Saif Ali Khan’s Dhishum Dhishum Act – What Tweeples Are Saying?

Saif Ali Khan is suddenly everywhere! Well, with his next flick  Agent Vinod release just around the corner the man should be grinning because of the coverage he is getting …that too free ka  news coverage ! But looking at his facial expressions on my screen I can’t say the man is in any mood to grin! He’s all frowns …after all what do you expect from a man who’s escaped 7 years imprisonment.

Just for a tick, think what would have happened if Saif Ali Khan did not get the bail!  The first thing that pops up in my head is – Kareena Kapoor had to wait for 7 years to get married !!

FYI if you are one of a kind – you don’t watch TV, you aren’t on FB and Twitter, you don’t read newspapers – basically if you stay in a secluded wonderland with internet connection and by sheer luck you have bumped into my post then let me tell you what the jhamela is.

Saif punched a man on his face on Tuesday night. And a  case under section 325 of the IPC  was registered against him.

The brawl took place between him and an NRI businessman  last night at Wasabi restaurant at Taj Hotel where he, Kareena and a few friends were having dinner.

Iqbal Sharma, the man whom Saif  punched was having dinner with his family at an adjoining table in the restaurant. Apparently, Iqbal complained about the noise that was coming from Saif’s table and Saif, reportedly, told him to go to a library to find peace. Well if that was not enough Saif punched the man in his face and broke his nose.

After the brawl Iqbal lodged the complaint that Saif and two of his friends assaulted him with fist blows, causing fracture to his nose bone.

Anyways after much drama Saif gets the bail!BTW he could have faced 7 years imprisonment if arrested and convicted for physical assault.

Saif Ali Khan’s  statement on the entire incident:

There was an ugly incident last night where my friends and the ladies with us were abused and I was assaulted.

I was hit and I defended myself. I have been to the police station to answer the requirements of law as I am a law-abiding citizen. I have also filed a complaint about what happened last night and I am confident justice will be done.

I have seen the interviews given on TV and they look like decent people and I cannot believe that the same people were so aggressive the night before and the lies that they are saying about me with such straight faces.

I think they have the CCTV footage in the restaurant that will prove everything.I hope the media is able to remain impartial while the matter is being decided. I don’t think any gentleman would have behaved differently.

Saif Ali Khan, Dhishum Dhishum, Broken Nose and Chirpy Tweeples -

• Saif ali khan beats up a guy named iqbal sharma in Wasabi restaurant in taj yesterday night who asked ‘Is kareena your Daughter’. #bollywood By Fake News
• So Saif Ali Khan punched some guy last night. Maybe he was trying to Pataodi his girlfriend. By MTVIndia
• Vijay Mallya will thank Saif Ali Khan for diverting media towards him. By MithunGNair
• Saif Ali Khan took the Royal Stag endorsement way too seriously. He must hve asked..Hve I made it large? Ans: No. Saif: Punch in your face. By GeetikaRustagi
• Congratulation to Saif Ali Khan for his first solo hit. Now it is only Abhishek Bachchan left on the ‘Solo Hit’ waiting list. By Irteja Ali
• Saif Ali Khan” – It takes more than a page to write the first two letters of his name. By Thinkerhat

P.S. BTW today Syrian Government Forces Killed 100 Civilians, did the news reach your ears?

Kolkata Rape Victim, Aarushi Talwar and Scarlet Keeling – What’s Common Between Them?

They can beat, slap, kick hard, rape, throw acid and even murder and can come clean by saying – “She deserved it”! What exactly does “She deserved it” mean?

I have tried to jot down a few extremely annoying remarks that  we often see associated with the victims of sexual attack, rape or physical assault -

• She was wearing tube tops and tight jeans. In other words she dressed provocatively and was giving SIGNALS to the men.
• She used to hang around with guys…she had many sexual partners.
• She went to nightclubs, danced till the wee hours of the morning and got drunk…high risk behavior. In plain terms women if try to be adventurous can court big problems. Gender equality talks are all bull shit basically!
• She had the audacity to say “no” to HIM…cases like that of Priyadarshini Mattoo who was raped, strangled by Santosh Kumar Singh, her senior in college. After murdering Priyadarshini, he battered her face beyond recognition with a motorcycle helmet.
• And many other such victim-blaming remarks.

