Why Sex (Sucks) In the City!!

1. As always, its just about a parade of brands, more brands and this time some gross Arab ostentatiousness thrown in with Middle East prudishness being caricaturised. "Dubai is over. Abu Dhabi is the Middle East" is the tagline used by the Arabs who woo Samantha to come over with her three friends to make their new hotel a brand

2. The movie maintains real time...Big and Carrie are now married for 2 years..the time since the last time they got together for the big screen and holy matrimony. Children are now grown..Miranda's cute red-haired little dork is a tooth gone little brat while Charlotte has her two girls ...But its evident that all the problems of life went on deep storage to be taken out two years later...

3. I'd like to have a relationship like these single women of New York manage to find. One where everything is fine till the spotlight is turned on it and then suddenly the husband hogging the remote, wanting to eat in and not really liking the designer, gay, brand talk circuit pops out like pimples on the happy marriage landscape.Isn't two years like quite a long time to get used to habits like these? Or do these things start rankling only post a couple years of togetherness?

4. I became a huge fan of the Sex and The City television series about five years ago, I think. Watching the series, season by season was a favourite passtime of my sisters and friends. But watching it with popcorn and wine at home over the weekends is lovely. Paying nearly 500 bucks (8 pounds) to watch it in the theatre somehow seems criminal in my present student situation.

5. The four ladies are hotter than any 40 year old women have the right to be...But the pressures of keeping Sex and The City true to the '30something single women living life at their own terms' through into their forties is somehow beginning to wear thin for me. No amount of flattering camera angles can keep the weary lines that have started appearing on the faces of Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha.Samantha - the oldest of the pack seems the best maintained. But wonder, if the loyal audience who continue to be the patrons of Sex and the City for over a decade now would mind if the women had more than just fashion escapades.

6. Carrie's life has hardly progressed now that she is steady with Big. Wonder why she is still the protagonist when the others seem to have moved on with life and age but this woman seems to be in time warp.

7. By the way, even the Arabs won't know this...according to Miranda, the way to say Yes in Arabic is 'Haan ji'. Guess the Indians in the Sex and City team tricked the director and script writer to have a couple of moments of private laughs.

8. There are some fun moments but some are too gross or too over the top. The gay wedding scene at the beginning is just soooooo stereotyped.

9. Caricaturing of Arab life and mindset, the focus on how women in burkha have to lift their naqaab every time to pop a french fry in. Then there is the revelation for the Fashion conscious NY-4 that women roaming around in burkhas around souks in the Gulf wear Armanis and YSL under their homogenising garbs.

10. The Indian butler to Carrie at the Abu Dhabi hotel gives her profound insight into Love. Gaurav talks about meeting his wife once every three months if he can afford it. Hmmm..he's in a great job, if he can manage to go home every 3 months isn't it? But to the Americans, it seems akin to slave labour. Enough for Carrie to leave back loads of cash to reunite him with his wife when she is forced to leave Abu Dhabi thanks to their desert escapades

11. Guess now I understand why Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie) seemed so unsure during the promotions, praying that enough people come to see the movie!!!!

Best lines/moments of the Film:

Poor naive Charlotte's attention is brought to her new Irish nanny's 'wholesome' assets given a free rein...Samantha remarks that hiring such nannies should be against the Law. And the writer Carrie Bradshaw (who's now conveniently using Preston whenver possessiveness strikes) comes up with a killer punning on Jude LAW ( Got the joke? Check here if you don't!)

Liza Minelli's guest appearance in the movie is justified by Miranda as When there is too much of gay thing happening, Liza is forced to appear!

Miranda and Charlotte decide to have a mummy evening. Each bitch/rant or rave is followed by a sip of the martini...hic hic moments are always fun...Candid admissions suddenly make you feel like some people have actually grown older - unlike the protagonist Carrie.

