“Bloody Indians.”

Human beings take offence easily. http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/05/whose-reality-what-reality.html. Now there’s a very good reason to take offence for all those who call themselves Indians. The bodyguards of Angelina Jolie whom you met in this blog earlier http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/10/midnight-cowgirl.html called a bunch of Indian parents “Bloody Indians”. And some haughty “foreigner” jumped the queue in a multiplex loo for women and insulted an Indian woman calling her something “extremely offensive” (in Kiran Joneja’s opinion). The Natives struck back pronto arresting the former and extracting an apology from the latter. No more Gandhigiri http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/09/gandhigiris-first-converts.html, we’re proud Indians. Actually, these seem to be the right occasions to use some crafty Gandhigiri, if you ask me. By all of us including the media taking the course of non-cooperation against all these firangs. Let us just ignore them. Let the media ignore them. While they walk among us, let us treat them as invisible aliens. Left alone without attention, even a flower withers.

Midnight cowgirl.

The estranged daughter of the Midnight Cowboy walks amongst us. Correction. Last sighted, she was riding in a scooter rickshaw in downtown Pune, hotly chased by paparazzi out to shoot her. Reading about her reminded me of the insanely funny moment from her dad’s debut movie when Ricco Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), better known to the world as Ratso, and Joe Buck are almost run over by a New York cab and Ratso bangs on its hood to declaim: “I’m walking here.” What cheek! Just like riding in a rickshaw in broad daylight and tempting the shoot-at-sight fraternity, eh? Why the sight of a celebrity triggers the intense desire to shoot in paparazzi is a mystery to me. Once you’ve seen Angelina once, you’ve seen her once for all as far as I’m concerned. What’s more, I’d rather see her as Lara Croft in reel life than as Angelina in real life. Show me every time something or someone I’ve not seen before, boys and girls. Talking of midnight, I cannot understand keeping a round-the-clock vigil just to catch a glimpse of someone – a trait shared by both paparazzi and star-struck fans in equal measure. In my books, it’s okay to hang around in a hotel lobby if you’re out to cover a war or a revolution. But a celebrity? Gimme a break. Also, what the unrelenting pursuit by paparazzi did to Lady Diana comes to mind. Come to think of it, though, you cannot really blame paparazzi for what happens to the celebrity who happens to be the target of the moment? The poor guy is sticking his nose and his camera lens in celebrity goings-on because the readers of his rag or the watchers of his TV channel expect to see the beloved mug over and over again wherever it happens to be in Paris or Pune, never you mind. Complain as they might about paparazzi attention, the celebrities need their stalkers as much as the latter need their ‘victims’. It’s mutual interdependence, I reckon. For the celebrities, it’s if you’ve got it, flaunt it and catch me if you can. For paparazzi, it’s I’ll get you sooner or later even if I’ve to risk my neck and my expensive camera. For some people, it’s always midnight, as someone so wisely said.

Baby pictures and other wonders.

Quick now. What’s the ideal tv fare to go with a lunch of boiled rice with shrimp curry (preferably green made with coconut milk) and crisp fried bombil (Bombay Duck)? In my book, it’s a segment from one of those movies with precocious kids, at times babies, as the chief protagonists pitted against totally inept, bumbling villains, usually burglars with a huge grudge against the youngsters. I especially relish the portions where the villains get their comeuppance quite violently from the unlikely traps unwittingly laid by the kids as I crunch at the tasty morsels of the crisply fried succulent bombil. But I draw a line when it comes to the first pictures of the Brad Pitt and Anjelina Jolie co-production pre-sold to People magazine for a reported preposterous $4.1 million http://13thfloor.imdb.com/news/sb/2006-06-07. My doubts are about what’s so special about the baby that People magazine should be willing to pay such a gargantuan sum for the US publication rights. It seems Hello!, the European gossip magazine, paid a further $3 million for rights outside of the U.S. The entire sum is earmarked for UNICEF and other assorted charities. So, the intentions are obviously noble and humanitarian. My problem with the pricing is obviously a matter of my perception, I’m ready to admit. I love babies. Here’s what I wrote (on the dedication page of my as yet unpublished novel, The Last Gandhi Movie) about Avantika whom I saw as a just-born babe: “For Avantika who has been eyeing her world with unabashed curiosity ever since she arrived here.” What prompted me to write these words was the vivid memory of the first look she gave me. “Who could this bloke be?” she seemed to be asking herself, as her alert gaze followed my waving hand. I know it was only my mind playing the game but I tell you her first look was something else. Maybe, People and Hello! magazines expect something out of the world in the first picture of the Namibia-born baby girl, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt. Yes, that must be it. http://people.aol.com/people/article/0,26334,1184497,00.html.