WE are the BHAIs…Bollywood Gangsters getting Hotter…

image from ourbollywood

I just saw “Shootout in Lokhandwala” and the action scenes are getting more and more akin to Guy Richie gangster flicks and full of violent stunt scenes that impress and raise the bar….there were….gun fights, exploding gas cylinder tanks, fist fights with a light bulb, a tv set crashing down screen-first over someone’s head and a squashed head over the side of the pavement borrowed from American History X. And it seems like directors are leaning more towards using heavy metal riffs and rock ballads (such as in Life in a Metro 2007) as a musical score than the more passé quivering violins .

But more importantly…have you noticed that Desi Gangsters are getting hotter? A new wave of Gangster films has been sweeping the Indian film industry and they seem to be getting slicker each time. Ram Gopal Varma’s “Sarkar” 2005 was inspired by The Godfather and had that sweeping operatic feel to it but…and King Khan’s remake of Amitabh’s “Don” 2006 produced a slicker, more metropolitan kind of mob boss….but I still like my gangsters old school… And yeah…its seems like “cool” is getting formally redefined into a more seedy, red light district, local vernacular…

ok so we know all the actors are rich boys trying on a mirch masala Lokhandwala bad boy act…but what I like about it is its brand of gangster without the Hiphop dance moves and gear that many mainstream Bollywood dance sequences tend to incorporate…don’t get me wrong…that NRI style of bhangra fusion is hot…but then here’s a more home grown, gritty alternative…without all the metropolitan finesse…which is sort of filthy and cute at the same time. That’s one woman’s opinion, anyway.

So check it out…the new music vid. from Shootout at Lokhandwala 2007

“…In the Mumbai…all over India…We are the Bhais…we are the Bhais (shake your ass shake your ass shake your ass)”

Notice that all good Ganster tunes are sung/danced while completely trashed?

Saif Ali Khan gets it perfectly in Omkara…with Vivek Oberoi and Bipasha in Beedie…(good to see Vivek is getting a bit tougher after Aishwarya’s wedding…I was a bit worried for the kid) Of course Sanjay Dutt and Arshad Warsi are killer as Munna Bhai and Circuit…but they play bad boys with hearts of gold where as films like Shootout at Lokhandwala, Omkara, Sarkar, etc. are just bad…bad to the bone…and did I mention cute?

Here’s Beedi …the lyrics are pretty raunchy…here they are:

No cover…No blanket…And this cold wind is also against me, oh fair one
It’s so cold, take someone’s blanket
Go take some fire from your neighbor’s stove
Light your beedi from my heart as there is a firing raging within

Don’t let smoke slip from your lips, my love
because this world is such a heap already

without any fault without any proof
Not commiting any crime, I got sentenced to death
On one such a day, do call me in the afternoon
Order me to court, tying me up with anklebells
Do call me in the afternoon and take me to court
Light your stove from my chest…
not even the edge of a knife
Even the dagger is matchless
She bit me in such a way, leaving marks behind
that any farmer will stop cutting his crops

oh, would you pair up with a crude like me
Oh billo, would you settle down with a crude
without telling, without calling me
he woke me up from my sleep
Suddenly my destiny came into my blanket
and while feeding me cardamoms, he kept coming closer…

lit your coal from my chest…

translation from bolly-what

BEEDI JALAYE LE – from Omkara 2006

The Gansters in Satya 1998 aren’t exactly…cute…but they are convincing…check out that classic drunken “kallu Mama” tune… here and another drunken Gangster song Saaki Saaki…..from Musafir 2004 with Sanjay Dutt here flicking his blade near writhing nymphets

Anyway, I’m working on my gangster sneer. I can’t wear my shirts unbuttoned down to my naval (or I won’t anyway)…but I’m working on my truck driver Hindi drawl…

“An IDEAL BOY”-GOOD HABITS Indian RETRO POSTER…

Some good habits I should get around to acquiring….like joining the army and going for morning walks…praying…wait a minute…is this a poster for the Republican Party?

click here for the full poster:

good-habits-retro-poster.jpg

found this floating around some shop in Sector 23…Chandigarh…if you liked this Desi retro kitsch check out RETRO safety posters

BOMBAY JE T’AIME…towards a Cinema of Possibilities…by Sanjay Lafont.