But the classic one is the one which appears on a trailer that precedes the movie - Those who are here to watch this movie are either women, gays or boyfriends who have been dragged along by their girlfriends.

The thing is no one forced me at knifepoint to go and watch it. But after being a fan of Carrie Bradshaw and her writing and the lives of the 30 something women in the tv series, I feel shortchanged by both movies. They are now in their forties. Samantha is going through her menopausal pangs. But their portrayals on the big screen have become more caricaturish, perfectly fitting into their stereotypical moulds that have been carved out.

I wish the director had tried to do something a bit different. I understand that this movie is only for the loyal followers. I was one of the TV series. But there was more to the series than just great clothes and shoes.

Sex Sucks in The City... My gyaan - hmmm...go for the brands, shoes and dresses if that's to your liking. Not much of a story, nor are the women looking convinced about what they are doing like they did in the TV series. There are some moments but the rest goes off in a blur while a lot many stereotypes continue to be perpetrated on the "dumb Americans".

The Wrath of the Chain Emails!

I have been neglecting my assorted inboxes for a while now. So this morning I sat down to clean them up. That's when I realised I have mails from a lot of my old friends, colleagues, classmates. Few are personal. They don't even have a personalised subjected line any more. Most read something like this

Fwd: (Fwd)(Fwd)(Fwd)(Fwd)(Fwd)This really happened to me!

Can you call these email forwards spam? No you can't. For they are being sent to you by some soul that believes, a soul that needs something positive in life, perhaps the need to do something positive at that moment. I would like to believe that it's that thought that is making them send it to the first 10 people on their address book. Since my name begins with 'D'( psst...I just blog as Journomuse) I'm inadvertantly in the first 10-20 hapless people who get automatically remembered in such mails.

I like to believe that I am pretty choosy about the standard of those that I forward.

As a policy I do not send assorted Ganeshas, Balajis and Lakshmis to 10 people on my list within 5 minutes of receiving it. I do not believe that Apple or Microsoft is giving out free laptops, Iphones and what nots to anyone who can find 50 people on their list. These mails are often those that someone really bored while in office randomly typed out and added a lure : Send this to 20 and you shall have the latest Apple Ipad, Send this to 15 and we shall give you the latest Iphone. Perhaps if they had written, if you send it to 10 or less, we'd send you another mail saying 'Go to Hell' that might have been a sufficient deterrant. But the mentality remains What's the Harm in trying. So you waste your time and some poor soul's inbox space clicking on their email ids. 

Flora might have fallen and broken her hip because she chose to leave one such email open and scoff about it with Clara by the coffee machine. Realising her 'grave misdeed', she might have even got herself back into divine favour by not just sending it to 10, but 20 people to do amends, but like Shania Twain crooned "That don't impress me much". Neither does it scare me into compliance. It just makes me marvel at those little jobless gnats who wrote these long mails out on behalf of the assortment of Hindu Gods ( and there are just so many of them to invoke!) promising their benevolence and their wrath in the matter of 500 odd words.

From beginning my account as a gullible '$1 donor' to little Amy's cancer cure where Hotmail promised to pay $1 for every email id on a chain mail to now, heartlessly clicking on the tick boxes to batch delete - I have become a ruthless email incinerator. It took me about 25 spam mails in my Hotmail inbox promising me 'Quick ways to Increase My D$%^ size' and 'The Magic Potion to keep Happiness in my Bedroom' to realise how I had aided in littering my own inbox by pledging to help my little cyber Amy in curing her cancer.

At some level perhaps we are all suckers for some kind of reassurance that if we do something good, there will be immediate divine repayment in cash or kind of our choice. If not, there is an oil slick being spread outside your doorstep to punish you for your wickedness. Why do we fall for this ruse? I could perhaps attribute everything that has ever gone wrong in my life, from the haldi stain on my new white top to the missing five pound note on the wrath of the chain emails that I studiously ignored.

