Supriya Pari Prakash: Or why we decided to give a middle name to our daughter.

It is only your spare name, darling!

I always thought that middle names were silly. They added unnecessary length to the name. They served no real purpose in modern life where our efforts and not our pedigree took us forward. And they sounded pompous. 

In fact, I earned my middle name quite by accident. My 10th grade teacher took it upon herself to tack my Dad’s middle name to mine before sending off the list to the High School Board. My high school degree arrived in the name of Chetna Rao Mahadik instead of a simple Chetna Mahadik. Having insidiously imprinted itself on this critical document of my life, the “Rao” then made its way to all my subsequent degrees, bank accounts and passports. 

Seventeen years on, I am still trying to get rid of it. 

Which is why, when Sid and I started thinking of names for our daughter, a middle name had no place in my plans. 

It was a chance discussion with friends that first got me thinking that middle names made little sense for my generation, but could be critical for my daughters’. 

You see, my daughter belongs to a generation whose life and actions will be imprinted all over the internet. From this blog, to her blogs and whatever other social media that takes over Facebook and twitter: her life, photos, opinions and actions will be played out in public. And with that public life will come the very possible risk of public embarassment. 

I think a lot of my child’s peers will look back at their teenage years and wish that they could somehow distance themselves from those internet words, images and personality attached to their names. And since they'll be unable to change the internet, many of them will change their names instead. 

And frightening as it seems, my daughter could be one of those wanting a new name. 

Taking this possibility into consideration, suddenly a middle name sounded not pompous but practical. It acts as spare name, waiting in reserve if someone found their first name too internet-tainted. If Supriya had an official middle name, a name change would not involve crazy and painful paperwork. It would simply mean dropping her first name, and adopting her middle name for most public purposes. 

So it is that a tiny, innocuous “Pari” made it between the Supriya and Prakash of my daughter’s name. 

And I sincerely hope that she never finds any use for it. 

Snowfall & Disney promises

It is not quite December and it is snowing outside.

I grew up with wistful visions of lovely snowfalls. Very few parts of India see snow. And since my economical parents wanted to save money on woollies, they made sure we never visited them in winter. But snowfalls still sneaked into our lives, thanks to Hollywood and all the Christmas releases. No wonder I thought that snowfalls always come packaged with romance, comedy and Christmas lights.

All that changed circa, February 2008, Amsterdam. And I learnt the hard lesson that snowfalls usually come with slush, annoyance, traffic jams, misery and, if you are really unlucky – a broken hipbone. In England, it usually comes with broken public transport as well, just to add to the fun. Needless to say, I am cured me of snowfall sickness forever.

England, for some odd reason, seems to be in denial about its proximity to the North Pole. In other Northern European countries that I lived in, people seemed more at peace with their winters. All houses compulsorily came with double-glazed windows, and as soon as the trees would start shedding their leaves, people would start bulking-up. Fashion was given a short shrift as they all bundled-up in their excellent, expensive winter coats, gloves, thermals and hats. By the time, the snow arrived – nobody even noticed it.

London’s Picadilly Circus knows only one season: that which requires girls in mini-skirts and sheer tights. Winter coats are designed more for fashion than for heavy snowfalls, and places like M&S don’t even stock real woollen cardigans. What you find are sweater lookalikes made out of synthetic mixes. Everything is cheap and most of it is useless. And all the three houses we have lived-in in London have had no double glazing. Public transport breaks down every winter and gas prices soar. And the worst part is: everyone appears shocked by the cold – every year!

But I have made my peace with winter. So if you see a tent waddling its way around London, do stop to say hi!

PS: My favourite winter memory relates to the song Hey There Delilah. Mostly because the Turkish-German cafe in Hamburg that I spent most of my 2008 winter in was always playing this song. So I always somehow associate winter with Hamburg, descending darkness outside, a cappucino cup warming my fingers and Hey There Delilah playing in the background. Here's to winters and Hey There Delihah.

Stopping by the hood on a snowy evening on PhotoPeach

Baby gorilla at London Zoo: Or is it EastEnders in a new avatar?

Hmm... so I have started contributing to Londonist. It is all a big experiment and all shall be revealed in due time.

In the meantime, enjoy my latest contribution on gorillas, zoos and EastEnders.

Snake Stories: Or which airline does the world's most wanted animal smuggler use?