Remains of the Desi brings you another guest writer, who by chance…also shares the French Connection. But this one isn’t a chef fusing cuisines…he is the cuisine. Sanjay Lafont is one part Pujabi/one part French. You might ask…but which part is which? I would say…he lucked out…he got the Punjabi looks and the French aesthetic sense…and the volatile creative personality of both…It’s a pretty lethal mix shaken…not stirred… He’s worked with Bharat Bala and has written the screenplay for Hari Om, as well as having worked as an actor and model for print and media advertising in Bombay for the past six years. I’ve known The Lafont since our teenage highschool thespian days…and I think both of us remember the less dignified roles we’ve had to play in various musicals and what have you…..so whenever we meet there’s a certain sense of solidarity in the memory of thespian geekdom……but now geek is chic and so is writing and acting in Bombay… so here is the man of the day to give you the low down on French cinema and the possibilities he envisions for cinema in Bombay….

still image from Paris Je t’aime at image2

What is it about Paris? The common mistake is to believe that Paris’s culture and image simply endures and the myriad love stories within are but reflections of that urban myth – but those who know better know that the myth is one that must be sustained and nurtured. The film Paris je t’aime is such an effort, one that should be seen as a cause rather than an effect of the Parisian myth. The most common remark made by viewers after Paris was, “What a great film! Why can’t we make films like that in India?” inevitably followed by a dismissive shrug meaning, ‘The fact is, we just can’t.’ The fact is we can. Let me get one thing straight first : I love Bollywood (or the Mumbai Film Industry, for those who take themselves too seriously). Love it in the same way I love Paris the city, for its reality and its fantasy, rationally and irrationally.

Paris is a collection of narrativaly and stylistically different films made by a score of directors and crew and actors from different nations, including our own adopted NRI filmmaker Gurinder Chaddha. It wasn’t handed out to a bunch of French directors and crew and actors, and therein lies the trick : by giving itself to the world, Paris has taken in the world. By contrast, Bollywood is still a terrifyingly selfish, hermetic industry. For example we have half a dozen male superheroes who lord it over the box office, followed by a herd of half-baked boys (approximately 99.9% of all leading men are related to the industry); we have an equal number of female bombshells to play damsel, followed by a gaggle of insecure girls clad in a few square centimetres of cloth (there is a kind of democracy here: hotness supercedes the gene pool). The fundamental problem is not nepotism/favoritism, however, but cinematic philosophy. Everything else, including the above -isms, stems from the prevailing cinematic philosophy. Even if we fixed the –isms it would be merely cosmetic, since the basic cinematic philosophy would remain.

image from bollywood

The fundamental mistake being made is the idea that Bollywood is a fixed mode of filmmaking, that there is only ‘the Bollywood way’ and any other way that deviates from that path becomes by definition un-Indian. People conveniently forget that cinema is the world’s biggest and most visible bazaar : styles, techniques, technology, trends, moods, even actors and directors and producers, everything that feeds into film is constantly traded across cultures because it strengthens the art and refreshes it. For Bollywood to close its doors to the outside influences would be more than simply chauvinistic – it would be a criminal suffocation of one of the major creative sources.

Cinema is about the exploration of possibilities. The creation of a cinematic work is about opening up the field of possibilities as wide as possible, not about restricting it to a perceived permutation of elements and running the work through the formula machine. Paris is a film that exemplifies the philosophy of a Cinema of Possibilities, regardless of whatever flaws there might be in the work. Bollywood, ironically, often rips off entire foreign films or full sequences within and ‘Indianises’ them. Doesn’t that already smack of ‘un-Indian’ influences? Numerous young talents I know have stories to tell that are dismissed as “non-commercial” or “un-Indian” by ‘those who know better’, and find themselves forced to re-shape them into “commercial, pan-Indian, marketable” stories. These stories are original, and come from their India, the India they know and live, and maybe that’s what some producers don’t want to recognise in their quest for the elusive hit. Bollywood’s attempts to force a pan-Indian definition on an India that is increasingly and healthily growing into a sum of equal parts is as gross as its prevailing cinematic philosophy of making the maximum amount of money with the minimum amount of (original) work, of bending the structures of a medium that is fundamentally artistic to a raw and unsympathetic business model.

image from London musical based on classic bollywood tropes im.rediff

This can change. Must it? Will it? That is not for someone like me to decide. All I see is that everyone I know walks into a Bollywood film and adjusts their standards down in order to enjoy the film. Why should that be? The pace of development of technical talent is undeniable, but must be equally matched by the development of authentic and new ideas and forms, new voices and expressions, new actors and actresses – not necessarily to replace the current system, but to make its place either within or alongside it. A new soul can’t speak with an old voice, and we know that most of Bollywood is still out of synch with the way India is developing. Some filmmakers are attempting new ways of cinematic expression, but too few.