To every such mail that promises me a divine bounty at the end of the completion of the task, I just want to ask, WHY? WHY DO YOU FORWARD SUCH MAILS? ARE YOU SCARED OF BEING A BAD PERSON BY PRESSING DELETE ON A MAIL THAT HAS A 'GOD'S PHOTO' ON IT OR ARE YOU SO JOBLESS THAT EVEN MINDLESS FORWARDING MAKES YOU FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE A PILE OF WORK TO GET THROUGH?

Frankly I enjoy reading the African Spam mails, that tell you the painstakingly sad story about a clueless 21 year old with millions that her father left behind but with some bank glitch that requires her to use your bank account to transfer all her dead man's stash. I give marks for innovation to that...If someone is gullible and greedy enough to fall for that ruse, he/she deserves it for their greed couched in empathy, don't they?

Will this post invite the Wrath of the Chain Emails on Me??? I'm waiting.....

I long to break the glass wall....

I was in London, yet again..just the other day...I believe there will be constant travelling up and down from Brighton to London and back...The term is nearly over...

Every time I am in London, I go like a moth attracted by the flame to Oxford Circus...The tube station is by now familiar...I can walk with my eyes closed towards the exit that takes me to Oxford Street. More often than not, I indulge myself in some good old fashioned window shopping...If the posters of 'Sale' manage to penetrate the tinted shades that I keep my eyes covered with these days, then my credit card quivers in fear...in anticipation of a merciless assault on its plastic spirit - a reckless swipe.

The cash register is prominently just inside the huge entrance...I swear I saw it wink at me and rub its hand in glee...The last time I was there, I spent most of the money I made with part time work - the excuse then was 'It's my Birthday'.

This time too, I had a valid excuse...In a month's time I'm going home...A few little presents to fill my empty bags...The evening was all planned out...My backpack was deliberately empty to stuff the shopping bags and make it easier to carry the loot back home...I swear I heard my credit card sigh the way harassed employees do as the Boss leads them on...

But this time around, I met someone...I chatted with her...and she cured me of the need for Retail Therapy..

NO.. she was not a counsellor...(You think I'd waste my precious time and money relying on the NHS here??)nor an evangelist spreading the good word of the Lord...She was a mannequin....at my favourite store Zara...

Hmmmm...now where did I meet her? I walked out of H&M disgusted at the lack of anything that I thought made it to my Take Home To India list....Normally when there is neither the willingness nor the money, there are usually a zillion things that scream out to me to buy them...And I walk like a coward, with my head bowed reciting all the important chores that had dragged me to London....Today, H&M had nothing for me...Losers, they lost a client...And then my mental GPS lead me automatically to Zara...That shows my determination to spend money...

Zara to the uninitiated, is a brand that is far more expensive,veers towards designer chic...

And there she was, outside...in the pretty window..with an assortment of men...

I could not help myself...I looked down at the lard I conceal cleverly with pretty cuts of fabric and jackets..and there she was...looking effortlessly sculpted...no evidence of workouts or liposuction...it was her hair that enthralled me...Jet black..shoulder length with an underlying fringe of shockingly white hair..I guess they call it Platinum Blonde...Same difference...

Cool Linens are the Zara summer look...attitude poured right down from the slant of her head through the practised pose of her right hand resting on her bent thigh...The Barbie of Zaradom...and next to her sat her Ken...Looking sufficiently in awe and adoring...but a couple of inches away from her...

As I studied her look, I saw her raise her eyebrow at me...And I glared back...Haughty, she knows I could suck all my breath in out of my belly and hold it somewhere in my ribs...but I'd still not be able to sit that effortlessly without worrying about where the unflattering creases were forming on my attire...

Is this the look you want, she seemed to mock...No thank you, not really my style - was my retort...she tried angling her hand closer to Ken...Dumb Ken was lost in translation...I sympathised...and then the dam broke..

Out came the longing to be normal....

