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Who says life is certain?
Tragedy sometimes strikes with stunning, cruel swiftness.
Here, watch the below video of an unfortunate incident that occurred today at the Patalpani Water Falls in Indore, Madhya Pradesh.
(Via Vasanth’s FB account)
Related Stores:
Indore: Family on picnic swept away by wave
Indore City Guide, Hotels, Colleges
Man, it’s been a month since SI’s last installment of Incredible India, those only in India real-life stories.
Here we go with another episode.
* All these years, we deluded ourselves into believing that the way to get strong is to eat nutritious food and visit the gym regularly.
Hell, what do we know!
SI blog reader Rohit Reddy writes to inform us that in some instances the road to good health and strength is paved with blood in India.
A native of Madhya Pradesh with a yearning to be strong took a different tack to achieve his goal – drinking his wife’s blood regularly.
Bizarre as it may sound, we are not kidding.
Here, read this excerpt from the Times of India:
A 22-year-old woman in Damoh district of Madhya Pradesh has told the police that her husband drank her blood for the past three years. “He used to take a syringe and draw blood from my arms,” Deepa Ahirwar said. “He would then empty it in a glass and drink it. For three years he did this on a regular basis, threatening me of dire consequences if I revealed this to anyone.”
Deepa was married to an agricultural labourer, Mahesh Ahirwar, in Shikarpura village in 2007. A few months after the marriage, Mahesh started drawing blood from his wife’s veins and consuming it. He said it made him strong and did not stop even when Deepa was pregnant.
* We’ve heard of accounts being presented to the government at the end of the financial year.
But at the famous Tirupati temple in South India the officials presents the annual accounts to ‘Lord Venkateswara,’ the presiding deity of the temple every year on July 16 in annual Anivara Asthanam festival.
Weird, these practices of the Hindus.
* In India, being taken to the police station for questioning is full of risk for the suspects, who disappear, are encountered, blinded, raped or just tortured to death, irrespective of the fact that all suspects are innocent until a court declares otherwise.
Fayaz Usmani, a suspect in the recent Mumbai blasts, was taken by the police for questioning on Saturday and before you know it the man’s dead!
Strange, indeed.
The Mumbai Police say they didn’t kill him! 
Related Stories:
Man drank wife’s blood for 3 years in Madhya Pradesh
CID probe ordered into death of blasts suspect
If it were human, Indian software services provider Infosys would be feeling a sharp pain in its back-side today.
For the New York Times has thoroughly buggered India’s software darling in a critical piece posted on its home page.
The NYT story says that Infosys is:
facing an expanding federal investigation prompted by claims from an American whistle-blower that it misused short-term visitors’ visas to bring in low-cost workers from India.
Citing a lawsuit alleging Visa malpractices engaged in by Infosys, the NYT story paints a dark picture of the company that has brought so much misery to U.S. programmers by importing Indian software coolies on H1B and other Visas.
Infosys Project Manager Jack ‘Jay’ Palmer filed the lawsuit after his internal efforts to resolve his concerns went nowhere.
Infosys is also one of the largest users of H1B Visas, which lets foreign workers with specialized skills work in the U.S. for a few years.
But as the U.S. unemployment picture worsened, the American authorities started clamping down via number of methods including reduction in Visas and strict examination of documents.
At the crux of Jack Palmer’s lawsuit is the allegation that Infosys then illegally got workers into the U.S. on B1 Visas, which are non-work Visas, and illegally put them to work here at client sites.
Here’s an excerpt from the lawsuit:
In March of 2010, Plaintiff was invited to Bangalore, India for planning meetings. During one of the meetings, Infosys management discussed the need to, and ways to, “creatively” get around the H-1B limitations and process and to work the system in order to increase profits and the value of Infosys’ stock. The decision was made by management to start using the B-1 visa program to get around the H-1B restrictions.
If, a big If, Infosys indeed did what it is being accused of, then it’d be a major violation of American immigration laws.
The New York Times‘ story says:
Aside from Mr. Palmer, at least two other Infosys managers in the United States have submitted internal whistle-blower reports pointing to Indians on business visitor visas who were performing longer-term work not authorized under those visas, according to internal documents and current Infosys managers.