The more Indian cultures become corporatised, globalised, urbanised, etc., the more valiant and ferocious our efforts must be to carry Bollywood forward, to make it one of the guiding lights of our way of life rather than a nostalgic museum piece, a cinematic Taj Mahal. There is a dynamic place for Bollywood in our future, one in which we embrace a Cinema of Possibilities as an open bazaar of wonder rather than a black market run by DVD thieves and petty power/money dynamics. To hark back to one of the original titans of our cinema, who himself openly assimilated elements and influences from foreign cinema and yet created his own stories with his own voice, Raj Kapoor called us “the dream merchants”. The only way merchants can prosper further is by trading with each other as much as with their clients. We must re-open a Spice Route of cinema, and one day even Paris may come to us for a helping of dreams of love with the words, “Bombay, je t’aime…”

image from ifctv

Punk Rock and Malayalam Gospel: What Finland has in Common with India

So I’m searching through youtube late at night and I think…what the hell…lets do a search for Finland and India…and what do I find?

A FINNISH WOMAN SINGING MALAYALAM GOSPEL:

She’s thinking, “this is such a pure culture…steeped in history and rich traditions…I am so happy I am able to cross the language barrier and partake of this universal experience of brotherly love…listen to our voices in harmony…”

The guy is thinking “Think holy thoughts think holy thoughts…Do not get woody near blond chic …think holy thoughts…The power of Christ compels me The Power of Christ compels me….”

You need to see the bit where the blue galaxy of stars starts shooting behind them…and don’t miss the studio fan which is blowing through their hair…

Then I randomly find clips of this famous punk rock star from Finland called Pelle Miljoona… headbanging his dreads in Manali…to one of his own hit songs Mä vaan pogoon… I just came back from a trip to Manali and Kasol…and there are pretty much two things there…green mountains and tourists. Oh yeah…and lots of trash in huge nasty rubbish heaps…but if you escape up to little guest houses on the hill you can actually get a sense of the untouched romance of the place that it all must have looked like in the 60’s and 70’s. And if you’re lucky you come across some old school Rastafarian punk rock hippie types like Pelle over here sitting in some coffee shop smoking chillums…usually stoned senseless…not usually headbanging like a maniac…wish I’d run into this guy… His biggest hit was in 1980 with Moottoritie on Kuuma (Highway Is Hot in English).

And here he is again playing a guitar in some seedy little restaurant in Delhi singing “I AM AN ANARCHIST I AM AN ANTICHRIST” while the waiter does a little jig! Punk rock is not dead!

Indian Cow Eats Chickens…alive!

“The local vets said the cow was probably suffering from a disease but others said Lal was a tiger in his previous birth,” Link

image from everythingweird

March 7, 2007

CALCUTTA, India – When his chickens started disappearing a few weeks ago, a farmer in eastern India figured dogs or jackals were to blame – until he discovered his calf making a meal of his poultry. Moloy, who uses only one name, and his 1-year-old calf have since become local celebrities, with the carnivorous cow appearing on television in India’s West Bengal state and hundreds of people flocking to see them in Chandipur, a village 145 miles southwest of Calcutta, the state capital.

“To catch the culprit, Moloy got up very early … and to his disbelief found that it was his calf which came out from the cow shed and was eating the chickens alive,” Debjyoti Chatterjee, a local resident who filmed the calf eating a chicken, said Thursday.

The local veterinarian was at a loss for an explanation.

Link

Playing with LACAN: comics, pop art, and pleasure

image from entropic-empire

I really dig comics and pop artifacts that do theory the right way…cuz not everyone into theory is into “high” culture. And there’s nothing more irritating than a pompous idiot who thinks that Lacan is only for “professional” Lacanians. The reason why Lacan’s work is interesting is because it is talking about the conflict between how people imagine their lives and how they live them- as well as how the conscious mind spends most its time trying to cover up this discrepancy.

