind of tongues did the Britishers possess that they could pronounce Tagore but not Thakur, and instead of training their tongues, they took the easier way out and corrupted the perfectly reasonable native names to suit their tongues, and this tendency encompassed not just surnames in Bengal, but also names of cities, rivers, books, just about anything that they could come across all over the country, and this led to names such as Cawnpore, Jubbelpore, Nagpore, where -pore was pronounced as -poor and Allahabad, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad etc where -bad was pronounced as, well “bad” which left a bad taste in the native tongues as it left a misleading impression in the minds of ignorant westerners reading these names that Indian cities were either “poor” or “bad” or both,which was far from the truth, but then which native was bold enough to bell the cat and tell the Britishers that “Ganga” and “Kaveri” were much easier to pronounce than “Ganges” and “Cauvery” for all tongues including the British ones, who should have got their tongues tested, in addition to their brains, who on the one hand reduced the size of some names,and on the other hand,lengthened some names ostensibly for the same reason of convenience, which led to words such as “Yog”, “Yudhishthir”,”Krishn” etc being lengtherened, as against shortened, and pronounced as “Yoga”,”Yudhishthira”,”Krishna” etc and complicating an already complicated system of renaming native names thus rendering it incomprehensible to all but linguistically the most blessed ones, which by default ruled out any Britishers from contention, but that did not cramp their style at all and they continued to rename Indian words to their hearts’ content, coming up with such gems as “coconut water” for the simple “daabh”,and “custard apple” for “shareefa” or “seetaphal”, making one wonder whether renaming these delicacies really made them more delicate,oops, I mean, more tasty to their tongues, which is highly doubtful, because “aam” is not only easier to pronounce than “mango” but is easily the tastiest fruit in the world, which tastes better when called by its Indian name and tastes even better when eaten the Indian way, which the Britishers never did and insisted to take out their knives, forks and spoons even while tasting Indian delicacies which are best sampled without these artificial contraptions that the Britishers introduced in India which were considered essential for any Indians who wanted to be counted among civilised persons according to the British ways of doing things, which was a world apart from the Indian ways, and this conflict of cultures often took amusing forms, what with the natives looking funny wearing shirt and tie on his trunk, and dhoti underneath, and the Britishers trying to do the same with Indian garments, with the British Mem-sahibs trying to don the Sari and tripping all over it, which remained a comical sight in many Bollywood and even Hollywood movies for decades, till Western women such as Sonia Gandhi nee Maino and Mother Teresa learnt to wear Sari the proper way and the Indian men learnt the proper Western way of dressing up, and this fascination with each other’s ways has reached such a stage that Indian origin English language teachers are in great demand in England whereas English and other European girls find little difficulty finding roles of Indian girls in Bollywood as well as in regional Indian movies, which was simply unimaginable just a few decades ago for Indians and Westerners both, and it has been a win-win situation for both really, because the Indians have been lured by the Western glitter and the West by the Indian mystic for quite some time and it has been the subject of movies such as “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” which bore little resemblance to ground or any other kind of realities, but was still lapped up by the audience, and a big reason for the popularity of this movie was the exotic Indian ways depicted in the movie, which frankly speaking were figments of the fertile and fecund imagination of the movie makers with as much reality in them as the diagonal members of a skew Hermitian matrix which as any mathematical geek will tell you, are either pure imaginary or zero,and as such can be converted into a Hermitian matrix by multiplying the skew Hermitian matrix with i and the resultant Hermitian matrix will at least have its diagonal members as real, even if its other members will not be,rendering the whole exercise an exercise in futility, even if it may not appear so to a non geek, who, if he happens to be the chairman of some scientific award may even nominate the former for some esoteric scientific award named after some long dead geek,which no one may have heard of and whose name may well have undergone corruption by the process as described above,but the geek will not know about that, and he will after winning the award, prance away happily and show off his award to anyone who is interested, which rules out most people in the world, leaving just a few fellow geeks,who will then pooh-pooh the award telling the suitably chastened geek that the process of getting a Hermitian Matrix from skew Hermitian matrix or vice-versa is a childishly simple process known to everyone who has read the first two chapters of the textbook on matrices by Shanti Narayan, who by the way wrote this book fiftythree years ago and this book is popular among mathematics students even today, which is amazing for a textbook, but not so amazing in comparison when you consider