Boa constrictor in news

I came across this news piece today about a man being sentenced in Malaysia for trying to smuggle  95 boa constrictors from the country to Indonesia.

In itself, the news doesn’t surprise me. If there is a market of exotic, endangered animals, unscrupulous groups will come in with a supply. But I always imagined that it would require some ingenious planning to smuggle those animals – I imagined dark, foggy nights, boats on choppy waters, mysterious lights flashing on, off, on, off, followed by perilous journeys through mountains and jungles with the police on their tail.

This man, who apparently is the one of the world’s most wanted animal smugglers, was taking his 95 boa constrictors from Malaysia to Indonesia in a suitcase on an airplane. But that is not the best part. The best part is that the snakes were not found via X-rays or whatever other sophisticated radiology system the airline presumably used. No, the bag – bursting with 95 snakes and some turtles – simply broke open on the conveyor belt, spilling the loot for all to see. I guess, they had no choice but to arrest him.

If the world’s most wanted animal smuggler was exporting animals by checking them into airplanes, then it must be fairly standard practice. I mean he didn’t even worry with a sturdy suitcase – that is how nonchalant he was.

How is it that airports can catch that one shampoo bottle or one nose-hair scissors that you mistakenly left into your hand luggage, or the coins or the underwire in your bra on yourself, but not boa constrictors, turtles and baby tigers? How is it that any petty traffic law you might have broken turns up in your record, when you go about asking for visas, but others travel around the world with boa constrictors in their bags despite being world's most wanted animal smugglers?

I trolled through many, many news reports - from Malaysia Star to AFP, Time and the Sun - but as usual all of them forgot to find out the most useful bits of information for the readers.


a)    With his criminal record, how did the world's most wanted animal smuggler manage his visa and passport situation?
b)    Which airline was he flying that would allow him to check in boa constrictors?
c)    Which suitcase brand was he using?
d)    And finally, if snakes are not allowed in planes, how does Dick Cheney travel?


***
Did you hear about the other Thai lady who tried to take a baby tiger in her land luggage? At least she had the decency to hide the drugged baby tiger among other stuffed toys.

Did you know there was a music video about snakes in a plane? The things you tube teaches me every day.

The girl with the dragon tattoo: genius or a cartoon?

Lisbeth Salander, the heroine of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – who in case you were wondering, is the girl with the dragon tattoo – was described in the book blurb behind as “a genius computer hacker”. Which to me meant that she was in grave danger of being a cartoon. Naturally, I had to read to find out.

You see, the thing is there is a thin line separating geniuses with cartoons in popular culture. After all, do we ever question the "what, why or how" of Tom and Jerry’s antics? No we don’t, because they are cartoons. They are not encumbered by any physical limitations the way we humans are. So often becomes true of geniuses in popular fiction. Once you have set your character up as a genius – established that his brain functions differently than us lesser mortals – you are released of any need to limit his actions and abilities by any normal human standards. They are like superheroes.   

A genius computer hacker is the worst of the lot. He or she is the scientific equivalent of Harry Potter with his invisible cloak. They can simply enter anyone’s server, network, email accounts, phone lines and happily gather all the incriminating information required – and all in the time that would take you to fill in your username and password. And they don’t have to explain anything. Since their brain functions differently, they just know how to break codes and encryptions in a way that they themselves can’t explain – so who are you to ask.

Further, their status as a genius will demand that they have extreme and inexplicable personality quirks, further taking them closer to their animation-counterparts.

So does Stieg Larrson's Lisbeth Salander fulfill her cartoon potential? Spoiler alert: Yes, she does. But the novel is a page-turner anyway. 

I mean she is as much of a cartoon as can get. She can not only hack through any computer system, she also has a photographic memory, can master complex financial money movements in a jiffy, is good with weapons, knows all about international travel on false passports, is fabulous with disguises, and is asocial, moody and emotionally stunted. In short, she is James Bond on steroids.

But on one point, Salander is truly original and not a cartoon at all. She extracts revenge in the most unforgiving way. In fact, one of the most staggering moments for me in the novel was when she takes revenge on her newly appointed legal guardian. I didn’t see it coming.