When he was speaking and writing he was addressing a mostly French and insular audience but that doesn’t mean that we have to mystify his ideas with dry academic ramblings. Bruce Fink’s writings on Lacan are a significant step in the right direction. And “Introducing Lacan” by Darian Leader and Judy Groves is an excellent example of how psychoanalysis can be communicated in comic-book format and still retain clarity without too many theoretical sacrifices.

click on the images to read the text…from “Introducing Lacan” by Darian Leader and Judy Groves, 2000

In my brief encounters with academia I have gotten the impression that there is an unwritten rule: If you are enjoying yourself too much then your thinking must not be very good. After all thought is “serious.” Perhaps this is why Zizek had such a hard time getting his Phd thesis certified…anyway…even he seems to have realized that people become far more open to philosophy if you gift-wrap it in a joke with popular references like Hitchcock. He gets annoyed by the fact that even some of his closest colleagues sometimes think he is just mucking about…but he realizes that he would fall under censure far more frequently if he made some of his radical propositions without a touch of irony. In fact, I do not think Zizek is very frequently ironic at all. He just pretends to be ironic so that the fluttering hearts of sentimental liberals can be soothed with the question “he wasn’t being REALLY serious, was he?”

image from zeitgeistfilms

Anyway, those of us who have felt the lacerating whip of academia probably realize that, when you are very far down the totem pole of academic hierarchy…it is difficult to get away with making the kinds of jokes that Zizek does. But, regardless, I’ve gotten tired of the dour-faced self-flagellation that most older academics seem to expect in British academia. Come on! Somebody tell a joke! Well perhaps they really are enjoying themselves and there’s a secret trap door in the teacher’s lounge that leads to a torture dungeon with whips and paddles but I’ve not yet been invited.

I digress…

So the point being…academia seems to bring with it instructions for HOW TO approach theory and it usually frowns upon enjoyment.

The point is…if you like theory…you shouldn’t be barred from enjoying it just because you aren’t into whips……and if you enjoy comics…then mix it up. Here is some graphic art along those lines…

Kid A IN ALPHABET LAND (trading card set)

(An Abecedarian Roller Coaster Ride Through The Phallocentric Obscurantism Of Jacques Lacan)

text from above image:

Kid A In Alphabet Land Jumps Another Juicy ‘Jaculator – That Jerk-Off, Jouissance!

You Displease Me, And You Think I Gain Pleasure From That! Heh! You Must Take Me For Some Masochistic Francophile! And You’re The Substance I’m Paid With By My Lack Of Substance? You’re Impossible! I’m Coming To Get You! – Fuck You, Jouissance!

Check out the whole KID A deck at KID A

and for more Lacanian artwork and other avant garde weirdness check out Perfume

And the filamentary corpuscles have all exploded…

image from novia

Finally! A computer program that gets my panties in a twist…now all I need is a table in a smoky bar next to a crumbling piano and a microphone…and a few weather-beaten French critics wearing black turtlenecks, berets, and unsympathetic expressions. Any volunteers?

image from virginia.edu

Anyway for those of you who would like to test your poetic pretensions…ascertain once and for all as to whether or not your poetry really is worse than a poem picked out of a computer generated grab-bag of words….Check out this link…you just write a few random words and it generates a beatnik poem for you….I just wrote “Walking late night yellowed tar Colaba taxis and sleeping corners” and I got back:

Dig this Daddio:

Walking late night yellowed tar Colaba taxis and sleeping corners
no nads felled were late Walking steal except my hall, if Come
the electric weren’t low And How naked and shut a buy eschew even
like fled decided destiny to with your to can of the bees I revved
up my chainsaw, and felled a few trees errupted with such
visciousness to scare me And the filamentary corpuscles have all exploded,
And the filamentary corpuscles have all exploded, And the My soul on fire and everlasting pain.

image from myspace

Ginsberg would be proud…(or unemployed)

A British Guy in Gujarat Discovers he is a Reincarnated Hindu Goddess

12 April 2007

I had to read it to believe it. The guy apparently had his divine revelation in a British shop when he happened to look at a picture of the Goddess Bahuchar Mata. In a temple in Gujarat he is being worshiped as her living reincarnation. And I have to say I’m impressed that Xenophobia isn’t a visible factor here…He doesn’t speak Hindi or Gujurati and no one is allowed to address him in English so he’s basically blessing people with monosyllables….wearing a sari…and living in Gujurat now on the same basis that other Indian hijras do…by taking food that is offered to him by devotees that he meets at the temple. His visa is expiring in six months and he doesn’t want to leave. I wonder if the immigration authorities would have the balls to deport a reincarnated goddess in the body of a British man named Stephen Cooper! link to article

Take the Rajma Rorschach Test: what kind of crazy are you?