the fact that there have been some textbooks which were written more than hundred years ago and they continue to be popular among students long after their authors are dead and buried, though fortunately not forgotten to the students who go to the bookshop and ask for Higher Algebra by Hall and Knight, little realising that this book was first written in 1887, and Loney wrote his mathematics books at around the same time, and the popularity of these books even hundred years later makes one wonder whether mankind has made any progress whatsoever in these hundred years in the field of mathematics, and the answer appears to be in the negative, and this could well be the answer in the field of physics too, when you consider the fact that the text book of university physics by Sears, Zemansky and Young,which was first printed in 1949, continues to be the recommended text book for students as well as those who want to have solid foundations on the basics of physics,and frankly speaking why should we have solid foundations on physics or anything which will only allow us to qualfy for Engineering colleges and from there to management institutes, where we will attend lectures by Laloo Prasad Yadav who may only use the abovementioned University Physics book as a handy missile to throw at other MPs in a Parliament session, where people are more often than not seen to resort to unparliamentary language as well as lung power to shout down fellow members who may really have something worthwhile and logical to say in a parliamentary language, but finds himself outnumbered and in a minority even among his own party members, in addition to members from the other parties,and the fact that one cannot speak in a parliamentary language in parliament is tempered by the realisation that one cannot talk in an assembly language in an state assembly either and there is every likelihood that the member speaking assembly languge will find his remarks expunged from the proceedings by the speaker of the house with severe reprimand to the member to confine himself to a language which is comprehensible to the honourable members of the house, none of whom ever reached the educational level where he could have the opportunity of studying even a higher level computer language,not to speak of assembly language, which even computer geeks may have difficulty comprehending and communicating in, so one cannot really blame the MLAs who in any case are elected by a different process than the process of selection of an IAS officer or an IIT aspirant, and it is chastening to know that an IIT aspirant is supposed to be the world class, whereas an IAS officer is just India class, and an MLA or MP need not be even literate, and this leads to a truly apalling situation where a world class IIT trained Enginner reports to a second division History graduate turned IAS officer, who in turn reports to a totally illiterate Chief Minister like Rabdi Devi or Mayawati,which shows that the founding fathers of our country were so mistaken and misguided in their goals in that they wanted their Enginners to be world class, beuraucrats just India class and the politicians the scum of the land, and that is a good reason why India finds itself in a paradoxical situation where Engineers want to be IAS officers, and IAS officers want to be politicians, and none of these people really want to be in their coveted position for the reason that they give to the interviewers and everyone knows that the IAS officers and politicians citing public service or serving the nation sounds as hollow as a beauty contst participant glibly talking about fighting AIDS in Somalia and wanting to be Mother Teresa in their next lives, which by now has become stale jokes for everyone except those telling these jokes, and as jokes go, these are still current and beauties still manage to win their titles mouthing the same banalities that their predecessors mouthed in the past contests in front of the very same judges,none of them incidentally possess an IQ of over 80, which is natural considering the fact that their fans and followers too have the same levels of IQ, which explains why beauty contests, rock concerts and the likes always have much bigger audience than a seminar of eminent brain surgeons of the world,whose announcement of breakthroughs in discovering ways to enhance brain power have no takers, but one can bet that that sexologists announcing breakthroughs in their field pertaining to sexual staying power will have the attention of every one in the world, including the gutter press,and the same gutter press will have nothing to report when India launches four satellites to space simultaneously, which is a much more complicated operation that what a urologist can ever perform on a bobbitised male,and that tells us something about the mainstream media, that one should never ever depend on such media if one wants to be well-informed and educated on a subject,and one is well advised to depend on specialists and special interest groups for news and views of specialised nature,which means that one needs to sift true information from a maze of gibberish, which is in effect no different from the process of finding a needle in a haystack, which now a days goes by the fancy name of data mining from a datawarehouse,and the experts who are supposed to be able to perform this seemingly Herculean task are paid millions by their employers who call their company “google” where the first three letters signify the matter within their brain, despite their protestations to the contrary …