I watch about a hundred thousand people walk up and down the street....Some look in with the same envy disguised as indifference that you threw my way...the others just look through me...They walk on...children stand here, unnoticed by their harassed mothers...making faces at me..knowing well that I won't scare them back...I try..but my muscles are sculpted in plastic..they don't yield when I tell them to.

I want to walk on the other side...I want to get out of this place...I sympathised..asked if her legs ached from holding the pose for long...my legs don't cramp...but I long to walk...to feel the ground under my feet...to feel the breeze blow through my hair...Then I wouldn't have to care about showing off these clothes for hapless ones like you to be enthralled and succumb to the cash register's ugly advances....What's the point of being beautiful? I want to be free....

Now I see her in a new light...She is beautiful, she is classy..she is caged...a glass wall keeps her enslaved...no where to run...I don't have her style, nor the panache to carry off what she can...but my legs are free...it can take me away...moving when I will them to move...So move them, I did....Walked away fast...

Smiled a little smile to myself....Revelled in the freedom...the plastic in my wallet jingled happily along with the pound coins...they were safe..for now..

Happily,

A Note From Me to Myself....

Its been over six days since my last post...I have been breathless, meeting deadlines, trying too much in too little time...being a little greedy in my attempt to cram 28 hours of living in 24 hours. I used to be an expert at this, till not long ago...Not anymore.

But life in Britain has made me a little lax, I think....I like my weekends, I like my breaks, I like my little 'intellectual time outs'. But over the last week, I took on just a little too much on my plate...tried juggling work and my dissertation and a couple of trips to London. 

Net result: Breathless and a sudden feeling of being out of control....Moreover, I haven't posted too...So I haven't heard from e-friends I have gotten so used to hearing from. Nor have I had the time to listen to them or read their posts...Time to make amends..

So what are my thoughts for today? Well, it has to be something I have been planning for sometime...It was to be a daily affair...but then remember, I'm in the process of setting up a Procrastinator's Anonymous.

A hasty note from me to myself....( Well, I can imagine atleast some of you chuckling to yourself, wondering when is it that my blog is not about me and myself...hmmm..my only mumbled response is this is my online diary...I'm glad I can share it with you as long as you bear with me...( rhymes too, doesn't it?) Bracket in bracket..too many thoughts cramping the head...)

For my thinking convenience and of course your reading ease, I shall bullet point the notes ...Works best...I shall aim for ten and refresh them with fresh perspective in the coming weeks. 

1. Try to take only so much work that you can finish without whining, pining or moaning about no time
2. While cramping your day with 15 Things to Do, also remember to include cleaning the pig sty you call your room.
3. Having too much work on hand is no excuse to calling 'reheating readymade food in the microwave' as cooking.
4. Endless cups of chai and fruit bread that proclaims itself to be 1 out of 5 servings of fruit that you need everyday are not healthy balanced meals.
5. Being caught with too many unanswered messages on Facebook and hating the pile of messages that need to be answered is no reason to hypocritically begin a group "I hate Facebook"
6. Looking out of the window and enjoying a sunny day and imagining the walk that you should be taking to exercise your lardy self does not constitute excersise
7. Refusing to let your brain comprehend theories that bored academics spent all their lives crafting will not ease your path to the dissertation that is currently the bugging the living daylights off you.
8. Not being able to afford half a day in a spa or an evening eating your favourite but expensive Greek cuisine cannot be slotted as victimisation by a cruel society
9.  Finding more excuses to justify your current state of misery is not going to make your present any more desirable or your future any better. 
10. Stop making these stupid notes and get back to doing something more constructive, you lazy ass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

 

PS : Thank you Hugh Prather for a nice title to happily distort and the picture to someone on the Net...If you hate that I used it, please send me a message and I shall dutifully take it off...the fact that I happily ripped it should be taken as Imitation is the Best Form of Flattery...

