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Through Vikram Doctor and Titoo Ahluwalia I received an email about the medieval and abhorrent Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which criminalizes “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” with punishment upto life imprisonment. Section 377 is being challenged by various groups in the Delhi High Court lead by Naz India, a […]

This article of mine appeared, in a slightly abridged form, in The Times of India recently. I cannot find the link:
Sexual morality is very big in India. The entire establishment is sexually straitlaced. A couple kissing on the dance floor led to the police closing down a Chennai hotel. Mumbai’s dance bars were shut down […]

The Kala Ghoda Arts Festival starts today. And will go on till next weekend. Do come along if you’re in Bombay. And if you can’t, hop over to the spanking new Kala Ghoda Gazette where I’m blogging on the festival along with an illustrous set of co-bloggers with some lofty aims. Join us.

I have argued for the legalization of cannabis in The Times of India today, based on an “experiment with truth” that I undertook at Devprayag, where the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi meet, and the river thereafter assumes the name Ganga. Enjoy!

From the Economist:
Some of the dodgiest marketing outfits now use the phone to tout their offers. In Britain, the latest trick is to use automatic dialling machines to call mobile phone numbers at random, but then to hang up after just one or two rings. Seeing a missed call, the unsuspecting recipient will usually ring […]

Rosa Parks, one of the heroes of America’s civil rights movement, died recently. Amongst the many obituaries and tributes, I stumbled upon this insightful gem from Thomas Sowell — Rosa Parks: Pursuit of Profit vs. Racism.
Most people look at the government as the savior from the dignity sapping effects from racism. But segregation […]

Tunku Vardarajan has a pithy piece on British phlegmatism in the face of the bomb blasts yesterday.
The secret of British composure is that Britons really do feel proud of their civilization. On the whole, they apologize for very little, which is as it should be. Their message to terrorists is always likely to be straight […]

Mid-Day has a story on the latest lifestyle neurosis.
My family members sit on a floor mat while the cats lounge on the sofa. The first bite of any dessert is sampled by the cat family, before being passed on to us humans.
This is the first time I’ve actually seen a medical term attached to behavior […]

Of late, I’ve been watching bits and pieces of Ekta Kapoor’s “K” serials (around 10-15 minutes at a stretch is all I can bear). And I’ve noticed strange stuff. No, it’s not the regressive portrayal of women, e.g. all the “good women” are housewives, career women are mainly bitches, nor is it her excessive portrayal […]

We don’t need taxpayers money to prop up our culture. In a brief piece, Sruthijith explains why
The justification for a state-run organisation to promote the �ancient cultural heritage of India� came from two basic assumptions. That the state is the �organised manifestation of people�s will� and hence it must undertake the �maintenance and development (of […]

A few days back I went out for a late night ice cream at Natural’s on Marine Drive. As I was about to enter, the door opened and around ten burkha clad ladies trooped out. The burkhas were the conservative sort, covering more than half the face. But most of the women were young (you […]

Amit Varma tries to get a grip on events and the Gujarati psyche just before today’s ODI between India and Pakistan in Ahmedabad.
Gujaratis are expert at constructing order out of chaos. What could have more tumult than the trading floor of a stock exchange, for example? There you will find, making sense of the thousands […]

From Suketu Mehta�s Maximum City.
[The Taj] is less a hotel than a proving ground for the ego. The Taj lobby and its adjoining toilets are where you test your self-worth; theoretically, anyone can come in out of the heat and sit in the plush lobby, on the ornate sofas, amid the billionaire Arabs and the […]

Johan Norberg, the defender of global capitalism had an interesting experience while giving a talk in Jordan.
Yesterday at an overcrowded lecture at the university in Amman, I got a lot of interested responses and questions from the students, until the moderator, a teatcher and supervisor, intervened and said that my book was offensive, and […]

In Defence of the Youth, and the young girl in particular
Methinks the unfortunate girl from Delhi Public School whose “boyfriend” – if he deserves the title – turned out to be a real nasty piece of works, is the “victim” in the much publicized MMS case. And no one is considering how she can […]

Christopher Lingle has an interesting article on Globalization and ‘Contract Culture’
Globalization should not be confused with Westernization or Americanization of economies and cultures. Perhaps this muddled thinking arises from an observed sense of convergence towards certain norms or rules that are associated with Western cultures, especially concerning commercial considerations. Promoting this misconception adds to an […]

and the season to greet and be greeted. Well not for everybody. Scrooge McGrumpy isn’t terribly jubilant.
Listen pal, just because the earth completed one revolution around the sun doesn’t magically change anything in your life. Some of us will do well, most will have their share of ups and downs, and some will screw themselves. […]

One of the first thoughts that passed through my mind on hearing of the Tsunami was “more evidence that God does not exist.” Every disaster leading to a huge loss of life reinforces my atheism. Natural disasters, of course, are stronger evidence!
MadMan was the first to write about it.
At times like these, I’m glad I’m […]

Shanti says that married men who watch porn by themselves are committing “mental infidelity”, which is just as wrong as physical infidelity.

Parth at Spontaneous Order has a pithy post on people who moan about “commercialisation” of festivals.
Commerce was always part of festivals–did all Indians, say 50/100 years ago, make their own fire crakers or Ganesh idols? No, they bought them. So what we see today is not a new phenomenon of commercialisation but simply the old […]