2067 words, breaks the Guiness record mentioned above. To be continued…

Watching English movies was an entirely different stuff from watching the desi movies like Bollywood ones. Watching these foreign(pronounced “foren”) movies, as well as observing those who had come to watch such movies made for some interesting observations.Here are my experiences of watching English movies in 1970s:

Definition of an English movie- Any foreign movie with English language dialogue, even if dubbed in English, is an English language movie for the desi audience.

Background work before watching English movie-Just like one got to know about the Bollywood movie by listening to its songs on Radio Ceylon, I tuned to BBC and Voice of America etc, hoping to listen to the Radio Ceylon equivalent of ” Aaphi ke geet” programmes, where the announcer would say,” the next song from the English movie “Gone with the Wind” is requested by Bob,Rob,Job, Tom,Dick, Harry,their girlfriends, their pets and many others from Timbuktu..”, but alas, I failed to locate a single such programme. In fact I failed to locate a single radio station playing English songs.Needless to say, I could not find the Binaca Geetmala equivalent of English movie songs either.

English movies in halls- In smaller places like where I was growing up, English movies would be shown in one show, viz the noon show.In rare cases, a cinema hall would decide to show an English movie in regular shows as well. In any case, the English movie lasted for not more than one week in a movie hall.

Crowd for English movie- For someone used to the crowd of Bollywood movie, crowd for English movie would come as a pleasant surprise, if not a culture shock. One could actually go to the counter ( which would actually be open) and buy the ticket for the current show without any problem. House Full board and black marketeers would be conspicuous by their absence.If Bollywood movie crowd was like the crowd in an unreserved compartment of an Indian Railway train, the English movie crowd was like the crowd in a first class coach of the same train.

Watching in style- Since watching English movie was “cool”, not everyone’s cup of tea, I would buy the ticket of Balcony, which would be readily available. Thus I would prove my “classy” credentials- to myself, if not to others.Of course, I dressed the same as others- viz., had long hair covering the ears and parted at the centre, wore bellbottoms, and wore a pair of hawai chappals. I was not aware that one needed to wear shoes to have “class”.

Length of movie- The first scene of the movie, viz the censor certificate, would be a big let down. We were used to Bollywood movies of 17-18 reels that lasted for nearly 3 hours, but the English movie would typically be only 7-8 reels barely lasting 2 hours. As we were used to intermission, finding a movie which ended without an intermission was difficult to get used to. To adjust to Bollywood style of movie watching, lots of trailers etc would be shown in the beginning followed by the so called interval. After the interval the English movie would begin , and that would last for under 2 hours, and that was it.

Understanding the dialogue- Understanding the dialogue of the movie was the most difficult part. There were people in the audience who had little or no knowledge of the language and who had come to the hall with some ulterior motives, but even those who had passable knowledge of English ( i.e. knowledge of English enough to pass the exams by writing an essay on the cow) were all at sea, because the pronounciations of the actors just went over everyone’s head.But no one would admit it. everyone would show, nodding his head at regular intervals,that he fully understood what the actors were saying.

Types of movies- The movie hall owners must have realised that a picture was worth a thousand words aka there is no language as body language, so their publicity poster for these movies would consist of scantily clad ladies occupying pride of place. That would bring some audience, who would look for these scenes throughout the movie, only for them to end up disappointed. Those scenes would have been deleted by the scissor happy censors, and in some cases, the pictures on the posters were not even part of the movie.

Action movies- A more effective method of attracting audience was to screen action movies viz James Bond movies or Bruce Lee movies.Even desi audience could identify with such movies because these movies depended on action rather than storylines or dialogues. This was one category of English movies which would bring the crowd and black marketeers back.

Science Fiction- People had heard of James Bond and Bruce Lee, but Arthur C Clarke was unknown as was his 2001:A space Odyssy. When this movie was screened in noon show, and I occupied my seat in Balcony, I found that I was the sole occupant in Balcony. When I looked down at the front stall, there were 4 more spectators there. So this movie was screened for 5 spectators in a 700 seater movie hall. And incidentally, none of the 5 spectators could understand head or tail of the movie. Movies like ” Close Encounters of the third kind” and “Starwars” attracted better crowd, but that was because watching such movies was onsidered”cool”, just as keeping thick books in your bookshelf is considered cool by some people.

Hypothesis about the storyline- Despite my determination that I would listen to the dialogue attentively, I failed to catch more than a few words, and as a result, I had to guess what was going on. Others in the audience too, in the absence of comprehension, put up their own hypothesis of what was going on.And there used to be some fantastic hypothsis, which the originator was so certain and vehement about.Once, I told my fellow spectator triumphantly that I knew the name of the 7 foot tall villain in “Moonraker”. His name is Richard Kiel, I stated. My fellow spectator cut me down, saying that the big fellow was a female in reality. My protests fell on deaf ears.