Infosys has denied the allegations in Palmer’s lawsuit.
Notwithstanding its sterling reputation with the unwashed masses, Infosys has never been an exemplar of probity. Continue reading »
Floyd Cardoz, who was the chef and partner at the failed Indian restaurant Tabla in New York City, is the new Top Chef Master in the third season of Bravo TV Networks competition.
Cardoz’ winning meal included a South Indian favorite Upma, a rice-crusted snapper in a fennel-laced broth and Rendang, an Indonesian beef stew.
“You cooked a meal that was deeply skilled and very, very memorable,” said judge James Oseland, Editor-in-Chief of Saveur magazine (the other judges were food writers Gael Greene and Ruth Reichl).
Floyd Cardoz, who hails from Bombay and Goa, pledged his $100,000 prize to cancer research.
Tabla, where Cardoz worked for a dozen years, was one of those fusion restaurants that served bastardized Indian cuisine. You know stuff like Stone Church Farms Normandy Duck ($28), Elysian Fields Lamb Loin & Short Rib ($32) and Roasted Poulet Rouge Chicken ($26).
Which sane Indian restaurant serves Stone Church Farms Normandy Duck, Elysian Fields Lamb Loin & short Rib and Roasted Poulet Rouge Chicken.
No wonder Tabla failed.
Failed Tabla Chef Floyd Cardoz Blah-blahing about his Win
Related Stories:
Tabla NYC Kisses the Dust; Closing Dec. 30
VK Shashikumar: Can you tell us once and for all, did Prabhakaran plan Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination?
Kumaran Patmanathan (LTTE leader): It was well planned and done by Prabhakaran. It is the truth and everybody knows it. At this point I what to say to the Indian people and specially to the Gandhi family, I want to apologise for Prabhakaran mistake. I say please forgive us, we beg you, our people are struggling here, please help us to live as humans. Sorry for all this. We know the feeling of the son of Rajiv Gandhi and that his daughter.
It’s a human nature. It is bonding with father and daughter attachment. Even sometime I left my daughter I feel very sad they know. You know the family sentiment.
Source: CNN-IBN
If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a million times.
The Sri Lankan Tamils are NOT our Tamils.
They deserve no support, no sympathy, no compassion and certainly no aid.
Let the Sri Lankan Tamils rot in hell.
For their support of the LTTE monster Prabhakaran and his thugs, the Sri Lankan Tamils are paying a heavy price now. But they have no one to blame but themselves.
The LTTE animals made a bad world worse. Continue reading »
No, the N in Nollywood has nothing to do with nudity or nude films. Get that dirty thought out of your minds, all ye concupiscent rats.
After we twice came across references to the Nigerian film industry aka Nollywood in the last week or so, we felt compelled to bring it to your attention considering y’all have an insane attachment to this movie thing.
Nollywood is a reference to the Nigerian movie industry. A word play on Hollywood, not unlike Bollywood (Hindi films), Kollywood (Tamil films) or Tollywood (Telugu ‘movies’).
A few days back, we saw our first reference to Nollywood in one of the unlikeliest places. In a work on politics by Francis Fukuyama (of End of History fame)
Francis Fukuyama in chapter one of his recent magnum opus The Origins of Political Order describes the Nigerian movie business thus:
(A) film industry that produces as many titles as India’s famed Bollywood, but films have to earn a quick return because the government is incapable of guaranteeing intellectual property rights and preventing products from being copied illegally. (p.13)
Wow, that sure sounds like Bollywood, doesn’t it?
After all, Bollywood too is characterized by the production of huge numbers of films every year in the Hindi language. And if you add up movies made in India’s regional languages (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bhojpuri and Oriya) as well, the number of films made in India swells significantly.
All of them at the mercy of the ruthless pirates. Three days after a Bollywood film is released, it is available for rent and sale across grocery stores in America, 10,000-miles away from Bombay/Mumbai, the hub of the Indian movie industry.
Of course, Indian movie producers seldom take on pirates because most are themselves thieving swines of the first order, often shamelessly filching successful (Ghajini from Memento) and the not-so-successful Hollywood plots (Tees Maar Khan from After the Fox).
