Shobhaa De

Mar 31, 2010
SHOBHAA.JPG

Shobhaa De

The ways & means of Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett exhausts me. I’m sure he exhausted several other people on his virgin trip to India. At 80, he is still at the crease, batting away… and going by his energy levels, he’ll hit his century effortlessly. It is just not natural for an octogenarian to be jetting half way around the world at such a hectic speed. He described his quickie chakkar to India as a “better late than never” trip. And came up with a booklet-full of quotable quotes, starting with philanthropy being much harder and riskier than business.

Own up... and be cool

Since India is in Confession Mode — starting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh — let’s all start “owning up”. Umm... let me think… I once stole a mango from someone’s bageecha. Oh yes, a guava, too. And I threw ink bombs on my French teacher. I also bunked classes constantly. Crashed other people’s cars. Pinched menu cards from fancy restaurants.

Setting: In India, it’s a verb

Late one afternoon, my car drew up next to a police van, and my firebrand driver Choudhary (yes, Raj Thackeray, he’s from Bihar, and I’ll never sack him!) pointed to a couple of Nigerians in the van. “Nothing will happen to these charsees”, he said laconically, “Sab setting ho gaya hai”. He went on to narrate a longish story about his

From Mumbai to Macau

Unbelievable as this sounds, it was not all that easy to forget “Balwa ka jalwa” and former Union telecom minister A. Raja’s manifold deals in distant Macau. I mean, I gawked at all those impressive buildings, the eye-popping flyovers — the infamous casinos that are the size of mini-cities and wondered who ran this show… and how

When the spouse is not a mouse

I watched this season’s most publicised movie, Dhobi Ghat with enormous interest.

I love Mumbai, I run for it!

It’s official: Mumbai is right up there alongside international cities with heart. You just wait and watch the show tomorrow! I am talking about the Mumbai Marathon which, over the past seven years, has grown into a robust property that does the city proud.

Stop the rot now

It has to be said: 2010 will be marked by historians as the year India sold out! And sold out in such shameless and brazen manner that the jaws that had dropped when the first few scandals hit the headlines, remain dropped till today. As we sing Auld Lang Syne and bid another rotten year goodbye, there is nothing much to cheer about in the coming months. The “Central Bureau of Ineptitude” (CBI) has done it again!

2010: Year of the Sleazy

Santa Baby, this is an SOS… hurry down the chimney… we need you. This has been a year of serious golmaal, and as 2010’s credit titles roll, the fate of the masala movie called “India” at the international box office looks khallass! When mega blockbusters bomb big time, everybody suffers. But those who suffer the most (apart from stakeholders) are the people — the all-important audience. Those trusting, optimistic viewers who come away feeling cheated and disillusioned.

I plead not guilty, gullibility

Welcome to the latest reality show in town. It features mediawallas of all hues, shapes, temperaments and sizes in a delicious free-for-all in which accusations get hurled, excuses are trotted out and participants indulge in a kiddish “mine-is-bigger-than-yours” competition. Unfortunately, so far, these shows have not thrown up a Dolly Bindra. But we do have our Fearless Radia (Hunterwalli) to fall back on, once she’s done with being politically correct and “propah”.

Monitoring minds

Poor Pamela Anderson. Imagine the woman’s plight… her entire identity is located in her mammary glands. The world largely knows her for the size of her breasts. It is as if the rest of her doesn’t exist… doesn’t really count. Pam is a woman attached to the world’s most talked-about boobs. And most people talk to her chest. Good sport

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I want to begin with a little story that was told to me by a leading executive at Aptech. He was exercising in a gym with a lot of younger people.

Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen didn’t make the cut. Neither did Shaji Karun’s Piravi, which bagged 31 international awards.

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