Movies that I could understand- Finally there were some movies which I could understand to a good extent, viz movies like “The gods must be crazy”,”love bug” etc, and I felt like I had arrived as an English movie watcher, only to be stumped again, when I watched ” Short circuit” and other such stuff.

How things have changed- In late 1970s, I dreamed of a day when we would not need to go to movie halls and would be able to watch movies of our choice sitting at home. My dream was total science fiction at that time. But now, it is a reality which many people can readily afford.Many of the English movies which I then watched and did not understand much, are now within reach. I can search for such movies and download them. That way, I have watched even those movies, which may never have been screened in the movie halls that I had access too. I have watched the movies again, that I had then watched and only partially understood. How things have changed for the better! It is wonderful, almost like Alladin’s magic lamp,is it not ?

Here is how a typical bollywood movie goer watched a typical bollywood movie in 1970s ( and earlier):

Release of movie-A movie is released, a movie goer looks at the posters, listens to the songs of the movie, reads reviews, hears word of mouth opinions ( jhakkas hai/ bakwas hai) and then decides to watch it. when he goes to the movie hall and decides to buy a ticket, he has to stand in a long queue. He is used to it, because he has the experience of queing up for everything-train reservation, ration shop,kerosene shop,admission to schools/ colleges, etc etc.

Ticket booking -In case of especially popular movies, the booking counter would not even open, and the movie tickets would be sold in black. If it is an Amitabh bachchan movie in its first week, black marketers make a killing (3 ka bees, 3 ka bees- meaning thereby that the ticket of rear stall costing Rs 2.95 =3 is being sold for rs 20). It was totally sellers market. Law abiding queque making public would be left in the lurch,People who did not have much care for such civilised ways as standing in queue would try different ways:

(a) Jumping the queue- strongly built law breaking types would just go to the top of the queue and shove his hand inside the 2″X 2″ size hole in the wall that was the ticket counter, pushing the bonafide people standing in the queue.A person more modestly built than the above mentioned one would try to enter the queue near the front of the queue, claiming that he was very much there from the beginning, and he had just gone to the loo, duly informing the people behind and ahead of him. The people supposedly standing behind and ahead would confirm/ deny his claim depending on the claimaint’s physique vis a vis their own physique. Then there would be some who would claim that they had just come to meet the counter clerk who was their old acquaintance, and would try to get some tickets out of turn, on the basis of their acquaintance. Then there would be some, who would try their luck with the gateman, in the hope that he could help them get tickets without going to the queue. And the manager of the movie hall would be a very well sought after person.

(b) people in queue- Then there would be people in queue who would boast that they were standing in the queue for three hours or more- as if they were likely to get some medal for that. In case of very popular movies, barely 5-6 people would get tickets before the counter would be closed- and a board wiould be hung reading “House Full”. And public standing in queue would lament the increase in corruption in society ( Sab chor hain/ sab mile huye hain).

(c) Buying through black- Those who could not succeed through the above methods, but had money, would buy the ticket in black. In case the movie was an Amitabh movie, the amount asked for would be six to seven times the face value of the ticket. It would all be decided by the black marketer. If you wanted to locate the black marketer, you needed to see where many people had gathered around a character of dubious looking integrity.He made you feel that he was doing you a favour by agreeing to sell you a ticket and you needed to be thankful for that. He would pocket your money, and give a stern look ( take it or leave it kind of look) if you asked for change, which he would try to pocket. And often, the rear stall ticket that you would buy from him would turn out to be as close to the front stall as possible. But you would be thankful that at least the ticket was for the present show. If you were not careful, some black marketers could even palm off the ticket of previous show.

Watching the movie

(d)Entering the movie hall:- There would be a big crowd waiting for the previous show to end so that they could get in. And as soon as the previous show is over, this crowd would fight its way towards the hall, through the narrow entrance. Those who were late in entering, would struggle to locate the usher, and then struggle to reach their seat, and sit down,only to find it occupied by someone else ( a lady typically- who would be certain that you did it on purpose). Neither the usher, nor the other in the audience would buy your explanation that you had yet to get your eye in.

(e) Enjoying the movie- The people who paid the least tended to enjoy the movie the most, sitting closest to the screen. And they would express themselves uninhibitedly- in the forms of catcalls, whistles, and shoutings. And they did not worry themselves about such nuances as story line etc.