Kolkata Rape Victim

Recently the city of Kolkata witnessed a heart-wrenching story of a woman who was raped in a car at gunpoint and was left bloodied and battered in the deserted streets. When she went to lodge her complaint at Park Street police station on February 9, the victim says she was asked uncomfortable questions and was jeered at for going to a night club. “Is it a sin to go to a night club? The policemen made me feel like a criminal. I was already traumatised and they made me all the more sick,” she said. The victim is a mother of two and was born and brought up in Kolkata and always considered it a safe city. You can read the complete report - articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-02-16/kolkata/31066093_1_night-club-gunpoint-young-woman

The investigation is ON and police hasn’t yet come out with the reports but the CM was quoted as saying “It was a fabricated story created to malign the government,” and if that was not all as the Transport minister of the state’s remark “Why did a woman with kids at home, who is separated from her husband, go to a nightclub? For all you know, she may still be drinking at a club.” on a TV panel discussion left many fuming. Check the report - timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata-/Rape-complaint-fabricated-Mamata/articleshow/11919755.cms

Such dismaying remarks from the leaders of the state makes my faith in the political system dwindle. Yes, they can have their own reasons for not believing the woman concerned but isn’t it too early on their part to come out with such comments when the investigation is still ON.

BTW today Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Damayanti Sen told the reporters that 2 arrests have been made.

Sumit Bajaj and Rehman Khan alias Tusi, who masqueraded as Lavi Gidwani and some others whom the 37-year-old woman named, had befriended her at a night club, Joint Police Commissioner (Crime) Damayanti Sen told PTI. The police were on the lookout for two others, whose identities had been established.

Ms. Sen said the police collected CCTV footage from the night club and spotted some persons around a car that night. “However, those named in the FIR by the woman did not match with the CCTV footage and it was found that the offenders were masquerading under other names to mislead the victim,” she said.

Read the complete report here - www.thehindu.com/news/states/other-states/article2907861.ece

ibnlive.in.com/news/kolkata-woman-raped-confirms-police/231524-3.html

Update on 19 Feb – Two people have been arrested identified as Sumit Bajaj, Naseer Ali and Nishat Alam alias Ruman Khan alias Tussi. The Honda City has been seized and is being sent for forensic tests The accused impersonated Lavi Gidwani, Sharafat Ali and Azhar Ali. The accused were habitual offenders and regulars at different nightspots. They always took aliases of real persons of their age and appearance before committing an offence. They knew Lavi Gidwani, Sharafat Ali and Azhar Ali as they went to the same gym. They also had a brawl with Lavi, Sharafat and Azhar at a nightclub a year ago.

Update on 20 Feb- The main accused Kader Khan(brother of another accused Naseer Khan) andJohny have left the city and are hiding in a neighbouring state. Cops have tracked their hideout and a detective department team is headed there, sources said. Among the duo, Kader was the one who impersonated Sharafat Ali and raped the victim. He is supposed to get married within a week.

Police has slapped gang rape charge on all the suspects.

Read the report here - timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Gang-rape-charge-on-Kolkata-pub-raiders/articleshow/11957381.cms

Scarlet Keeling Murder in Goa

The incident reminds me of the rape and murder of Scarlet Keeling in Goa. And this is what one of the Goa ministers had to say “How can a mother, let her minor daughter go out so late in the night?…. Tourists should take care of themselves.” I also saw some comments on various blogs like “Scarlett was wasted, she was just 15, yet she was having sex…..”

The mother of the victim was accused of bad parenting but what about the parenting the rapists and the murderers of Scarlet Keeling received…no one questions that!!

Aarushi Talwar Murder

Another case where the victim has been bashed several times on blogs, websites, and newspapers is Arushi Talwar of Noida. Well, people say that she was murdered by her father because he caught her in a compromising situation with their servant Hemraj. BTW Hemraj was also found murdered.

Soumya Vishwanathan Murder

When journalist Soumya Vishwanathan was killed in the year 2008 while returning from work in the wee hours in her car Chief Minister was quoted as saying “All by herself till 3 am at night in a city where people believe…you know…you should not be so adventurous.”