Funnily enough, Larrson’s novel only in part requires Salander’s genius abilities. Most of the plot is a rather more staid mystery of a missing child which is solved using standard sleuthing techniques: going though old, old newspapers and photographs, questioning people, piecing together the scene of crime, and lots and lots of plain old thinking and connecting the dots, which is done without any computer hacking required. The end is somewhat grisly, let me warn you.

Besides, Larrson plays off Salander against her mature and serious-to-the-extreme sleuthing partner Mikhael Blomkvist, which takes the edge of her extremities.

Most of the computer hacking is limited to a sub-plot within the plot – a sort of mystery that depends on solving the main mystery. Which means that – whether you enjoy old style whodunits or new-agey digital thrillers – the novel has something to offer.

However, one thing glaringly missing from the novel is sparkling humour. In fact, Larrson’s sense of humour is strictly juvenile. Here are some gems:

“For a moment he stared at Blomkvist with an expression that was presumably meant to instil respect, but which made him look like an inflated moose” (pg 312).

Inflated Moose – doesn’t that have a secondary school corridor ring to it? In fact, I think even secondary school boys might have moved on.

“He, on the other hand, told a funny story about how Nilsson had come home one night to discover the village idiot from across the bridge trying to break a window at the guest house. Nilsson went over to ask the half-witted delinquent why he didn’t go in through unlocked front door”. (pg 127)

Was there ever a more boring rendition of a funny story?

Other than that, the only points of humour are Ms Salander’s T-shirts which declare stuff like “Armageddon was yesterday. Today we have a real problem”.

T-shirt humour? As I said, juvenile.

So would I read the other two Salander novels to complete Larsson’s trilogy?

Yes, what to do? I love Tom & Jerry.

***
Here's the trailer of the Swedish film by the same name:

On Style: Or does homelessness lie in the eyes of the beholder

Taken from the Style Scout blog

Trolling through the English-Life Mattters website, I came across The Style Scout, a sort of Sartorialist-for-adolescents blog. I was completely perplexed by the picture that greeted me: see, the man in sad green cardigan on the side.

Now, if I met this guy on the streets, my first thoughts would be: “Oh, poor soul, do I have some pennies to spare!” I mean, to me he just looked homeless and starved. He even has a dog to complete the look.

But, obviously, the look was constructed and considered stylish enough to be featured on the blog. Apparently, he is “very grandma-chic meets sporty” according to one of the comment.

Obviously, I was missing something.

Then I realised I was being “so first-gen” (as Sid calls all the first generation Indian immigrants).

You see, the thing is that in India everyone looks generally poor and badly dressed. Life is too hot, rushed, crowded and painful for most of us to worry about how we look. So if somebody wants to stand out – he/she dresses well. Because if you turned up in holed cardigans and cotton Bermudas, you won’t be seen as a stylish wannabe-arty-person-only-masquerading-as-a-homeless-man, you will actually be taken for one and shooed away. On the other hand, if you regularly turned up in uncreased clothes, neatly blow-dried hair and make-up in place, people will be enthralled. For it is indeed a difficult look to manage with a four-hour commute in a breathlessly-packed train everyday.

On the other hand, as I am slowly learning, in the civilised world it works in reverse: the more holes in your cardigan, the better. Because if everyone is dressed in their Sunday best all the time, what better way to grab eyeballs then to turn-up in your Monday night pyjamas.

Name Game: Or is it goodbye Ms Mahadik?

 It is a truth universally acknowledged that teenage-hood brings trauma in its wake. For girls, it is usually connected to breasts, bras and boys. I must be the only girl in the world for whom the trauma related to a dick – a big dick at that.

I was in eighth grade when the attention of my hormone-charged class of 36 boys and girls suddenly fell on my surname: Mahadik. With “Maha” meaning big in Hindi, I was a sitting dic.. sorry duck! I faced the vicious teasing with a stoicism and non-violence that would have put Gandhi in shadow. As I kept telling myself – it could have been worse, my surname could have been “Harddik”. But secretly, I vowed to get married and change my surname as soon as possible.

The vow took 17 long years to materialise. But the strangest thing is that when finally the moment arrived to rid myself of that blighted "Mahadik", I felt an immense spurting of affection for it. For better or worse – mostly for the worse – it was my name. All my certificates, my degrees, my email addresses, my facebook name, my skype ID, and all the hundreds of articles I had written over the last seven years carried that name. Even my bills came under that name. All my friends knew me by that name. All my long, lost friends probably remembered me by that name. What if they googled my name and couldn’t locate me?

