Editor wanted

Item One The venerable folk at BEST decided to provide a public information system to allow users to track bus timings. It allows commuters to receive SMSs on bus locations. The site's imaginative title: http://www.bestpis.in

Item Two Promotional ads for the new Sallu movie characterize Inspector Chulbul Pandey as
"bad ass".

All that work in the gym and then they insult his glutes?

If the marketing department meant badass, defined as a tough, aggressive, uncooperative person.. ..that I agree with

A quiz

NaBloPoMo it is! After such a long gap, it's extraordinarily difficult to get back into blobbing mode. Especially on a daily basis. Even though I started 2 weeks late. So a daily blobber I will be. Here's a quiz for crime fiction fans, answers tomorrow:

1. This detective's sidekick was reported to have a shoulder injury from a "jezail bullet" during a battle in Afghanistan. Later in the series, he mentions a thigh injury, also from a jezail bullet. Who is the unfortunate detective with the traveling bullet wound?

2. Two comically clumsy detectives who look identical, yet could not be related

3. HRF Keating, a British author wrote a detective series about a Bombay CID inspector. His first book was made into a Merchant Ivory film. Another of his books was set in Goregaon- Powai areas. Name the detective

4. In a Danish book later made into a movie, this female detective relies on her understanding of snow and ice to solve the mystery behind the death of her neighbour, an Inuit boy.

5. Agatha Christie's created a character said to resemble Christie herself- Ariadne Oliver. Oliver wrote detective stories starring a vegetarian detective who she disliked and wished she could finish off. Name the detective and the country he's from

6. A celebrated film director wrote a series on a detective Pradosh C. Mitter. Name the director/ author and the popular name for the detective

7. Next- name the female detective who is a Crimean war veteran and owns a dodo called Pickwick.

8. A short, stumpy detective, who's crime-solving ability is coloured by his Catholicism.

9. A titled, cricket-playing, whimsical gentleman detective.

10. A NY city police detective 3,000 years in the future solves mysteries on Earth and other planets. The detective's sidekick is governed by the Three Laws of Robotics. Name the detectives and the author

11. A holistic detective who investigates the "fundamental interconnectedness of all things", may be psychic, and runs up huge expense accounts

12. Elegant Effendi the miniaturist painter is murdered in the Ottaman Empire. Name the author.

Well obviously you can google these if you want.

Funerals of septa and octagenarians from natural causes I have known

What did I learn in 2006- don't go to work, or you'll have to walk home. What did I learn in 2012: always keep ice cream at home. You never know when you are going to have a tooth extracted, be put on an icecream diet and find all the shops shut for 36 hours.

"We're maroon"

Umass Amherst: We're maroon!
We're also brown.

I point out to you, (converts pointy finger into one of those Apple multi-fingered gestures)

Item 1: Anshu Jain is Deutsche Bank's CEO, first non-native German speaker
1.1: Anshu Jain is a Umass Amherst alumnus

Item 2: Hina Rabbani Bandra (I mince Khar, suburban Mumbai joke) is Pakistan's first female foreign minister, and the youngest
Point 2.1: Hina Rabbani Khar is a Umass Amherst alumnus

Item 3: Have I missed out on anyone?

Barb Wire

No, I don’t mean the movie that is basically Casablanca in a dystopian future, with Pam Anderson as Bogart.

I mean the real thing- in all its pointy glory.

My worst barb wire memory involves a bicycle. There I was, learning to cycle on a leafy University campus. I rode downhill, and felt confident enough to negotiate a sharp turn. At the crucial moment, I froze and couldn't turn or brake. As I went hand-first-to-avoid-going-face-first into a fluffy hedge, I expected it to gently break my fall, in a planty sort of way. But the university campus that I was cycling in had decided to put barb wire inside the hedge, just for fun to lacerate the tongues of passing cows.

You can imagine the result- the cycle was in two pieces, joined tenuously by the brake cables. My right palm was in similar shape. I was rushed home and taken to the nearest doctor. On a Sunday evening, that was a piles clinic. (You probably didn’t imagine that part.) They were kind enough to clean the wound and point us in the direction of a less-specialized, and less piley doctor. Who happened to be one that believed that doctors over-prescribe, and the body has natural healing process that will holistically self-heal. So no stitches for me. At the end of a week, when the bandages were removed, I found I had an angry scar along my palm. This led to two outcomes- the first was that in the years to come, I found that a sharp tap on the scar led to a shooting pain along my right hand. And second- throughout my childhood I could never claim that I had stitches. (This was an important talking point for children in the 90s).

Last week, Johhny Hoogerland reminded me of my accident. (He was hit by a car seconds before this, while cycling at high speed).



Pic source: Yahoo

In conclusion- barb wire bad. Stop hiding it in hedges. Stop using it to hem in pastures. Just stop using it. And don't call me babe.

Not quite Cinderella

The other shoe lies somewhere at the bottom of the Kundalika river, along with one earring and some of my skin.

After falling out of a raft at the start of a Grade 4 rapid, I think I'm going to go ahead and stop thinking of white water rafting as a Disney ride.

Filmi filmi, wizard howl

Two days, two deaths.
March 26th- Diane Wynne Jones
March 27th- H R F Keating

I have read one book by each of them, and seen a movie based on one of their books. Coincidence?
Yes.

The Perfect Murder was of course, neither perfect, nor a murder. It was a murderous attack on Mr. Perfect, the Parsi secretary at a South Bombay business house. Naseer, fat family tycoons, suspicious wives and daughters in law in low-cut Merchant Ivory type sari blouses, the monsoon... I remembered the movie and the author because Keating had written the initial Inspector Ghote books without ever visiting India.

Years later, the Herr Doktor gifted me Filmi Filmi, Inspector Ghote- a murder mystery on a film-set with movie stars, agents, fat financiers, light boys with ambitions to finance movies, all under suspicion. The set was set in Kamaal Amrohi studios, on JVLR (Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road, obviously) which I drove past every single time I visited Mumbai as a chile. The filmy characters even picnic in Powai, where I now live. Knowing an area that a book is set in.. joy! After all, the only thing I liked about The White Tiger was its opening line with the office address of a BPO transport agency near Electronic City, off Hosur Main Road. Ahhh, I thought.. Hosur Road, where the bison freely roam...

And then there was Ms. Wynne Jones, who should be read for her mad photograph alone. Howl's Moving Castle is of course, brilliant. It's funny, charming young adult fantasy fiction with clever bits that make you re-read the book. The movie is beautiful, as behooves young Mr Miyazaki, but it can't help but miss out on the plot twists. So I'd recommend watching it only if you aren't going to read the book. Which would be silly.

Among other series, Wynne Jones also wrote about a school for young wizards (long before she who must not be named). The Chrestomanci series. Wonderful stuff, strongly recommended for young adults. Although.. I haven't read any of them yet- I freely admit.

HRF would have approved.