Movie content

(f) Songs- Songs were the selling point of movies. If you watched trailers of forthcoming movies, it would contain nothing but songs, and some arbitrary fighting. The songs of the current movie would evoke different reactions from different people. Some people would break into a dance, some will go wah wah, and some would throw 4 annas and 8 anna coins- as appreciation. And then there were some who went out of the hall as soon as the actors broke into a song. They used this period to have a smoke outside the hall. If it was a musical movie, full of something like 15 songs, then some disgruntled man in the audience would express his frustration ( what the hell? There is a song every five minutes.Why can’t they have a proper storyline instead)

(g) Storyline- Story needed to be understandable to even the lowest IQ audience sitting in the hall. Thus we would have the hero entering villain’s high security den in disguise, ( a thin mustache, or a white wig- everything else, including hairstyle,mannerisms etc remaining same) and the audience sitting in the front stall would identify him immediately, even though the villain would not, and the lyrics of the songs would make it clear to all what the mission of the disguised hero was, but the villain would be in the dark as long as the song was on.

(h) Moral of the story-Working hard and long- which is the secret of success in real life, would be replaced by singing hard and long as the mantra for success. To succeed in their ventures- all that the characters needed to do was to break into a song, and they would win their love, come first in their exam, get their eyesight back, reform those needing reforming etc.Now you know why the villains failed in the last reel- that is because they did not get to sing in the movie.

(i) Police and judiciary:- All police officials, be they inspector or SP or IG, would have their offices in a police station, with a lockup visible beside their desk. In case of court scene, a long lost character artist would appear unsummoned, and would harangue the judge, and the judge, otherwise ready to pass his death sentence, would change his decision, without needing any evidence to the contrary.Can this be tried with ICC match referees too ?

How movies were made

(j)Assembly line production :The movies needed to come out of the same assembly line, with similar stories, songs, actors etc,to have any hopes of success, but the movie makers would invariably state that their particular movie was “different”. Movies which were actually different tended to have few takers among the mainstream audience. This double talk of their movies being different was accepted by all without a murmer.

(k)Relation between reviews and success-Movies which were appreciated by critics would fail to find favour with the audience. Movies heavily criticised by the critics would be big hits. So one could judge the likely fate of a movie by reading the review of the movie in the press and believing just the opposite.

Public reaction having watched the movie

(l) Leaving the hall:- Had there been exit polls in those days, then the typical views heard from the audience about th movies would have ranged from- ” bakwaas hai”, “Time pass hai”, to “paisa wasool ho gaya, bhidu” and “ekdum jhakkas hai”.

(m)Government reaction:- If the producer made an especially rubbish movie, he would call it an educational movie/ inspirational movie etc and appeal to the government to waive off the entertainment tax, which would then have the effect of the ticket price getting reduced to half the usual price. Cynics commented, with justification, that movies that were given entertainment tax free concession had no entertainment in them in any case. And most of such tax free movies fell flat at the box office, despite the waiver of the tax.

The above summarises a day in the life of a bollywood movie goer in 1970s.

Here is an attempt to finish the unfinished work of Charles Darwin. A brief classification of various kinds of cricket experts. It has to be kept in mind that everyone who follows cricket is a cricket expert. There is no category such as a non expert among cricket followers.

1.“High horse” expert: An ex cricketer, turned commentator, he never fails to tell the fans that the fans cannot understand cricket and therefore they should not criticise slow strike rate of cricketers, because they never played the game at that level. Then he himself goes on to criticise the strike rate of the batsman. And one is left to wonder what was different in his criticism and that of a layman. If the layman was not competent to criticise Tendulkar’s strike rate, how is Shastri competent to criticise Tendulkar’s strike rate, seeing how slow he himself batted during his playing days.

2.“Famous last words” expert: The abovementioned ex cricketer turned expert, in his illusion of being more knowledgeable than others, tends to put his foot in his mouth often and gets proved wrong every time. But relying on the fact that most fans have short memories, he himself tells the fans later how he had predicted big things about certain players, when in reality, he had predicted just the opposite at that time. Example: Shastri, during Vishakhapatnam ODI against Pakistan in 2005 continued to tell how Dhoni( then a newcomer), having scored his 30-40 runs, should have thrown his wicket away, because better batsmen were waiting in the pavilion. He continued to commentate like this, till someone must have pointed out to him that Dhoni had scored 148 and the so called better batsmen had failed to match Dhoni’s strike rate.

