Posted By
Santosh Desai
25 July 2010, 03:47 PM IST
This was what my Sunday forecast for the week had to say about how to forestall some predicted health problems-"throwing sweet sugar revadis in flowing river water and burying blue flowers in a deserted place or field just a few minutes before sunset will...
Posted By
Santosh Desai
18 July 2010, 04:41 PM IST
Two very tragic suicides have occurred in the last few weeks with little in common. In one case a young boy took his life allegedly because of being caned in school a few days ago and more recently a model took her life apparently out of frustration at her...
Posted By
Santosh Desai
12 July 2010, 05:52 AM IST
When in doubt stop working. Even better, stop others from working - block roads, burn a few buses and get arrested on television. Return to television bathed and rested a few hours later and proclaim the success of your bandh. Go on to...
Posted By
Santosh Desai
05 July 2010, 05:31 AM IST
In the month that has gone by after the Bhopal gas tragedy verdict, the reaction to the punishment handed out to the accused has been remarkable. After 25 years of apathy, we have seem to have re-discovered the pain caused by the callous disregard for human...
Posted By
Santosh Desai
27 June 2010, 03:28 PM IST
Over the last fortnight, we have seen a lot of comment in media about the La Martiniere tragedy where a student committed suicide days after being caned. Enough has been said about the incident itself, so it might be more profitable to look at some of the...
Posted By
Santosh Desai
21 June 2010, 09:46 AM IST
In an ad currently on television for a finance company which specialises in pawning jewellery, a mother is shown doing so in order to finance her son’s music scholarship overseas. It is interesting that not only is the mother pawning her jewellery, something...
Posted By
Santosh Desai
14 June 2010, 12:15 AM IST
In the film Chhoti Si Baat, one of most striking ways in which Amol Palekar the diffident, Adam's-apple-bobbing loser, turns into a winner is by turning into an accomplished eater with knife-and-fork (actually even more impressively, by using...
Posted By
Santosh Desai
06 June 2010, 11:30 PM IST
The stronger media gets, the easier it becomes to manipulate it. For all the screechy aggression, we see particularly on television, it works on some rudimentary principles. Here are some easy ways to use television to your advantage.
1. Use strong...
Posted By
Santosh Desai
30 May 2010, 04:30 PM IST
Sixty years after independence, the caste question looms large in our consciousness. Far from being abolished, the caste system is at the centre of many debates of the day. Whether it is the larger question of the importance of caste in electoral politics,...
Posted By
Santosh Desai
23 May 2010, 02:01 PM IST
As we go through the cyclical bout of manic depressive anger that follows the loss of our cricket team, it is time to look beyond cricket, the IPL and other such burning issues of the day and turn our gaze to some underlying mindsets that come into play. One...
Posted By
Santosh Desai
17 May 2010, 10:17 AM IST
It has taken 17 months but the verdict is out and most of India has heaved a sigh of relief. Kasab is to die for his role in 26/11. But far from providing any sense of finality, a new debate is raging these days. Should the sentence have to wait its turn to be...
Posted By
Santosh Desai
10 May 2010, 11:41 AM IST
Looking back on the IPL saga, now that it no longer gets the breathless non-stop coverage it did, and being able to reflect upon what seems to have happened, one is struck by kind of culture it espoused and managed to get away with in full view of the public. ...
Posted By
Santosh Desai
02 May 2010, 03:39 PM IST
Cricket is just a game. Amitabh Bachchan is just a film star. My Name is Khan was only a film. Valentine's Day is only a made-up festival. Speaking in Marathi carries the same meaning as speaking in any other language. Statues, however large are not real...
Posted By
Santosh Desai
25 April 2010, 03:34 PM IST
A few weeks ago, Jairam Ramesh, in a dramatic gesture, removed the convocation robe worn usually at graduation ceremonies labelling it a barbaric colonial ritual. His assertion that India did not need to live with such vestigial symbols of colonial pomp,...
Posted By
Santosh Desai
18 April 2010, 05:21 PM IST
The can is rattling and the worms can barely conceal their glee. Slithering out one at a time on a daily basis, they give us fresh insight into the phenomenon called the IPL. By all accounts, the IPL seems like a compendium of morality plays compressed into a...
Santosh Desai is a leading ad professional. He says he has strayed into writing entirely by accident, and for this he is "grateful". "City City Bang Bang" looks at contemporary Indian society from an everyday vantage point. It covers issues big and small, tends where possible to avoid judgmental positions, and tries instead to understand what makes things the way they are. The desire to look at things with innocent doubt helps in the emergence of fresh perspectives and hopefully, of clarity of a new kind.
The views expressed in City City Bang Bang are the author´s own.