Brighton on my Blackberry

On a balmy summer evening, as I walked down the Brighton pier...in the distance, in the sun-dappled sparkling waters of the Brighton beach...shimmered the ruins of the Western pier...

There is currently only one functional pier in Brighton that is called as the Brighton Pier now...But the one you see, in this picture is the Western Pier...both were built in the mid nineteenth century..But the Western Pier was shut down in 1975 and in the early part of this decade was gutted down nearly completely in a massive fire . 

Many find this structure, eerie and desolate...I, on the other hand, find it interesting..To me this is the image of Brighton that captivates me most. These pictures were taken from the only functional Pier, the Brighton Pier( also called as the Palace Pier)

I was checking how good my camera on my new Blackberry phone is...and though I can't say much for the 2MP camera in low light, in bright sunshine like this day offered, I love the frames...

In the summer months, the sunset is roughly at about 7.30-8PM...the days are longer, sun rise happens by 5AM ( though I'm never awake to capture the magnificent hues of the sky) This picture is a favourite one of mine..The Brighton skyline on the right, the burnt Pier in the yonder..and the rails of the Brighton pier in the foreground...with sun dappled sea stretching out...

Ask me what I love most about the Brighton beach and I'll say its the pebbled beach front...no sand here..just pebbles and more pebbles for miles...

And here's one final picture from my phone, taken from the Seafront of the old pier...The Brighton authorities are planning to pull it down completely and replace it with a swanky white apparition...I'm appalled...Even if this is a burnt-down Pier, to me it has history...and tearing down history so ruthlessly...is that necessary? 

 

If you'd like to see more of my Brighton seafront pictures - check here

An Anti-Climatic Vote

At 7AM this morning, Britain began its mammoth excercise...The process of Voting a new government in...Now, I was wondering why today, I chose to post on the British elections and not the death sentence given to Kasab? I was in Mumbai covering the 26/11 siege - watching the Taj burning up-close and personal.. So there is definitely a sense of closure for me, though I am not naive to imagine that this sentence would mean that tomorrow he would be made to pay for the terror he and his now-dead partners unleashed on Mumbai.

But today, I dedicate some time to the British elections. The election seemed to me like a staid grand aunt of the flashy American Presidential elections...While the whole world had put aside considerable media space and discussion time to Obama's historical ascendancy to power, except in the UK, there seems hardly much interest in the election of a new government..

Frankly speaking, across Britain too, I hardly see much excitement....Between current PM Gordon Brown, Lib- Dem leader Nick Clegg and the blue-eyed boy of the Tories, David Cameron - they tried whipping up some interest...Three head-to-head debates relayed on national television was pretty well-watched, with the leaders proving to be good orators who gave as good as they got. But like British films which seem like poor step-sisters of flashy Hollywood, Browleggameron's ( that's my term for their combined crowd-pulling power) box-office skills are hardly anything to write home about...

So here's my personal experience...About a month ago, I got a registration slip by mail, that seemed to audaciously suggest to me that I am a Registered Voter in Britain....My first impulse was to junk it in the rubbish bin along with other spam mails...And then, I took a closer look..wait it said my polling booth is a building inside the campus and they had my name and address right...With my mouth in a little O, I walked back home wondering which schizophrenic self of me had applied for a British citizenship for them to notify me as a registered voter...

And then I found out most of my friends had also received it...The feeling of self importance, deflated sufficiently, I went about figuring out how we became eligible to vote in the General Elections that will decide who will form the next government...The answer: We all belonged to the erstwhile Pax Brittanica...now the Commonwealth..So the Canadians and the Indians and the Malaysians and the Zimbabweans were all empowered by 'our country of a year' to vote in their leaders...Foreigner when it came to paying to the category in which we pay University Fees or apply for student visas, but important enough to be bestowed the 'honour' of participating in voting in a new government!!