Nollywood like the Indian movie business is a glorious triumph of quantity over quality.
Some reports suggest that locals in Nigeria believe more films are made in their country than there are stars in the sky!
Sarah Lacy, our second introduction to the Nigerian film business, writes in the digital media publication TechCrunch, that Nollywood churns out hundreds of films a month with ‘most shot on a shoe-string budget of about $15,000 per picture.’
Apparently, there are few theatrical releases in Nigeria. Most Nollywood films are released not in theaters unlike the Indian movie business but straight to DVD and on TV. Not surprising when you consider that even Lagos, Nigeria’s capital and a city of 15-million has less than five theaters.
The DVDs sell for a dollar or two and are eagerly snapped up not merely by locals but all across Africa and the Nigerian diaspora. Again, we see a similarity in the inroads Bollywood has made in neighboring countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, as well as with the large diaspora in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, UK, Canada and USA.
Heart of a Fighter (A Nollywood film)
If you believe those anonymous scribblers on Wiki, Nollywood is the second largest film industry in the world (in quantity not earnings or quality) yielding only to the top-ranker India.
Poor USA is third in this mad quantity game.
And for those like yours truly who bitch and moan at the theft by Indian movie-makers, the Nigerians are ahead in the scam game. According to Lacy, the Nigerians sometimes release the same movie as many as four times with different titles. Lo, here we were under the delusion that our desis were the ne plus ultra of crooked behavior.
Piracy too is rampant in Nigeria and the window of opportunity for Nollywood filmmakers to make money off their films is a fortnight or less.
If you think Bollywood directors Ram Gopal Varma or Priyadarsan are film factories churning out film after film in quick succession, consider the Nigerian director Chico Ejiro, who is said to have directed over 80 films in an eight-year period. Ejiro, it seems, can complete production on a movie in as little as three days.
As in India, Hollywood films play second fiddle in Nigeria too. The local industry is entrenched and the “family-oriented” Nigerian movies are said to be more popular over American films, which, as we should know after years here, is all over the place in respect of themes.
Just as we were concluding this post, we came across references to Nollywood’s competitors, Ghallywood and Lolliwood (the Ghanian and Liberian film industries respectively).
So, if it’s any consolation to y’all, Indians are not the only ones making crappy films in large numbers. It warms the cockles to know there are other humans making movies so much worse than our junk!
Related Stories:
Nollywood profile on Wiki
Nollywood: Lights, camera, Africa
Who gives a f*ck if the poor in India can’t get food to eat.
Who gives a f*ck if income disparities in India are rising sharply.
Who gives a f*ck if Anna Hazare is on a fast unto death.
Rejoice, my countrymen.
Uncork the champagne for India’s private jet business is expanding.
Thank God, the super-rich now don’t have to rub shoulders with all you hoi polloi, all ye rabble slaving away at Wipro, Infosys, TCS and Reliance anymore.
Not for the super-rich, your stinking breath or your body coming in close contact with their Armani threads and the Gucci handbags.
Private Jets Rising in India
In its inaugural report on the private jet landscape within India, Hong Kong based boutique private jet advisory practice Firestone Management Group recently said that as of March 15, 2011 there were currently 136 private jets registered in India. Continue reading »
The 2011 Indian census puts India’s literacy rate at 74.04% and the population at 1.21 billion.
That works out to about 314.6 million illiterates in India.
The U.S. population as per the 2010 census is 308.75 million.
And to think we outsource our IT services to these illiterate baboons. 
No wonder software is increasingly buggy these days.
The Times pretty much overlooked the Holocaust as it was happening.
- Bill Keller, Executive Editor, New York Times in The New York Times Magazine p.12, March 27, 2011
Well, this certainly is a shocker to present-day readers of the Times.
Millions of Jews were gassed at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Dachau and Bergen-Belsen, worked to death and horrific experiments performed on them and the NYT overlooked all of these monstrosities as they were happening!
Makes you wonder what the NYT is overlooking today.
Or is that something only our grandchildren will read 50 years hence.
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