Food, Freud, and F***ing around making pointless internet quizzes…these are some of my favorite things…

When I look at a plate of _______ I see:

1) Rajma

a) three dimensional curving ovals
b) a thick substance I’d like to eat it off of someone’s belly
c) They scream everytime I try to pick them up with a spoon…
d) swarming maggots or smurf turds
e) beans beans beans

2) Tandoori chicken

a) oval-shaped objects with pointed ends
b) boners
c) his name is Bobby
d) the juicy flesh of small children
e) I see tandoori chicken. That’s it.

3) Naan

a) a bumpy flat oval
b) a shaggadellic beanbag to play on…
c) She’s actually quite philosophical about being eaten…something about karma…
d) Baby flesh
e) it’s a naan you daft loser!

4) Samosas

a) 13 triangles
b) Triangular condoms
c) These bitches always tell me I’m fat.So I torture them by eating their corners first.
d) That’s what it looks like when you fold a baby seven times
e) They’re samosas you fool

5) Baingan (eggplant)

a) two dozen spheres with stems
b) a pile of purple balls (human ones)
c) they say they are the eggs of satan. I ate them anyway.
d) the battered skulls of unborn babies
e) its just one small aubergine. Only multiplied and fried.

6) iddlies

a) four flat circles
b) fried smegma
c) alien spaceships…they say they come in peace…but I ate their leader anyway.
d) squashed doves
e) fluffy white iddlies waiting for Sambar

7) Pakoras

a) oddly formed coagulated shapes
b) lumpy breasts
c) These losers are full of gas…they wont stop talking even after I eat them.
d) deep fried bandicoots (monster sewer rats)
e) mmm….pakoras

8) red chillies

a) two semicircles and a line
b) fairy dildoes
c) After 10 chillies my eyes water & I hear the voice of god. It’s a recorded message.
d) mutant tape worms pulled out of shilpa shetty’s nose (lowering her IQ by 69 %)
e) three tasty chillies

9) rasgollas

a) a dozen small spheres
b) balls
c) Do you hear barking?
d) the eyeballs of little girls
e) gooey rosgollas

10) mango

a) four fifths of a spherical object
b) punani
c) ah the music of song in a bleeding mango…
d) fresh human baby heart…still dripping…
e) don’t be disgusting. Its just a mango.

TEST RESULTS:

IF YOU GOT MOSTLY “A”s THEN YOU ARE: The Compulsive Carbohydrate

Obsessed with geometry of your food you are a poster kid for the Freudian anal phase; doomed to count your piles of food as if they were coins you might bury in an underground safe…you treat your food like money…and your money exits your body as shit…you are split between active and passive impulses: the impulse to mastery on the one hand, which can easily become cruelty; the impulse to scopophilia (love of gazing), on the other hand. You gaze at your food as if it were treasure. You calculate its quantity and measure each bite. You are the Lacanian death drive on a rampage; a mathematical vampire that has to keep counting his prey to avoid a fear of unmeasurable objects and incomplete experience. But as Zizek might say, Enjoy your symptom and keep counting your life away.

