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It has been a delight to watch the circus that is the Sania Mirza-Shoaib Malik wedding. The wedding itself has enough drama going for itself with Shoaib’s — ex-wife or whatever she is — leveling one new allegation every day. Sania called off her engagement with some dude a couple of months ago, and claims to be in love with Shoaib for 6-7 months. Whatever works for her, I say.
The wedding itself served a five course menu, but the following are like that awesomely delicious food item you discover after you are full :
Hindu Youth Federation wants her to marry an Indian Muslim :
Twenty members of the Hindu Youths Federation were arrested for allegedly tearing and burning pictures of tennis star Sania Mirza to protest against her proposed marriage with Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik.
The members held a demonstration earlier condemning Sania Mirza for choosing a Pakistani, and demanded that she should instead marry an Indian Muslim.
I would have an easier time getting this if this were the Indian Muslim Federation.
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Echoing similar sentiments is Pramod pink-chaddi Muthalik :
“Once she ties the knot, Sania should not be allowed to play for India. Her decision is an insult to Indians,” Sene chief Pramod Muthalik told reporters here.
“Could Sania not find any eligible bachelor among 100 crore Indians, which includes 15 crore Muslims? It is India, which is responsible for her fame and by choosing a Pakistani cricketer as her life partner, she is insulting all Indians. We totally oppose the move”, he said.
He now runs the risk of attracting pink tennis skirts.
But wouldn’t he look adorable in those ?
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Bal Thackeray proves he is equally adept at medical stuff :
Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray on Friday flayed tennis star Sania Mirza for her decision to marry Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik, saying “had Sania’s heart been Indian, it wouldn’t have beaten for a Pakistani.”
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Meanwhile, across the border, some dude wants her to play for Pakistan :
“Asian women traditionally follow their husbands which is why I’m hopeful that someday she would be inspired by Shoaib to play for Pakistan,” he added.
As a hardcore feminist, I thoroughly oppose this idea of a woman following her husband and playing for Pakistan. I’m not sure who would stay back at home and cook food if that happened.
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But taking the cake, the icing, the accompanying calories and the following burp, is Times of India. They invited astrologers to predict the fate of the Shoaib-Sania wedding.
As they say, age does not a wise person make.
Sachin Tendulkar had famously said a couple of days back that Mumbai is for all Indians (or was it a Mumbai Indians pun ?). Bal Thackeray goes for the easy bait :
“There was no need for him to take a cheeky single by making such remarks,” Sena mouthpiece Sammana quoted Thackeray as saying.
“By making these remarks, you have got run-out on the pitch of Marathi psyche. You were not even born when the ‘Marathi Manoos’ got Mumbai and 105 Marathi people sacrificed their lives to get Mumbai,” he said.
Anyone wants to take a guess who got run-out here ? You have one chance.
All the Sena had to do was keep quiet about the issue — didn’t 50 years of the Congress teach everyone this one small thing ?
It also says :
Thackeray expressed displeasure that Sachin “left the crease” and moved to the pitch of politics by making these remarks which have hurt Marathi sentiment.
If an average person should not talk about politics, who do you think votes leaders into power ? As much as this attitude irks me, I cannot help but admire how politicians want the average person to stay away from politics, except of course during elections.
And now an open letter to all kinds of Sainiks :
Listen up Sainiks, and I mean to say this in the sweetest way possible – You don’t mess with Tendulkar. You go around hitting everyone in Mumbai, but you don’t mess with Tendulkar. You comply (allegedly) with rioters, but you don’t mess with Tendulkar. You dig up pitches, but you don’t mess with Tendulkar. You do all the nonsense in the world, but you DON’T mess with Tendulkar.
A minor statistic – you have around 5 million voters. The guy has a billion die-hard fans — and that’s only just Indians.
So if it comes down to choosing between you and Tendulkar for Maharashtrians, you stand as much a chance as Warne stands with Tendulkar. As irrational as it sounds, it is true.