But Sid was adamant. As Mr and Mrs Prakash, we were a unit. What if someone wanted to send us a wedding invitation? Would I really want the invitation to come in the name of Mr Prakash and Ms Mahadik? Wouldn’t that be absolutely outrageous?

Faced by such impeccable logic, I quelled. Kicking and screaming, I decided to change my name.

And this month, I finally had the honour of getting my first few articles published in the name of Chetna Prakash.

One for the website Mumbai Boss, which funnily enough is about another famous name change and ensuing identity crises: that of the city of Mumbai.

Open Magazine, which is my revenge against Shashi Tharoor, ha ha ha!!!

And finally in Crest, the Saturday paper of The Times of India on art and culture.

I eagerly sent the article to a friend in Mumbai. And guess what? She replied, yah but who the hell is this Prakash woman?

Sob!

Man doesn't eat dog...

But he eats his 10,000-euros winning ticket. That too, on a Ryanair flight.

It is for news like this that I live on. 

News of the day

The most popular stories now section on the BBC News' site makes for a fascinating study.

The headlines on today's website pertains to Haiti's death toll, sex offender alerts in the UK and the death of the 251st British soldier in Afghanistan since 2001. By contrast, the most shared news on the site at the moment is Untidy Beds may keep us healthy and Experts stunned by 'swan' divorce (no, no kidding).

And this is why, journalism is in so much trouble.

***

I am guessing someone forgot to tell the poor swans that David Cameron intends to hand out tax breaks to married couples.

Jobless in London: Or how I got scatological over Johnny Depp?

I knew I was not going to get the job when I received an email saying:

We get a lot of stories from celebrity’s Twitter page, which often means we have to build a whole story from a quote of just a couple of lines. I’d like to see how you would go about this, so please could you write a news story from the below post on Pete Wentz’s Twitter page:

“johnny depp is the shit. he owns an island and awesome cheekbones. pkease adopt me.”

The recruitment executive had helpfully sent me two recent examples from the magazine for my assistance. The first was about former Playboy playmate Kendra Wilkinson feeling ready to have sex again after giving birth to her first child, and the second announced the engagement of Kate Perry and Russell Brand.

Desperate as I was, I actually started investigating why certain Mr Wentz was getting scatological over Johnny Depp. Mr Wentz turned out to be the confession-happy lead bassist of the American band Fallout Boy, husband of celebrity singer Ashlee Simpson, and father to one-year-old Mowgli (that boy will grow up to have some complexes!).

The result was as follows:

Pete Wentz, the bassist of the American rock band Fall Out Boy, has his love for the Pirates of the Caribbean star Johnny Depp plastered over the internet with his latest tweet, “johnny depp is the shit. he owns an island and awesome cheekbones. pkease (sic) adopt me.”

Wentz is a long time fan of Johhny Depp, with whom he shares a love for eyeliner. In the past, the outspoken 30-year-old musician has admitted that one of his nightmares is Johnny joining his band, because he would have to stand so close to someone who is the “epitome of coolness”.

Pete’s latest outpouring could have been inspired by the fact that he has recently recorded a song for the soundtrack of the upcoming film Alice in Wonderland, which stars Johnny as the Mad Hatter. Pete collaborated with his long time friend and musician Mark Hoppus, the lead singer and bassist of the pop punk band Blink-182, for the song.

The island in question was bought by Johnny in the Caribbean in 2005.

So do Pete’s singer wife Ashlee Simpson and one-year-old son Bronx Mowgli Wentz come as package for adoption? The answer just might tilt the balance, Pete!

I felt like I had sold my soul. And 48 hours later, I was informed that my style was not suited to the magazine. Celebrity gossip journalism is “the shit” indeed.

Sheep & Horses

I spent most of yesterday researching for a magazine whether in Aberdeen a man owning more than 12 sheep must prove that he is not a 'pimp' (brothel owner).

What hogwash, I kept thinking all day.

Then I came across this news piece today, and decided perhaps it wasn't such an idoitic law after all.

Dressing-down

All right, so the 1980s theme party that Sid and I attended on New Year’s Eve wasn’t as scandalous as the “Prostitute & Pimp” party thrown last month by one of Sid’s friend. But dressing up in George Michael gear or Madonna’s Who’s That Girl-attire didn’t make anyone look better than prostitutes and pimps.