3.“Cliche” expert: He could be an ex cricketer, or a non cricketer turned expert. He would deal in cliches, and some of his favourite lines would make you feel like cricket matches are quite topsy turvy affairs, a contortionist’s delight. In his commentary,ball will swing, pitch will turn,bowler will bend his back, match will turn on its head, etc. And to add to that, he will have players with tongue twisting names to pronounce. Try pronouncing Lokuarucchihetige.

4.“comparison” expert: In school, this person had memorised an essay on “my friend”, but unfortunately, the examination paper required him to write an essay on “my father”. The pupil,just substituted the word “father” in place of “friend” in the essay memorised and submitted his answer paper.” I have many fathers. But Ramesh is my best father…..” This fellow is now a cricket writer. And continues to treat us with cricket articles where he finds similarities in matches, situations, players, events etc where none seem to exist. He writes full page articles on similarities between Australian and Bermuda cricket team, between Sehwag and Shoiab Akhtar, between Gavaskar’s straight drive and Chandrashekar’s googly etc.

5.“Geography” expert: His knowledge of geography, especially his own region, makes him an expert on players of his area. Such experts also go on to become selectors, who then select players from their own area. Example: *kar selects players named *kar from his city, *Singh selects players named *Singh from his state,*Yadav selects *Yadav from his family.

6.“History” expert: This expert, who calls himself a doctor, as he is a PhD in history, believes that history is a close loop circuit. Sehwag scored runs in the past against Pakistan, so he will score runs in the present and future against Pakistan, that is his firm belief.But what about the time when he was yet to play against Pakistan ? He will refuse to entertain such facts in discussions.

7.“I knew it” expert: Whatever happens on the field, this expert can churn out an article where he will tell you, backed by solid statistics and evidences why this result of A defeating B was preordained and he knew about it beforehand.The next week, he will write with the same conviction why B defeating A was also destined to happen, and he, as always, had already foreseen it, and he will of course have statistics and evidences to prove it.

8.“Political science” expert: He can tell you that the famous win that the team earned owe it totally to the great leaders of the nation. When India beat West Indies, chasing 406 in the fourth innings in 1976, it was thanks to the path shown by the great leaders of the country like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, lal Bahadur Shastri, Chandrashekhar ( the freedom fighter, not the politician or the cricketer), Bhagat Singh, Abul Kalam Azad, Sarojini Naidu, etc.Of course, the great leadership of the primeminister Indira Gandhi and her emergency rule those days, was directly instrumental, in India securing this win.

9.“Weather” expert: During the days of Radio commentary, we had a commentator who would wax eloquent about ( in Hindi of course) blue sky, green grass, white clouds, red cherry, pleasant breeze,trees, with spectators hanging from the branches, etc- and suddenly his voice would be punctuated by ” Aur isi ke saath Vishwanath out”.

10.“Hockey/football/tennis experts“: turned cricket experts: The original prototype was Jasdev Singh, whose clones still rule the airwaves on AIR and DD. But the regional language commentators were the most entertaining. In the 1976-77 test match between India and England, Tolchard and Greig were batting in a sleep inducing 250 runs partnership and the Bangla language football commentator turned cricket commentator was getting frustrated. Suddenly Tolchard was out clean bowled, and the Bangla commentator went berserk with delight as if Mohun Bagan had scored a goal against East Bengal.

11.“Building Castle in the air and living in it in denial” cricket experts:This category is found mainly to the east of the earlier category of expert. The team of this expert hardly wins, but that does not stop this expert from dreaming big before every match involving his/ her team, and living in denial, as far as the real abilities of his team are concerned. The expert writes long articles proving why his team is looking like the next world cup champion. The match thread for the ODI match that this group of experts starts one week before the actual match, runs into 500 pages. First 100 pages of pre match discussion are highly bullish. As the match begins, the bullishmess starts coming down gradually. At 25/5 in the 10th over, the bears take over. At 101/7, they gloat about the 100 ball unbeaten quarter-century made by their wicketkeeper. By the end of the match, rationalisers take over who still refuse to believe that the 10 wicket defeat was because of sheer lack of ability. They continue to describe their players as superstars, even though the batsmen all average less than 22 in any form of the game, and the bowlers average in the 50s.