So what did you get — you don’t mess with Tendulkar.
Yours sincerely,
P.S. : Oh and you also don’t mess with the BCCI. Recall the last person who messed with them and isn’t messed up now.
I don’t have anything new to say about the MNS MLAs attacking a colleague in the Maharashtra assembly and their subsequent suspension, but I think it is unfair on the people of the 4 constituencies who now will have no representation in the State assembly. If people are still bothered about such trivialities, the least they should do is hold their legislators responsible for their unruly conduct.
On the language issue that is the root cause here, I don’t think I should be speaking. Although I consider myself a Maharashtrian (definition here), my views of the MNS have often been misconstrued as the views of an ‘outsider’. As for myself, I can pass off as a Maharashtrian easier than some Marathi friends of mine, but that isn’t pertinent here.
I have come to believe that the only ones speaking or discussing the issue of MNS should be the Marathi people. Far too much noise is made by others for someone to pause and ask a Marathi person about his say in the matter.
Trust me, you’ll see some alarming results. I have come across individuals (in the U.S., ironically) who explicitly or implicitly support the MNS. You’d think that someone who studied at Stanford (purely used as a metric of education, extent of global awareness, ubiquitous ideologies and lack of friends from other universities) would know enough to disagree with the MNS, but I’ve seen exceptions.
When the mainstream media makes this much noise, they are only helping a Marathi person feel more marginalized, thereby aligning him further with the MNS ideology. We don’t really want to know that the MNS MLAs’ kids study in English medium schools. We don’t want the opinions of Mulayam Singh and Lalu Prasad Yadav whenever the MNS raises its head. The average Marathi person needs to hear moderate and liberal views coming from Marathi people, and therein lies the biggest problem — lack of Marathi voices against the MNS ideology. This could imply 2 things :
– the average Marathi person supports the MNS, which is quite rational if you ask me. Why would you not support — or why would you speak out against — someone who claims to be fighting for you ? Heck, tomorrow if there is a TamBram superhero who goes around beating up non-Tamils, I might not speak out against him (Of course, I will. That’s just an example).
– the average Marathi person doesn’t care.
In both these cases, the clout of the MNS will only grow, because you need individuals who disagree with the MNS to halt their march. This needs more Marathi voices to be heard on public forums, blogs, Twitter, Facebook and GTalk status messages. The Marathi voice is silent there.
In a sense, the Marathi person faces the same situation an average Muslim faces in India. You cannot just sit at home and criticize your ilk — we, and it pains me to say so, need to hear your opinion aloud.
I came across this interview of the Thackeray cousins by Rajdeep Sardesai, filmed separately of course.
Rajdeep Sardesai queries Uddhav Thackeray in English, Uddhav replies in Hindi.
Rajdeep Sardesai questions Raj Thackeray in Hindi, Raj replies in Marathi.
They sure have the whole concept of language messed up, no ?
But I shouldn’t bother, as long as they speak any language without coercing others. As far as language is concerned, I was debating over the issue of our national language with a friend and I mentioned language should be considered as a means of communication and nothing more. That would get rid of a lot of problems.
Imagine if the Neanderthal man got all worked up about preserving his language and culture, this post would look like “aaaa .. eooe .. uuu .. bbaaa“. Good luck decoding that.
P.S. : The interview in itself though, has nothing to talk about, just typical stuff. But you may check it out.
Recently, French President Nicholas Sarkozy effected a ban on the burqa. Not to be left behind, the Sena supremo has made a similar demand for India.
Which brings me to another thought.
If the burqa is to be banned, why not the sari ? If the burqa is a sign of subservience, so is the sari in many households. If you argue that a lot of women wear the sari out of preference, the same can be argued of the burqa, I believe.
Okay maybe they are slightly different, but I am extrapolating.
Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray speaks out (or atleast has it attributed to him in a Saamna article) against the racist attacks in Australia : (There is so much of irony in that statement. And irony is the sweetest way to word it.)