Thus, in a way blaming the murdered victim for leaving the work place late and unescorted rather than nabbing the culprits and ensuring law and order of the state. BTW Dixit later apologized for her insensitive remarks.

You can read the complete report here articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2008-10-03/delhi/27932960_1_home-minister-sheila-dikshit-law-and-order

It’s appalling that in country such as ours which boasts of women empowerment- you know, women in power kinda stuffs with a woman President, 4 powerful women chief ministers, Mrs Gandhi as one of the powerful politicians in the country, Smt Sushma Swaraj as leader of Opposition Lok Sabha, Chanda Kocchar , Indira Nooyi, Kiran Bedi et al, we get to hear such remarks about women victims who in addition to going through the physical+emotional trauma of rape or assault also have to face the probing of her  life –like how many men she was going around with, what she was wearing, how she behaved in public, what was her family background etc etc so that the reason why the man was PROVOKED or ENTICED to commit the crime could be determined.

The idea that women provoke men to assault them or entice rape sounds plain preposterous to me.  Let’s face the fact and it is -

• There’s no woman who wants to get raped or assaulted. Or even deserves it.
• Men who want to attack or assault women will find someone to attack– irrespective of what one wears or how one behaves.
• A woman’s rape is not her fault.
• Last but not the least – Rape is a horrendous crime and the criminal should be punished severely. And we must understand one thing – if a woman is saying that she was assaulted please don’t cast aspersions on her at the first go. Let the facts emerge and then decide. If you don’t know the facts  then do not  convict, sentence or bash her.

The Kolkata Rape Victim, Aarushi Talwar and Scarlet Keeling – all have received similar kind of bashing from moral police. In case of Aarushi and Scarlet they were tried, judged and bashed relentlessly after their death, whereas the Kolkata rape victim is living a nightmare.

Tweets…Tweets!!

Today’s tweets that add to my Tweet collection are -

Politicians cutting across party lines wish Happy Promise Day to voters in Uttar Pradesh. By Faking News

#GirlsShould Hold your head high, and your middle finger higher. Let him know what he’s missing! By Will Smith

Law minister breaks laws. Be grateful that home minister doesn’t break homes. #Khurshid By Diggileaks

The #porngate ministers were just doing what all politicians do. Watching others do their ‘jobs’ instead of doing their own. By MTVIndia

Tweets of the day!

Well these days I’ve got a new hobby and it’s collecting tweets that are witty, funny, real, unreal and re-reading them and laughing out loud. But there’s no maza in laughing akele akele. So, thought of posting the tweets on my blog . So, let’s start with today’s tweets.

These tweets are collected from the topics trending today – from Robert Vadra, Rahul Gandhi,#my baby’s nearly 18, Ayesha Takia to somber ones like Yuvraj Singh’s et al.

Today’s 14+1 Tweets that are Funny+Funny

1. As long as Rahul Gandhi is our yuva neta I am still young. And most of you all are babies. By RaggedTag
2. #AlternateUsesofChetanBhagatBooks Use two of them to create a raised platform for your laptop. To use when laptop cooler not working. By Deepak Mehta
3. Robert vadra shud b a very very worried man.today he also watched Times Now. By Sachin dixit
4. Who are these people Robert Vadra thinks will ever want him to enter politics ? By Anubha Bhosale
5. Kya aap Ayesha Takia ko takkar de sakti hain? Agar haan, toh t(w)itpic karein! By Kash
6. Dear Ayesha Takia and Kingfisher. It’s Bob Marley’s birthday. Peace out. His method of flying was best. Try it. You’ll both feel better. By Rohan Joshi
7. 4 Sonam kapoor blouses can be made from 1 Ayesha Takia blouse. By Trendulkar
8. What’s all this Ayesha Takia talk about? Did Siddharth Mallya visit Chai Coffi and get pissed when they charged him for a glass of water? by Aniruddha Guha (BTW Chai Coffi is a cafe owned by Ms Takia)
9. People tweeting about Ayesha Takia when they should be sleeping with a Takia under their heads. One common factor, both are of same size By Gaurav
10. Complan was the success behind Ayesha Takia’s enormous bust. I wonder if it had the opp reaction to Shahid Kapoor. By Evilgeniusnick
11. What Deepika padukone couldn’t do for 2 years!!! Ayesha takia did it in 5 mins.. Trend Siddharth mallaya on twitter!!! By WTF
12. It all started with the 15 year old boy, wearing the grey hoodie saying “aye, aye, aye” and now my baby’s nearly 18. By BiebersBeats (And it was Rt’d 3246 times) Justin Bieber Fans!! Seriously!!
13. #Happy Birthday Bob Marley… Can we please get you back if we sacrifice Justin Bieber? by Hopelesssouls Justin Bieber Haters!!! Seriously!!
14. Why is everything of Housefull 2 getting leaked first the song..now the trailer..I think they have some leakage problems! Plumber time guys! By Imroj singh
15. I saw Heyy Baby in theatre, I also saw Housefull in theatre, with this exprience i can safely say “I WILL NOT WATCH Housefull 2 in theatre” by Fultufilmy