Of all the English cultural quirks – read, kidney pies and Katie Price – it is this predilection for mass ritualistic fancy dress parties that I find most peculiar.

Now, for us Indians, it is a simple equation. If we are going to a party, we try our best to look our best. We are too conscious of not being good looking enough – not tall enough, not fair enough, not thin enough, not blonde enough – to treat our looks with any sense of humour.

But by corollary, does it mean that the English are so confident and bored of their good looks that they are ready to spend so much time, energy, money and effort into making themselves look ridiculous? (Now if it were Italy or Spain, I wouldn’t find that confidence questionable. But England?)

Or is it that they are so convinced of being irreparably ugly that they see no point in dressing up? Their act of looking silly is rebellion against the French and Spanish pressures to look good, which they know they simply can’t achieve, so why try!

Or perhaps, as Sid says, they are just interested in have fun!

Hoo Dunnit: Mystery of the missing dinner jacket

Sid in his new dinner jacket

Last weekend, Sid’s office invited us to a Christmas party at a country house hotel at the outskirts of London called Luton Hoo.

Luton Hoo, as a bit of research revealed, is a five-star country manor hotel with 1000 acres of estate land around, an 18 hole golf course, a spa and a history that encompasses over 400 years of aristocratic ownership, parties with the King and Queen in attendance, the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral, and a resident ghost – the manor’s previous owner, Nicholas Harold Phillips, committed suicide there and is rumoured to haunt the premises. Luton Hoo promised us luxury and adventure wrapped in one.

It turned out to be an adventure alright.

As the main course was being laid out, the waitress stumbled behind Sid as she was serving the guest next to him, coughed an apology and quickly disappeared. In turn, Sid felt a warmth trickle down his back. Our pretty waitress hadn’t just stumbled, she had also managed to pour most of the beef sauce in the plate she held down Sid’s hand-tailored dinner jacket. We had a situation – a 6-ft Californian left with a steak without sauce, a vegetarian Hindu with beef sauce trickling down his dinner jacket and a culprit waitress nowhere to be found.

Sid immediately raised an alarm, and the head waiter – our saviour no 1 called Bobby – took charge. He sent Sid’s jacket to the laundry, got him a replacement for the night and assured us that we would open our eyes the next morning to a freshly laundered, stain-free dinner jacket.

Of course, it wasn’t there the next morning. It was still missing as we were checking out. The night staff at the laundry had left, and the morning staff hadn’t heard of any wayward, beef-stained dinner jackets from the night.

Determined not to lose our cool, we asked them to locate the lost jacket while we took a stroll around the verdant 1000 acres of Luton Hoo’s parkland.

After an hour and half of freezing walk, we got a call from our saviour no 2 called Gareth. The jacket had been located. We rushed back, only to be told that the stain hadn’t come off, the jacket needed to be dry-cleaned, the dry-cleaner would only open on Monday, so could we pretty please leave our address, and they will definitely courier the dry-cleaned jacket by Friday.

In protest, we insisted they dry-clean the pants as well, left our address at the reception, drank the complimentary coffee, and headed back.

It is Friday today, and no courier has come knocking on our doors.

We are now expecting a call from our saviour no 3, who we are sure will be called Nicholas Harold Phillips, Luton Hoo's resident ghost.

***
PS: Yes, of course, I am married to Sean Connery.

Curry Worries

Transport for London takes public service very seriously – especially if it involves pasting preachy messages all over the trains and tube stations. But I am worried that this latest public service message (see picture) may have some cataclysmic effect on the real estate market of London thirty years hence.

Let’s examine this message again from the perspective of an Indian kid on the tube.

Cute, nerdy child = Me.
Frizzy, darkish hair = Me.
Smelly food = oh my god curry, again Me.

Now, Sid grew up as a cute, nerdy boy with frizzy black hair eating curry in Melbourne three decades ago along with a small but select group of equally, nerdy Indian kids with frizzy black hair eating curry. They all loved curry. They were all traumatised by the fear of the smell of Indian spices sticking to them as they stepped out with odourless, colourless skip (read: White Aussie) friends.

