I am a farmer and I want FDI

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I was still in college when farmers' leader Professor MD Nanjundaswamy's men ransacked the first outlet of Kentucky Fried Chicken on Brigade Road in Bangalore. That was in the mid-1990s. The vandalism attracted national and international attention. It led to a fierce debate over the entry of foreign retailers into India. Anti-KFC people argued that the American eatery would eliminate local poultries. I was confused. But I believed the anti-KFC lobby was right. Fifteen years on, I admit that I was mistaken. It is true that KFC has opened outlets all over India and is thriving. But not a single poultry or chicken shop has downed its shutters because of the advent of the American fried chicken chain. The ongoing debate over FDI in the retail sector brings back memories of those days when foreign brands ran into stiff resistance when they tried to enter India. I....

In Ayodhya, Dasaratha's wives gorged on idli-dosa

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AK Ramanujan's essay,'Three Hundred Ramayanas-Five Examples And Three Thoughts On Translation,' has finally been dropped from the history syllabus of Delhi University. I wrote the following article in the last week of February 2008. Nothing has changed in the last three and a half years. I think my three and a half years old article is as relevant today as it was then. The late AK Ramanujan is arguably one of the best-known Indian writers worldwide. Ramanujan, who taught at the University of Chicago for decades, introduced India's oral folktales to the West through his scholarly and fascinating writings and translations. The Mysore-born Ramanujan died 15 years ago in the United States but he is now making news in Delhi, no thanks to our ill-informed and self-proclaimed custodians of Hinduism and Hindu mythology: the outfits of the RSS like ABVP and VHP. Ramanujan's essay, "Three Hundred Ramayanas-Five Examples....

Solitary Song of Shimoga

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The only thing most people in Shimoga discuss these days is real estate. The real estate bug has bitten the people of Shimoga. Wherever you go in this booming town in the south central Karnataka, you witness construction work in full progress. Shimoga is no longer a sleepy, quiet provincial town once known for its great intellectual wealth and its people's unending quest for knowledge. Shimoga has always been a politically very important district contributing four chief ministers to the state. The latest contribution is the current chief minister B S Yeddyurappa. With his "ascension" as the first BJP CM in the entire South, Shimoga's real estate fortunes started to soar. A close family friend of mine whose family has been in Shimoga for over three centuries told me that a small piece of land he bought 15 years ago for just....

Gill is over the hill

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Sports minister M S Gill is an instant politician (instant as in instant coffee). He has never won any election. (The Rajya Sabha election isn't really an election. It is just a nomination and India would be better off without the house of so-called 'elders'). His understanding of public sentiment is poor. People who get power without effort begin to believe power is their birthright. They owe their authority to some individual, not to the people. This turns them into big abusers of power. With them, you must watch out for a daily display of arrogance. Gill behaved like a lout when distinguished sportsmen visited his house on Tuesday. His graceless act of pushing Satpal Singh, legendary wrestler and world champion Sushil Kumar's coach, has shocked the nation. But I am neither shocked nor surprised by Gill's behavior. He has a history of shameful, silly behavior. Six years....

Mangalore Diary: Highrises, malls & beautiful Bunt women

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One of the best descriptions of Mangalore comes from 'Outlook' editor Krishna Prasad. He writes: "The tourist guidebooks don't quite put it that way, but Mangalore has always been a bit like the city's trademark ice cream, the 'gadbad'. A potpourri of religions and languages-Hinduism and Islam, Christianity and Jainism, Tulu and Konkani, Kannada and Malayalam-that's one delicious whole. Canara Pinto buses dovetail Durgamba; Yenepoya College isn't far from St Aloysius, which isn't too far from Kasturba." Many Mangalores exist within Mangalore. It is Mangalooru in Kannada, Mangalore in English, Kudla in Tulu, Kodiyala in Konkani, Mykal in Beary and Mangalapuram in Malayalam! Perhaps no other city in India (and perhaps in the world) has so many names in so many languages. Most Mangaloreans speak three languages: Kannada, Konkani and Tulu. A few speak two more: Beary and Malayalam. Once our firebrand leader George Fernandes....