12.“Statistics” expert: Statistics are the be all and end all in cricket as far as this category of cricket experts are concerned. A averaged 43.07 against Tripura and Goa at a strike rate of 67 in three day matches, whereas B averaged 39.87 at a strike rate of 55 against Australia and South Africa in test matches , then it is clear to them that A is a better player than B, and keeping A out of the national team and keeping B in the national team is a conspiracy. Based on statistics, Tiwari and Badrinath need to be in the test team against Australia ahead of Laxman and co.

13.“Team combination” expert: Whatever the occasion, this category of expert has the playing XI ready for the occasion. If the discussion is on the party thrown by Shahrukh Khan, this expert would come up with his playing XI of players who will be most suited for dancing in the abovementioned party, viz Yuvraj, Dhoni, Sreesanth, Uthappa,Pathan, Rohit Sharma etc. Badrinath and Tiwari, please take dancing lessons to get into this XI.

14.“Establishment man” expert: This expert believes that BCCI is God’s gift to its fans and it can do no wrong, so what if BCCI does not have a website. Talk against the BCCI and the expert will accuse you of being a WUM.

15.“Anti establishment man” expert: He will accuse BCCI of being a mercenary organisation, and he will in return get accused of being a WUM, as described above.

16.“Nostalgia” expert: The person may be only in his 20s or 30s, but he will talk about WG Grace, Fred Spofforth and CTB Turner as if he went to school with the above mentioned 18th century gentlemen. He will tell you how Victor Trumper scored a 90 before lunch on a wet pitch on the first day of an Ashes test in 1902 on a thursday, as if anyone is interested in the details.

16.“Mushrafrafraf” expert: His playing XI for a test match includes, among others, A K Hangal and Asha Parekh, but never Kareena Kapoor or the stinking desi in the NY tube.

17.“Extreme mood swings” expert: He bets his entire possessions and more on certain results, making outrageous statements like ” team P will win the tournament” and then he goes missing for weeks after his prediction goes wrong.

18. “Trying to get cured of cricket addiction” expert: After every defeat of his team, this category of cricket expert would vow to give up taking interest in cricket, only to come back with his expert comments the next time his team manages to win a match.And he would be trying this de addiction routine for the last 33 years.

19. “Individual records over team performance” experts: They are happy as long as their favourite player is in the team. It does not matter if his presence in the team hurts the team results.

20. “As good as the last tournament” experts: A large number of people belong to this category. If the team loses badly in a tournament, they throw stones on the houses of the stars. If the team wins a tournament, the same people shower the same players with garlands and more.

21. “I am right, you are wrong” expert: This kind of expert quotes the posts containing contrary views and comments on them line by line to prove why the contrary views on the subject are wrong.

22. ” Taking it personally” experts: They tend to take cricketing matters too seriously and become uncharitable and even abusive towards those who they think harmed the cricket causes dear to the expert.

23. “Technical” experts: They go down to the brasstacks and pinpoint what is wrong with the game of the player. “Keeper is standing up too early, spinner is bowling too fast, quickie is bowling too slow, Yuvraj needs to play slower, Ganguly needs to play faster, Sreesanth needs to be less aggressive, Ashraful needs to be more aggressive.”

24. “Rana Pratap/ Jhansi ki Rani” brand experts: They believe that their team should play with all out aggression and crush all opposition. They are totally against Dravid brand of defensive batting and they want the team to be full of batsmen like Sehwag and Afridi. Of course, they point out the example of Australia to prove their point.

25.“patience is a virtue” experts : This brand of experts believe than no brand of cricket is all slam bang. There is need for patient blocking even in Twenty20, they point out. Their idea of a great match is where a batsman bats out for 378 minutes to score a century that kills off any chances of result in the match.

26. “Strategy” expert: These experts attach a lot of importance to strategy. And considering that toss plays such an important part in the strategy, they suggest that the captain should practice tossing the coin correctly/ calling correctly at the toss. And after that, the rest of strategy is easy. Win the toss, bat first and score 600 runs. Bowl the opposition out twice for less than your total. Simble !

27. “Past record of matches” expert: This expert looks at the past record of matches between the two teams to predict which team will win the series.Unfortunately, no one believes such experts when they say that West Indies, based on past records are the firm favourite against most cricketing nations.