“Australian players in IPL teams should be removed. Team owners like Vijay Mallya, Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta should display nationalism by doing so,” the Sena chief said.
While I assumed that the Shiv Sena was against any form of public display of affection (PDA), their liberal views on this form of PDA come as an eye-opener.
Er .. forgot to add .. the IPL just got over. And unless Mr. Modi wills otherwise, there isn’t another one for a year. But not to worry, we’ll think of something in the meanwhile.
Link separately by Rahul T.
On the subject of not taking too nicely to defeat, Bal Thackeray has something to say :
Upset over the poor show of the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance in traditional strongholds of Mumbai and Thane, Sena chief Bal Thackeray on Monday said the ‘Marathi manoos’ should explain reasons for not voting for the party.
Firstly, I too am annoyed at the ‘Marathi manoos‘. Not voting for the Sena is not only disrespectful to the party that originally beat up migrants, it is also disrespectful to the millions of shards of glass windows from McDonald and Pizza Hut outlets, apart from a few thousand cards that were respectfully cremated by them. And we all know our culture teaches us to respect the deceased.
But yes, I am annoyed at the Shiv Sena for blaming the ‘Marathi manoos‘. The statement directly challenges the intelligence of the voter. Are they suggesting the voter doesn’t have the sense to see for himself who beat up more people before deciding whom to vote for ? I would be quite annoyed if I were the voter.
The statement also adds :
The Marathi voter, who strayed away from the Sena, should explain to us why he did so and what harm had Shiv Sena done to him, Thackeray said.
I think leaders are answerable to the people and not vice versa, but of course, I have been wrong sometimes.
Someone suddenly remembers the tax payers’ money :
In a scathing editorial in Saamna, the party mouthpiece, Bal Thackeray said a huge amount of tax-payers’ money has been wasted in providing security to “Kasab Saheb”(Kasab Sir).
Could someone with internet access nearby please pass on the results of “Shiv Sena glass” ?
Interestingly, the reason we are having a trial for Kasab is pretty much the very reason the senior Sena leader is living in a mansion comfortably in his final years.
On the subject of Kasab, the trial is quite possibly going to be delayed a bit owing to the 11,000 page chargesheet (which could be somewhere around the number of pages I must have read in a lifetime) and the fact that an Urdu translation of it has been requested. Serious I am. But I am quite peeved that more questions are being asked about the speed of the trial than security improvements after 26/11.
Public sentiment is strange.
Do we prefer terrorism to be associated only with cross-border actions as it gives us the comfort of identifying an enemy ?
Is an Islamist (as some of them have been branded) the only face of terror or could it be someone we support too ?
What exactly is even the definition of terrorism ?
Amit Varma makes you think about the above questions and a few more in a piece that chronicles the recent incidents by powers of Sri Rama Sena, Shiv Sena and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena :
On the other hand, let’s look at the definition of terrorism according to Merriam-Webster: “The systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.”
Is this not “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion”? And in all these cases, some of the accused might get arrested, but are released in no time and are back in business. As I’d once written, mobs in India have the license to do as they please if they do it under the banner of politics or religion. If you and I go and vandalize a hotel lobby or beat up women in a lounge bar, you can bet we’ll be thrown into jail, and rightfully so. But if we do it under the pretext of defending our culture or our religion, then anything goes. The rule of law, in such situations, is a joke.
Thinking is mandatory, commenting is not.
The MNS chief would be a happy man today.
Mumbai defeats UP in the Ranji trophy finals.
MNS manages to drive out all Pakistani terrorists out of Mumbai. No .. wait. Just the comedians ?? Yeah but still.
MNS forces all shopkeepers to take books by Pakistani authors off the shelf. Now if only I could name one book by a Pakistani author.
But just when I thought that everyone will truly fear the MNS now, this snap comes around (edit : since this was causing confusion, focus on the pink turban in the snap and not the traditional costume. Not just turban, ‘pink’ turban).