And as they grew up to become nerdy engineers, doctors and lawyers, the latest trend in the tightly-knit community is to build two kitchens in their houses. One a barely-used, clinically clean, odourless model kitchen to convince their skip friends that they have never heard of curry before. And then, the real kitchen ferreted in the back redolent with the smells of spices, daals and flavoured meats that they can’t live without.

But Melbourne has a lot of open land to indulge the smelly food paranoia of its rich Indian immigrant kids. Can London afford the same?

***

For more on curry-infused fears of Indian kids read Anon's review of the book Leaving India.

Match-made in heaven

The Clintons have announced the engagement of Chelsea Clinton to her long term boyfriend, Marc Mezvinsky.

Mezvinsky is Jewish, works for Goldman Sachs, and his father Ed Mezvinsky served a prison sentence between 2002 and 2008 for bank, wire and mail fraud (much like Madoff but on a cosiderably smaller scale).

Goldman Sachs and financial fraud! Poor Clintons, I can already see Fox News salivating over the news.

***

According to a report that gives a rather riveting account of Daddy Mezvinsky's misadventures, Ms Clinton's fiance grew up in Pennsylvania in a six bedroom mansion with four step sisters, two adopted sisters, a blood brother, three foster siblings and his parents. On the other hand, Ms Clinton, as we all know, grew up in a 132-rooms-and-35-bathrooms mansion called the White House largely by herself. Opposites attract.

Window Dressing

As December 25 comes closer, the London shops are choking with Christmas spirit. Here's an early nomination for the most over the top window decoration in London.

Fortnum & Mason (scaring us with OTT windows since 1707), Picadilly, W1J 9.

Vaginal Twist: Or how Eve Ensler got women wrong

A recent BBC report on the growing trend of women wanting designer vaginas had me thinking of the seminal play, The Vagina Monologues, by the American playwright and feminist Eve Ensler. The play written and performed by Ensler for the first time in 1996 in New York quickly catapulted to a feminist phenomenon. It inspired V-day, a global non-profit charity to oppose violence against women, which in 2009 alone has held over 4200 benefit events; a book entitled A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer comprising pieces by such famous personalities as Tariq Ali, Maya Angelou and Jane Fonda; and a television film on HBO by the same name. Besides, the play itself has been performed in 28 countries covering all habitable continents of the world except Australia.

I came across The Vagina Monologues when it was performed in Mumbai, India for the first time in 2003. The play – a set of monologues by women about their different vaginal experiences – was funny, tragic, empowering and incredibly graphic. At a superficial level, it was about sexual violence committed against women. But under that, it was a larger call for women to embrace their sexuality without any guilt or shame, and vocalise their experiences and desires. In particular, I remember one of the skits, Because He Liked to Look At It. It was about how we, women, often don’t even know what our vaginas look like, simply thinking them to be ugly and embarrassing. It had a woman sit in front of a mirror and look, properly look, at her vagina.

Well, it seems many British women have taken Ensler’s advice to heart and have sat in front of a mirror to look, properly look, at their vaginas. The result: they found it ugly and embarrassing, screamed in horror, and ran to the nearest plastic surgeon to demand a better, designer vagina. As Douglas McGeorge, the past president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, described the surgery: “this is just about removing a bit of loose flesh, leaving behind an elegant-looking labia with minimum scarring”.

Hmmm... what would Ensler think about this latest vaginal twist.


***
London nugget: Ensler performed The Vagina Monologues at the tiny pub-theatre, the King’s Head, on Upper Street, London in 1999. As Ensler fondly recalled on Timesoline: “Ah, the King's Head. I had to pee in a pot because there weren't any toilets.”

Anil Kapoor in trouble: Or should we say it's a dog's life?

The Time magazine website reports that 40 slum dwellers are protesting outside Anil Kapoor's house holding banners reading "I am not a dog". They, of course, are referring to the title of the Academy award nominated film Slumdog Millionaire in which Kapoor plays a role.

And far away in Patna, another slum dweller has sued the Indian cast and crew of the movie, for offending slum dwellers with the title. As the article reports, "He said he didn't expect any better of the British persons associated with the film because their ancestors called Indians "dogs" anyway, but the Indians should've known better."

I wish some of this delicious black comedy of life in India had percolated into Boyle's earnest film.

As another Bollywoodian Sohail Khan would say: I... Proud to be an Indian