image from myspace

IF YOU GOT MOSTLY “B”s THEN YOU ARE: The Sexual Vegetable

You have sex on the brain and no place else…You are so obsessed with your lack of sex that you see sex everywhere that it isn’t. The real truth is that you are in love with your food but rather than admit your deep passion for carrots you pretend to use them as metaphors for human romantic gratification. Yes, my dear Desi, like countless other Desis you have sex on the brain cuz your life is as asexual as an Obese Raja, chewing paan and trying to dispel the boredom of magnamanity by flipping through the instructions of the Kama Sutra…or building entire temples covered in sculptural erotica…with girls…boys…donkeys even….while he is fanned by his many nubile serving girls….and hopes no one will notice the fire that glows in his eyes when the Chicken biryani arrives…Ever wonder why Bollywood films are so Horny but the people in the audience….sitting in nice little family groupings….aren’t? Is it because when something is missing you see it everywhere? Perhaps you are A) a teenage dirtbag baby (who isn’t getting anything from anyone except his left hand) or B) a bored married person who sees more erotic potential in a vegetable than in their spouse, or C) A single person who has gone without amor for so long that you’re prepared to walk around the fire tied to a nice piece of fried jackfruit as long as it doesn’t smoke, drink, or philander. D) You are a Food Fetishist who will in later life force some poor unfortunate soul to throw snow peas at you while screaming “ You’re the Queen of the Cabbages!”

image from niu.edu and

IF YOU GOT MOSTLY “C”s THEN YOU ARE: The Psycho Samosa

I hate to break it to you but no matter how good a conversationalist you are…the fact that your food talks back to you is not a hopeful sign. Something rather complex evidently happened to you in early childhood and if you were Alice in Wonderland I could tell you it was all a dream but your rabbit hole doesn’t begin or end; its you. And as far as I know….according to Lacan your kind of condition is totally incurable… All I can suggest is that, as Alice learned, it is rude to eat food to whom you have been introduced- so if your food talks to you- don’t talk back. Eat.

Alice in Wonderland Through the Looking Glass:

‘You look a little shy; let me introduce you to that leg of mutton,’ said the Red Queen. ‘Alice— Mutton; Mutton— Alice.’ The leg of mutton got up in the dish and made a little bow to Alice; and Alice returned the bow, not knowing whether to be frightened or amused.

‘May I give you a slice?’ she said, taking up the knife and fork, and looking from one Queen to the other.

‘Certainly not,’ the Red Queen said, very decidedly: ‘it isn’t etiquette to cut any one you’ve been introduced to. Remove the joint!’ And the waiters carried it off, and brought a large plum-pudding in its place.

‘I won’t be introduced to the pudding, please,’ Alice said rather hastily, ‘or we shall get no dinner at all. May I give you some?’

….

`What impertinence!’ said the Pudding. `I wonder how you’d like it, if I were to cut a slice out of YOU, you creature!’ It spoke in a thick, suety sort of voice, and Alice hadn’t a word to say in reply: she could only sit and look at it and gasp. `Make a remark,’ said the Red Queen: `it’s ridiculous to leave all the conversation to the pudding!’

IF YOU GOT MOSTLY “D”s THEN YOU ARE: The Normal Naan

Insanity is your sanity. Repulsed by giving the sane reply you are a neurotic who hates the idea of having a garden variety form of sanity/insanity. Your desire can only function when you see it as unusual/abnormal/contrary to the generally accepted law of desire- if you are “supposed” to enjoy your desert you won’t be able to. You may eat it but you won’t like it. In other words you feel your most deranged when you feel “normal”- You are bored and disgusted by food when it doesn’t look like something out of a B- Grade Lollywood flick.

IF YOU GOT MOSTLY “E”s THEN YOU ARE: The Repressed Rasgolla

Check into the nearest mental institution…because you are the sort that noone ever expects will one day without warning flip out and set fire to your school, home, workplace or suddenly join a cult where your guru demands sexual favors and that you forsake all your earthly belongings in exchange for a uniform of orange fur. Your “seeing is believing”/ “Tell it like it is” attitude is the biggest line of crap of them all. According to Lacan “The Undeluded are Kidding themselves…” So if you really think that an objective truth exists where butter chicken is only “really” identical to butter chicken …then that means you have a mind with a unique capacity to lie to itself- and you know what that means babe? You lack the capacity to view yourself as lacking….err..that is to say…you refuse to believe in the possibility of multiple sanities/insanities and..you refuse to believe that you yourself, like everyone else…are mad as well….which is the maddest thing of all….so welcome to the tea party Alice…but watch out…if you keep telling yourself these tall tales about being normal…well…then one day…

image from quizfarm

Tera KHOON PEE JAOONGA!!!

Crazy cat from airsoftgunhelp.com

SREESANTH SUNDARAM- Dirty Dancing on the Cricket Pitch

He Hits Nell for a Sixer and gets jiggy with it…

Shake what your mama gave ya!