Silly, isn't it? Considering that we aren't going to be around to bear the fruits of our 'labour'....but then I would be exaggerating, calling it labour...There were no long lines anywhere...most polling booths have roughly between 200-500 people registered to vote there..Like the BBC informed me, Some were in pubs - practical idea, isn't it? Imagine heading to the pub after work, taking two minutes to cast your ballot and then drinking to a vote cast....Hmmm..wonder how that would work in India if polling booths were to be set in the toddy and arrack shops...I can imagine a lot of drunkards sitting out, 'exhausted' from the effort of hanging around the 'polling booth'!!!

I Voted....What are the odds of being in a country in the year of General Elections and having your registration card delivered to you - limiting your effort to participate in the democratic process to walking five minutes to a polling booth set up in a university building and walking out about 30seconds later - ballot cast!!! The ballot paper looked like the ones printed at college elections, with a stubby graphite pencil dangling on the side of the booth...No EVMS here...No standing in queues in hot hot sun...no having indelible ink marking your finger for nearly two months post the elections or in my particular case, running behind politicians at their polling booth for lame sound bites saying 'We are confident of coming to power!!!'

I am sitting up through the night, watching an exemplary BBC coverage - measured and prim like the English - for unlike in India where the counting day is different from the polling day...the counting here is right after polling stops at 10PM!!

Interesting indeed....for me, it's a small slice of historic memorablia for me...

Statistics:

No. of times that I have voted in India - One ( Not proud of it,mind you, but when you are a journalist covering General Elections since the time I turned of legal age to vote, you will find yourself in Gondia or rural Andhra Pradesh on voting day, while your vote is in a small school in little Kochi)

No. of times voted in UK - One

The Statistics have a very skewed way of saying a story doesn't it?

P.S I just heard that I have been part of a historic vote that voted the first MP in for Green Party from Brighton!!

Are you an Open Book?

A simple question " Do you think it is good or bad to be an Open Book?"....On a personal introspection trip, a friend posed this to me....and now as I sit in my second storey perch in far away Brighton, nursing a sprained knee, I'm in the mood to ruminate...

Am I an open book? About five years ago, I wouldn't even have batted an eyelid before saying 'YES'...I was...everything I thought or did would reflect in my actions or words...The simple principle then was, what do I have to hide? The less I have to hide, the easier it is to be honest and forthright with my opinions...If my plate is blemish free, I can point out the spots that someone forgot to clean out - (in a noble sense..I have never been a meddler)

But today, the answer wasn't that simple. Am I an Open Book? Relatively...My life is no more in black and white..the greys have started creeping in and settling themselves well between my opinions and viewpoints. I allow some place for a Maybe too amongst the Yes and the Nos that I'm quick to settle upon. I still prefer a complete Yes or No...but I respect the Maybe too..That's what I was trying to say.

If I were to picturise myself as a book, five years ago, I'd have been a wonderfully bound leather tome with gold letters. The pages arranged coherently, one after the other, little confusion with labels or numberings, on blemish free pages, printed in fine black India-Ink...Open it and there would be a smile that often creeps across your lips when you are in a bookshop, leafing through a new volume.....

So where am I today? I'm sheafs of paper...loosely held together by a leather folder..Not punched in, but just gracefully arranged within...any sheet can be moved into a chapter ahead or a later one...the paper is hand-made - with little bumps and nothings sticking out here and there...the texture is coarse...the colour a pleasing cream...if you try to move your pen over them, there are bound to be bumps and ink blots...It won't be smooth cursive.

But I like the flexibility of arranging my life in a sheaf of papers in a leather folder...The bounded pages compelled people who entered and left my life to tear away the pages where they featured...sometimes gently, leaving a stump behind like a sort of book mark...mostly harshly leaving dirty ragged edges about...Now if one paper has to be removed from a sheaf, I just lift it off the folder..replace the page and I'm whole again....