The above is by no means an exhaustive list of various kinds of experts. There are people who may simultaneously belong to more than one category. While becoming a cricket expert, a person makes use of his experience in other fields and tries to use his expertise in that field while holding forth in cricketing matters. Thus we saw how a historian may become a different kind of cricket expert than a statistician.

There are still many professions whose practitioners have yet to become cricket experts. Once they too take to cricket, I am sure we will have some new kinds of cricket experts.

Not only was a bhains not given the same exalted status as a cow, it was in fact made a butt of jokes and ridicule.Ancients made it out to be the vaahan of Yamraj. One Asura was depicted as a Bhains and called Bhainsasur.If we look at the Hindi muhawaras,bhains has been ridiculed much more than even a donkey. Just look at the muhawaras:

1. kala akshar bhains barabar
2.Bhains ke aage been bajana
3.Jiski lathi uski bhains
4.Meri bhains ko danda kyon mara
5.Gayi bhains pani mein

SPCA has not been much active in India, and Maneka Gandhi has never protested against this humiliating depiction of bhains in Indian culture.Let us take a look at the above muhawaras.

1. Kala akshar bhains barabar: It equates bhains with illiteracy, just because bhains is black in colour. Come to think of it, when an illiterate person is being made a literate, it is with a white chalk on a blackboard or slate. So it should actually be “safed akshar gai barabar”, don’t you think. In fact, I think it is the originators of the muhawara who were the real angootha chhaps, who did not know the actual method of spreading literacy. But it is surprising to note that this inaccurate muhawara has survived to this date,even among educated people.

2. Bhains ke aage been bajana: Now, this muhawara equates a bhains with lack of taste of music. The same people would like us to believe that a snake is an appreciator of the music of a snake charmer or that of the movie Naagin ( the old one).The originators of these muhawaras are obviously much more ill informed than merely unlettered. Snake does not appreciate a been. It does not have ears like human. It basically takes an aggresive position ( spreading its hood) and moves as the snake charmer sways. The snake is basically responding to the movement of the snake charmer ( thinking that the snake charmer wants to attack it). If the snake charmer plays his been without swaying, a snake will not sway. A bhains has ears,it responds to music and yields more milk if you play nice soothing music. It will not appreciate the music of Himesh Reshamiya, which shows that a bhains DOES appreciate music better than what we have been conditioned to believe.

3. Jiski lathi uski bhains: Now, this muhawara is a creation of hardcore feudal mentality prevalent in the Hindi heartland. It is an accurate reflection on the state of affairs in that area even today. The fact that bhains should be used to signify the feudal mindset of its owner is more a reflection on its owners, than the bhains itself, which is a very peaceful animal, infact more peaceful and tolerant than a cow.

4. Meri bhains ko danda kyun mara: This is not really a muhawara, but a popular song from a long forgotten Bollywood movie. The song itself has gained immortality and it has become a muhawara of sorts ever since. Now, this muhawara actually refers to a danda being applied on a bhains. Such a song makes me feel that a bhains is to Hindi language muhawarebazi what Indian Railways is to Indian agitators or black holes to an astronomer. Whenever in doubt, stop trains in your agitation, whenever you cannot explain anything distant in astronomy, say that it is because of some black holes, and of course, whenever you want to coin a new muhawara or write a comedy song, look towards a bhains.

5. Gayi bhains paani mein: This muhawara is also made popular by some Hindi movie. It means things going haywire or plans getting upset. Now, a bhains, unlike a cow loves water and looks in enter water to keep it cool.The fact that cows hate water and never look to dive in it shows that a bhains is much more hygiene conscious.

An examination of the above muhawaras and facts amply demonstates that a bhains has been wrogly maligned for nothing. It does for mankind what a cow does and more.Unlike a cow, a bhains keeps away from city traffic and does not eat plastics, and unlike a cow, it allows you to ride over it. Just try riding a cow, and you will find that a cow is not really as meek as it is made out to be. In fact, most of the milk that we get to drink is courtesy the bhains, not the cow.

Nearly half the total world population of bhains is in India. May be that is the reason, why bhains has been so underestimated in India. It has really been a case of “Ghar ki bhains dal barabar” for Indians. Ok, a bhains does not apply fair and lovely and does not believe in waxing. But then it is not participating in a beauty contest. It should be judged on the basis of its utility and on that basis it scores higher than most domestic animals, including a cow.