MORTAL COMBAAAT!!!!! PUNJU AND GUJU ISHTYLE…..

Its Gujurati against Punjabi in a battle that settles the QUESTION once and for all…Who has the biggest dunda? GUJU or PUNJU?..and these boys get really serious with their weapons….its bhangra against “dandia-ras” stick dance…PAAN SPITS….CHUPLE HITS….For all you gaming nerds out there….MORTAL COMBAAAAT! The owners of the vid clip do not allow embedding so please click here:
BHEN DA LORDA

THERAPY for the PROBLEMS of PAST LIVES- A hypnotherapist explains…Vikramjeet Sinha

Have you ever considered therapy? For how many life-times? If you subscribe to the adage “don’t live in the past” perhaps you should reconsider whether the PAST is living through you…

Remains of the Desi Brings you another unusual Desi…Vikramjeet Sinha, who has worked in a number of capacities;

1) As an art based therapist and social worker for various NGOs across India over the past ten years…working with juvenile delinquent street kids, and other disenfranchised communities that have required creative group therapies to work through issues of alienation and aggression.

2) As a past life regression therapist and hypnotherapist with individual clients. He has often used these healing techniques in his creative work as a social worker with larger groups. These techniques include the therapeutic use of art and drama.

3) As a subtle madman…a modern day shaman…with a penchant for the dramatic and really one of my closest friends…its hard to tear him away from his hectic life but here he is with a brief introduction to what he does…and we look forward to more of his writing on subjects related to his therapeutic practice. He will be answering any questions regarding his practice and if you would prefer not to post your query as a comment then you may write anonymously to remainsofthedesi at gmail dot com

image from ompalace

Hi my name is Vikramjeet Sinha. I have done a year and a half certificate course from the Californian School of Hypnosis.I have been practicing hypnotherapy and past life regression therapy both in Delhi and in Bombay. There has been remarkable healing .In my opinion regression happens only for the clients when the right time arrives. The subconscious guides in a way which makes it easy for all of us and therefore is not frightening or scary. The guide as the therapist would gently allow the integration and the release to take place smoothly.

image from hypnosisrebt.com

WHAT ARE PAST LIVES ?

In order to understand what past life therapy is one has to move into the framework of the theory of reincarnation.The theory of reincarnation is firmly embedded in the ancient Hindu and Buddhist belief system. It comes with this understanding that we are not the body and the mind but we are souls having previous existences other than the present one.The previous life times’ impressions are embedded in our subconscious.These impressions in ancient Hindu and Buddhist texts are called Samskaras.

image from gazette

WHAT IS PAST LIFE REGRESSION ?

Past life regression is the procedure of hypnosis where through controlled progressive relaxation one is regressed into a state where one visits those impressions caused by previous births. These, if they are negative, would have left their imprints on the subconscious mind. This would, in turn, disturb the body or mind of the client either through illnesses, thereby effecting relationships.

image from roflcat

WHAT IS PAST LIFE REGRESSION THERAPY?

The therapy part comes in when the client is regressed into a previous life experience and then the present life personality is transposed onto the emotions and images of previous lives where those negative experiences are being displayed by the subconscious mind –sometimes baffling the conscious mind. Then through a method of internally releasing and placing a positive experience on the negative experiences, the release and the understanding of those negative experiences takes place.Therapy occurs by increasing understanding and allowing negative experiences from the subconscious mind to be released.

image from beyondtheveil

The effort of this endeavor may bring up all that is suppressed to the hilt and then allow that which is suppressed to be released and as a result make the client be rid of the ailments and phobias which have been plaguing them for years. However, progress is gradual and not rushed or instantaneous. Past life therapy is about lightness in being and about awareness and helping the consciousness to be expansive which brings about joy in daily life.

image from lycaeum

FAIR and HANDSOME…pass the face cream boyz…

Well apparently the fairness cream conglomerates that dominate the Indian cosmetic market making over 1000 crores per year have decided to hone in on the metrosexual demographic…so guys…you no longer need to fear the sun…or sneak into your mommy’s toiletry cabinet at night searching for bleach and sunscreen…from now on you too can get your face to look several shades lighter than the rest of your body…and trust me…the girls will come running….dazzled by the Brahminical whiteness of your gleaming pores… Now you just need to wax those legs and arms (armpits optional) and work on those cooking skills and the girls will come screaming screaming “Hi Handsome Hi Handsome Hi Handsome!”