And on a somber note, get well soon tweets flooded in as the news that Yuvraj Singh is battling cancer spread.

Ayesha Takia  Trending on Twitter???

BTW for those who are thinking why, of all the people, Ayesha Takia is trending on  Twitter. Then here’s the story -

Ayesha Takia tweeted about her sister being harassed by Kingfisher Airlines staff – “The worst airline,kingfisher!!!shockingly baddddddddddd airport staff behavior at delhi airport with my sister.This disgustingly behaved kingfisher staff called Vinay podwal just tore my sisters boarding pass n misbehaved with her!!!!Can’t believe thisssss!!!I’m in mumbai n I wish I was there rite now 2!soooo angry!!How can this happen!!!how dare this vinay podwal misbehave with a passenger and tare her boarding pass,it cud b any one of u!!think about it.I will tweet and tell ul the whole story in a bit,2 angry n upset rite now!this just happend!!I wanted u alllllll 2 no!My heart is beating so fast with anger that a girl at an airport gets treated this way by airport staff!he is at the kingfisher counter.She is unwell and has a horrible backache,can’t believe this happend 2 her rite now!!!!!!!!!!!!Is this how a girl alone at an airport gets treated by the staff of the airline she is flying?!?!?!?Vinay podwal at delhi airport,kingfisher staff just threatend and yelled at my sister saying he can throw any1 out n TORE her boarding pass!She is unwell n tired n hurt from being mistreated n threatend..I’m shocked!We r goin 2 take serious action against this and go 2 court with it,let the law handle it,so that this dosent happen 2 any girl again!”

Well for obvious reasons the tweet didn’t go down well with Jr Mallya and he took to Twitter as well – “Been getting retweets about Ayesha Takia & KFA. not too sure who she is, an actor of some sorts?? But it seems something has upset her!!Don’t know why Ayesha Takia is tweeting so much when she wasn’t even present. There are always two sides to a story. Pipe down love.”

It’s a buffalo on ebay

It was 4 in the evening and the weather outside was frosty. The sky was laden with heavy clouds and everything seemed gloomy. You know the kind of weather that makes you want to cuddle up in front of fire with a cup of coffee and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. But wishes don’t always come true, do they? So, I was sitting at my office, staring at my laptop screen or rather at the write-up on ox car sticker (What is an Ox car sticker BTW ? Don’t ask me!) waiting to be edited and then a press release to be filed…

Well, was trying very hard to concentrate but all of a sudden BB (my colleague+HR) came bursting into my room and said “email ta check koro!” Very obediently I opened the inbox and saw a message from our Creative Designer and an image of a buffalo! “What’s wrong today? As if dealing with a write -up on Ox-whatever wasn’t enough and now I have to excruciate myself by going through an email on Buffalo?” grudgingly I muttered.

Anyways I opened the image and clicked on the link. And I saw a buffalo being sold on ebay! A young black buffalo which gives 20l milk per day. Pretty efficient I would say. Though the stuff was funny it made me wonder what if such things (you know selling cattle) become online. Well, the thought was voiced by one of my colleagues who hails from Uttarakhand and said “ Mere ghar mey teen bhais hay. Agar mujhe kal ko koi bhais bechni hay aur online bechne ka option hay toh phir isse better option kya ho sakta hay.” If we can sell  coal online then why not cattle?