The second landing for the king of good times

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It's the latest partnership in Indian politics, the King of Good Times with Karnataka's farmer king. Liquor baron Vijay Mallya stepping out to file his nomination for the Rajya Sabha, two years after his first term ended. Backing him in his efforts is H D Deve Gowda who has 27 MLAs in the Karnataka Assembly. Gowda refused to support the Congress, and his decision to back Mallya instead has sparked off speculation of the nature of the deal struck between Mallya and the former prime minister. Mallya walked the corridors of Vidhana Soudha in Bangalore, flanked by two of Gowda's MP sons and former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy and JDS legislative party leader and MLA H D Revanna with nomination papers in his hands. Gowda's most favourite son, H D Revanna, handled all the paperwork before Mallya filed his nomination papers. For a change, Mallya was behaving....

Nithyananda, the sadhu who reads Cosmopolitan

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Nithyananda isn't your garden variety swami. He flips through glam magazines, chit-chats with the powerful, and beds the pretty and gullible. "God's will is always good, acceptable, and perfect. Let's trust God to show us the best and most bountiful way to experience His blessed gift of sex." --Kay Arthur, author of 'Sex According to God: How to Walk with Purity in a World of Temptation'. They say luck favours the brave. Sometimes it also favours the horny! Sex swami Nithyananda must be thanking the IPL for saving him from the media gaze. His Indian Sex League (ISL) is juicer than the IPL, but the TV channels were obsessed with the latter. All kinds of people come to Bangalore. It has all kinds, from saints to sinners. And sinners in the garb of saints. When Nithyananda landed in Bangalore eight years ago, he was....

Rashmi's Stilettos - Newsroom Masala

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The novel I've enjoyed the most in recent times is Stilettos in the Newsroom. I found this little book in a bookshop corner and leafed through a couple of pages. I was hooked after just one paragraph. I took it home and read it non-stop. Rashmi Kumar, a young journalist, has demystified the newsroom in this debut novel. It is a racy account of charming, 28-year-old Radhika Kenetkar's life at a Pune newspaper office. Rashmi's story-telling is candid. She writes to the point, and avoids overwrought descriptions. Like in all novels, there is probably a bit of autobiography here (Rashmi, don't throw your stilettos at me... and in any case, throwing a shoe at someone like me won't make it to the headlines!). Rashmi's lead character Radhika Kanetkar is a Delhi-born Maharashtrian who goes to her native Pune to pursue a career in....

A Decent Star falls silent

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Early morning telephone calls always bring a bad news for me. This morning it brought the sad news of the untimely death of Vishnuvardhan. He was already a big hero, years before I was born. His unforgettable, intense role as Ramachari in Naagara Haavu had made him a household name in Karnataka, decades before I started to go to school! Teenagers like me who grew up during eighties and nineties had a strange liking for Vishnuvardhan. The gigantic Rajkumar was too big and too senior for our generation. The only other film hero who attracted us was Vishnuvardhan. He was young, he was charming, sophisticated, he wore nice clothes, rode motorbike and above all he was very good in fighting scenes. Rajkumar looked like a family headman. Vishnuvardhan looked like a caring, flamboyant elder brother. He was also very decent like Rajkumar. I had met him on many....

When BJP's Things Fall Apart

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TURNING and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, THE SECOND COMING The BJP's 'former future prime minister of India' L K Advani is not a poet like that party's only real prime minister A B Vajpayee. Advani's 'weighty' biography My Country, My Life doesn't talk about poetry or literature. If he had studied poetry, Advani might have recited the above lines after watching the Reddy brothers of Bellary holding his 'national' party to ransom. Soon after B S Yeddyurappa led the BJP to victory in the Karnataka Assembly polls in May 2008, Advani had boasted that the party....