I just read about a groom who went on hunger strike because his bride-to-be refused to marry him because he was too dark…it was an arranged marriage but she refused till he starved himself outside her house…eventually she agreed…its scary to think that these fairness creams are actually helping people…and that its not just advertising hype…these adds are all about how whiter skin means better jobs and higher marriage prospects. Well. Its true. So it makes it slightly hard to condemn a product without looking at why it is so successful…people want to use it. and they do want to use it for the same reasons they are advertised.

SPIDER MAN 3: What happened? And when will Bollywood do a Remake?

Can someone please explain to me what happened to the 258 million dollars that went into making Spider Man 3? Apparently they didn’t bother to pay the writers…perhaps Kirsten Dunst wrote the screenplay? I don’t know. The villains lacked any sort of evil convinction….there was no mad maniacal grin from Willem Dafoe’s creased and weathered face…instead we had a beefcake and that kid from “that 70’s show”..where was the motivation?

I had a hard time convincing myself to be scared of a pile of blowing dust…or a rabid piece of licorice with sharp teeth that just…uh…inexplicably fell from the sky in a meteor..and gets pissed off because some pathetic piece of blond skirt dumps his dweeby ass….and what is the motivation for dust bunny? He needs money for his daughters sickness (what was wrong with her anyway?)….so he goes around blowing enormous dust farts at cops and bats his blue eyes at spidey….they have such an emotional scene in the end I thought they were going to embrace and discover they were long lost brothers who were separated in the Kumbh Mela… who have the same hereditary tatoos on their butt cheeks that spell…..”madar…chodh….” And why was Tobey Maguire trying to dance like Govinda with an adolf haircut and eyeliner? Can someone please explain? I mean how does someone manage to screw up a film about spiderman?….

Well, considering the overwhelming success of this incredibly mediocre film…which is now being dubbed and screened in Punjabi, Hindi, Marathi, and probably more Indian dialects than Titanic ever was…. I wont be surprised if a Bollywood version of Spiderman comes out in a little while…with Hritik Roshan as Pavitr Prabhakar, the Desi Peter Parker of the new line of Gotham Comics books being designed in India…where Spidey wears a dhoti-kurta costume and gets his powers from a mystical yogi…

“As Spider-Man, Pavitr leaps around rickshaws and scooters in Indian streets, while swinging from monuments such as the Gateway of India and the Taj Mahal.Mumbai’s (Bombay’s) first web-swinging Super Hero will be joined by a reinterpretation of the classic Spider-Man villain, the Green Goblin — reinvented as a Rakshasa, an Indian mythological demon.” from gotham comics press release

image from newmoanyeah

Anyway I’m holding out for the Bollywood version because once again it seems that huge amounts of cash manage to completely ruin a classic comic story-line. And it seems as if the stars were just getting bored and more ugly if at all possible…At least when Hritik Roshan has an emotional scene I don’t feel like throwing up. He’s like the Forrest Gump of Super heros in Krish….

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images from lakeshoredrivein and mmail.com

and I guess it is interesting that Bollywood always adds a theological touch to its sci fi and action hero types…..so if Krish is a metaphor for Krishna….with Hritik playing his little flute….then Spiderman is going to be a metaphor for……Ganesh? So how will that work? Hritik will wear a fat suit and shoot ladhus out of his trunk at rakshashas? anyway…I’d see that film..

image from Diane Duane

MOZART’s GHOST POSSESSES SPORTS RADIO JOCKEY SID PINTO…

HAHAHAHAHA….I wake up first thing Sunday morning and what do I find? My bleary-eyed husband sitting in front of the computer monitor wih his hair flying every which way looking like he’s going to fall off the chair…our most excellent friend…Sid Pinto (a.k.a. sports radio jockey)…has sent us an email…and what should I find inside? He’s apparently been running around Bombay playing “air” violin in between the traffic and some crazy dude has filmed him and turned it into ART!….i LOVE BOMBAY….filled of strange desi types with cameras in their hands……so enjoy a little Mozart music…filmed by Rishi O. Kishnani