BTW ebay India has removed the listing.

The image was shared  by many on Facebook, if you missed it then don’t worry. You can take a look at it here

Buffalo on Ebay

Madhuri Dixit is getting waxed at Tussauds! She does mani & pedi @ Eiffel Tower

I am a big Madz fan and was quite excited when I heard that her wax statue would be included in the Madam Tussauds. But my excitement soon became a roller coaster ride of laughter and digging up Wren and Martin – courtesy newswallahs! Two biggie newspapers (India Today and Headlines Today) carried the story with a super headline that said Madhuri Dixit to be Waxed at Madame Tussauds. So, Madz goes all the way to Tussauds to get her waxing done! My next question - where does she go for her mani and pedicure? To Eiffel Tower! And BTW since when Tussauds became a celebrity beauty parlor?

Seriously, whoever wrote the headline did not know the meaning of the word ‘waxed’  or was trying to be funny in a lewd way.  Then there was this Bollywood portal called desihits which posted a video with the headline -Video: Madhuri Dixit is Getting Waxed! While going through these headlines a thought struck me – Madam Tussauds should have zeroed in on Anil Kapoor! What helluva news it would have made – Anil Kapoor getting waxed at Tussauds.

Let’s see what does Oxford dictionary tell us what does ‘waxed’ mean when it’s used as a verb -

1) Cover or treat (something) with wax or a similar substance, typically to polish or protect it: I washed and waxed the floor

2) Remove unwanted hair from (a part of the body) by applying wax and then peeling off the wax and hairs together: she waxed her legs when necessary

So, going by the headlines it means either Madhuri is getting covered with wax!! or she is going to the wax museum for yeah, you know hair removal! Sounds, gross, doesn’t it?

P.S. – I am not  a grammar nazi.

5+ Key Points from the TIE Interactive Session with Sabeer Bhatia

Sabeer Bhatia at TIE Kolkata

1. At the core of every entrepreneurial venture there should be an idea which really solves some fundamental problems

The idea of Hotmail hit Sabeer Bhatia and his partner Jack Smith while they were working for Firepower Systems. The company had installed firewall around the corporate intranet which prevented both of them from accessing their personal email accounts. That was when the idea struck them “Wait a minute, we can access any website in the world through a web browser. If we made email available through the web browser, that would solve our problem. And then it occurred to us, ?If that would solve our problem, it would solve the problems of many others.”

In 1996 Mr Bhatia along with his partner had launched hotmail which changed the way people used email. Now, 15 years later Mr Bhatia has launched JaxtrSMS, world’s first and only free and open texting application. “This product will do to text messaging what Hotmail did to e-mail 15 years back” said Mr Bhatia at an interactive session at Tie Kolkata.

In a very short span of less than a month we have crossed 700,000 users and we are already in 210 countries. We are growing at 30-50,000 new users everyday and all of this is because of that viral ad line with every out – of network text message that goes your friend is using JaxtrSMS, you should use too. Click here to download” he added.

After briefly giving us some insights into the market for texting he got to the precise point – So, what’s the problem JaxtrSMS is trying to solve? About 20% of all the revenues of the phone companies around the globe come from texting. If one is to look at the amount of data bandwidth these phone companies use in terms of air time it is trivial. Users end up paying a lot of money for texting that essentially costs nothing to the carrier and also texting is extremely expensive when one needs to text internationally.

JaxtrSMS lets users who have data enabled mobile phones send messages to any other mobile phone free. In his speech he detailed the main points on how the application would work on any data-enabled phone and their competition in the texting space.

2.You’ve got to be very frugal when you start

Mr Bhatia gave the attendees a brief peek into the issues he and his partner faced before getting a $300,000 funding. He was candid when he spoke about his efforts to get funding and how he was turned down by 19 VCs before a funding from DFJ happened. “So, we started with a very small sum of money $300,000 and not only we proved to them that we could do this but we launched the company and had a 100,000 users before we went in for the next round of financing.” He added and was quick to point out that one of the factors that entrepreneurs must consider when starting on their own is – frugality.

3.People take risks with you.