It's an Open Folder...No more a bound book....Less tolerance for nonsense...More leeway for various shades of strange to fit in seamlessly into the pages....You may leave behind a dirty thumbprint...or a water blot...my new papers soak it all in, and make them look intrinsically part of me...unlike my pristine white self that glaringly exhibited these trespasses...

I'm now 100% handmade, crafted from the soul - scars and all....open? Maybe... :)

IPL - Do you care about the mess? Really?

Sitting here in UK, watching IPL was one way to keep me connected with my brat-set back home...

Chennai Super Kings was my team and I supported them through thick and thin - I hated Raina for sacrificing his wicket cheaply and melted into a puddle of love when Dhoni ensured that the CSK made it to the semifinals...That was my level of involvement...Now would I call myself a naive cricket lover? 

No...that would be grossly wrong...I'm that Indian who can smell the muck in the system thanks to being in the media bandwagon that routinely goes around digging muck out of here and there...the dirt that is dug sometimes from the ground or from the lardy deposits around some slimey businessman and very often from the pristine looking 'Surf ki Safedi' designer kurtas of our Colgate white politicians...

So I know there is muck...and truckloads of it around cricket...And IPL never did appear clean ever, did it? Not with Lalit Modi heading it...So I couldn't understand the sudden furore that erupted with the Media acting like holier than thou in castigating Modi when it came to an all-out political tussle...I know personally of atleast three top honchos of three different English news channels in India, who were used to receiving 'Lalit's' calls during Edit meetings and nuggets of juicy IPL tidbits would then be floated around that would by the evening be telecast to the gullible gossip loving news junkies as breaking news...

IPL to me was as much a media baby as Modi's...We created it,created the romance around it, played replayed and then looped the bites of SRK and Zinta and Shilpa Shetty continuously to enhance the glamour around it...Taught the public to chant Korbo, Lorbo, Jeetbo re and Chennai Chennai Super Kings...And then, suddenly as soon as the Twat Modi Tweeted, we Tittered...

Lalit Modi's calls became an uncomfortable reminder to these media bosses that they had been had by him for three seasons..They kept playing into his hands because it suited their TRPs...there was drama, masala and plain old sport to make a heady combination...And then when the politics of Sports took over news channels, everyone, including the three biggies turned into screaming banshees, claiming to have the BREAKING NEWS FIRST...

And every bit of news coming out of the shady deals were being treated with high rhetoric like "tell us gentlemen, the country needs to know"....My simple question is " Didn't the country know till then? Were you in any doubt about who owned these franchisees? Was it any surprise that there are atleast 4 companies registered in Cayman Islands and other tax havens that are the main investors in them?" Or more importantly when there were billion dollar auctions, why didnt the ED and IT department launch detailed enquiries into sources and funding...When clean chits were given then on non-existant documents, why act outraged and earnest now???

Does all the muck raked up mean the end of IPL? I sure hope not...Like I kept telling all my fellow journalists...I don't think the shadows of match-fixing and who makes the money out of IPL wracks my conscience-less soul any more...

I'm no connoisseur...I love Test Cricket and One days too...I watch them religiously too...But IPL for me is love for the lusty thwacks from Sachin's bat...I love the way Dhoni the captain can outplay his rival...I love Sourav Ganguly's often misplaced passion...And I like counting the yards in Pathan's well placed sixes...IPL will be that for me...Modi or Amin or Pawar - they can all be damned...

And if anyone says, the dirt emerging from IPL was a surprise...I'd say hypocrite...You can't be that naive...just as we want the IPL investigations to be placed before the country, I want another motion for media dishonesty to be examined too...Do we have a watchdog of society we can trust? Are they non-partisan? Are they giving us the right picture or the picture they want us to believe in? 

Why this hypocrisy? My question is posed as a disillusioned broadcast journalist who has her hands as bloodied as those still churning out these stories...Yes, I was part of this merry brigade too...Scoffing of those pontificating from the sidelines...

But this post is catharsis for me...