“That’s the beauty of Silicon Valley; people take risks with you.” Mr Bhatia mentioned a few instances where people took risks with him. He told the attendees that with the $300,000 he’d hired 4 full time employees and 15 part-time employees. All the part-time employees were paid in stock options and were promised that when the next round of funding would be received they would be brought on board as full time employees.

4.For every 19 companies that fail 1 makes it. But the 1 that makes it more than provides for the 19 failures.

He spoke about a fund where he’d put some money. The gentleman at the fund had invested money at 150 companies and when the dot com crash happened 149 of the 150 companies failed miserably. But 1 company where he’d a put a small amount of money was Google

5.If the software industry in India is to truly develop we’ve got to breakthrough and create world-class products.

“And we have the opportunity to do that” said Mr Bhatia as India is the second largest mobile market in the world. He chose to launch JaxtrSMS in India as- the product was completely developed in India and he wanted people over here to see what it takes to develop products. He India has talent, audience and the market to test the concepts – all the right elements one need for innovation. We just need a few people to show us the way

6. Key ingredients of success – Size of the market, Technology, Financing required & People

He talked about the success of high-tech business ventures (of Silicon Valley) and zeroed in on the 4 above mentioned factors. He spoke, importantly, about the quality of people that plays an important role in high tech businesses. “It’s the quality of people that makes the difference between a good product and a great product, or a fail product and a super successful product, and in no other industry you see this much of variation because of the difference of people you find as you do in high tech space.” Mr Bhatia said in his speech and he very nicely summed up by saying “You hire A quality people you get A class product.” Also, he talked about mistakes entrepreneurs make while hiring. He very aptly drew a distinction between a good and a great leader. According to him a great leader identifies that the person they’ve hired is not the right person and let the person go immediately.

Sabeer Bhatia and Microsoft Negotiations

Well, we all know Hotmail was sold at $400million to Microsoft. There were different stories about the hard negotiation Mr Bhatia made with Microsoft Biggie Bill Gates. Here’s the story about that famous deal straight from the horse’s mouth!

Sabeer Bhatia – We were providing email to about 7 million subscribers when someone from Microsoft called us and said “Is this really true that you are providing email to 7 million subscribers” and we said “Yeah”. And they said”So we want to come in to see how you do it”. Microsoft at that time had Microsoft network which had about 2 and a half million subscribers and they were down every other week. They were getting really bad press.

It originally started off being a deal where we would provide email to their subscribers and because we had skillfully mastered the art of providing email to 7 million subscribers.

But very quickly they realized that we wanted to be more than just an email provider and they saw us as being competitor to their business so that’s when the VP of Microsoft called me “Have you thought about a merger between 2 companies.” He didn’t say acquisition. So, we were taken to meet with Bill Gates.

I started talking and Bill was looking everywhere else but at me. I thought he wasn’t interested but at the end of it he really heard every word of what I had to say.  And when we were walking out he shook my hands and said “You know what I hope we can do something between our 2 companies otherwise we like to write software too.”

So, when I walked out, there were 14 people from Microsoft in the other side and I knew if I had opened my mouth and try to negotiate then I’d be a dead duck. They started with $160 million offer at first they wanted me to counter somehow and this was at a time when both Jack and my personal bank balance was just $5000 and somebody put $160million in front of you and I refused to accept that. I kept negotiating so we countered back and forth. At one point I turned down $350 million at which point even my parents deserted me.

I called up my dad one day and he said what’s going on and I said “Yeah they made an offer.” He asked “what happened”, I said “I turned it down.” My Dad asked “how much was the offer.” I said 350. Dad said“350! $350 million and how much that’s in Rupees I can’t even put it on my calculator. You accept it right now!”

And luckily a week later they called back and I was asking about $450 and they said we can’t match your 450 but how about we meet half way and I said that’s a great idea. Let’s do half way.

Ooty, Toy Train, Rajesh Khanna and Girlish Dreams

I have always been fascinated by toy trains. I think the fascination has got a lot to do with Rajesh Khanna! I still remember him donning a black topi, a mustard blazer and singing Mere Sapno ki Rani and wooing Sharmila Tagore who sat by the window of a toy train acting all demur