AmreekanDesi

Breaking News: Fans of Chicken Tikka Masala beware. The tandoor in your favorite desi restaurant may not be safe. These ill-maintained tandoors have been blowing up all over Birmingham of late.

As if the damage to their digestive system from the super spicy Indian food wasnt bad enough, food patrons now have to bear in mind the prospect of the Tandoor, and god forbid, the entire desi food joint going up in fire.

A number of restaurant workers have been severely burned because the modern gas tandoors, used to cook chicken tikka and nan bread, were not properly maintained.

Birmingham City Council inspectors also found that at many establishments kitchen staff routinely light the ovens by throwing in burning serviettes, rather than using an ignition system. [link]

And we thought the only thing Indian food blows up is your stomach!

This is terrorism of a different kind.

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Is this what old age and lack of work does to veterans?

But then we also have reigning superstars Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan doing ridiculous ads for diverse brands such as Chyawan Prash and Hair Oil.

Maybe it isn’t about lack of work. Maybe it’s all about the Moolah!

I had always heard of the rush associated with the killing of wild animals, aka Hunting. I am happy to inform my dear readers that i have been experiencing the said rush these days thanks to a new found passion.

I have blood on my hands. Well, not right now. Not as i type. Wouldn’t want to stain the keyboard. Anyway, it isn’t even just blood. There’s some other gory stuff as well.

For those of you who have watched (and enjoyed, i daresay) the spectacle of that Discovery show called Man vs Wild where this brave guy catches fish with the bare hands and rips their head off for the protein, i have been doing some bare handed killing myself.

The best part is that the more i kill, the more there seem to be. Its like the akshay patra of Mahabharata, the bowl that was always full of food. Somewhere in China, maybe they fry and eat these beings but i dont think i am quite yet ready to eat a mosquito pakora.

(Swatted one just now as i stopped for a breath in between paras, Obama style. I got the sucker.)

Nothing beats the joy of finding a lonely fat (it’s most likely my blood in there) machchar, and swooping in for the kill like a vulture diving to pick up a rat from the ground. It’s not easy, and the amateurs will likely have a low success rate. It’ll take some practice before you can reach fire and forget levels of surety.

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Doctors at a government hospital in Tamil Nadu performed 14 surgeries in 3.5 hours to set a new world record. The doctors videotaped the feat and sent it to the Guinness authorities through the state government.

“We opened four patients at one go. I would open the breast, remove the tumour and nodes and move on to the next patient. My assistant and a post-graduate student would close the wound. When I moved to the fourth patient, the first was ready to be sent to the recovery room and another patient would be wheeled in,” Prasad told reporters.[link]

Outrageous, did you say?

I would certainly have not wanted to be a patient inside that operating room that day. A doctor is held in high esteem as a person who saves people’s lives. When he starts treating his patients as guinea pigs in the quest to set a world record, what do we do?

14 lives at risk for the sake of a silly record?

For some reason we are reminded of Kumar Sanu who recorded a record (ha! pun alert!) 28 songs in a single day back in his day. Wonder what happened to those songs!

The chief minister of Andhra Pradesh died in a helicopter crash this past week. Our heartfelt condolences to his family. It is a sad moment when life suddenly comes to such a tragic and untimely end.

Rest in Peace, Y S Rajashekhara Reddy.

As always, this event got converted into a huge national crisis, and the media went into overdrive with the frenzied zeal that has become synonymous with news coverage these days.

And then they took it up a notch.

At least 60 persons either committed suicide or died of shock after hearing the news of Chief Minister YSR Reddy’s death in a chopper crash.[link]

As much of a charismatic and visionary leader he may have been, it is hard to stomach the fact that grief stricken people are going around committing suicides because of his untimely demise.

We Indians sure are crazy, but this crazy? Somehow, in a state that has seen almost 3000 suicides in the past 5 years this claim rings hollow.

Sample these news reports from the time when YSR was alive and well.

Even as Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy admitted there had been 20 suicides by farmers in the state in the last 40 days, yet another case came to light on Saturday. [link] – 16 Aug 2009

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy today admitted that 2,890 farmers committed suicide in the state since May 2004 when he took over reins for the first time.[link] – 10 June 2009

Why must we attempt to squeeze every ounce of marketing points out of even a tragic event like death? Why must death be made into a complete circus?

Is it a fair assumption that any deaths in the state following YSR’s are out of grief for the fallen leader, or is it just propoganda by overzealous party promoters?

Also read this piece by Sandeep, who points out that YSR may not quite be the god that he is being proclaimed to be.

(Image courtesy: indianexpress)

British broadband provider TalkTalk has come up with an ingeneous idea to get some publicity give back to the public suffering in hard times. They have deployed teams of ex pick pockets to put money in people’s pockets, on the sly.

Aware that people are suffering in the economic crisis, 20 former pickpockets have turned over a new leaf and are now trawling London’s tourist sites slipping money back into unsuspecting pockets.

Anything from £5 ($10) to £20 notes is being surreptitiously deposited in unguarded pockets or open handbags in Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden and other busy spots. [link]

This sounds like great news for the pick pocketing industry. People are going to pray to be putpocketed, and might just flash a smile as they see a pickpocketer making his getaway after putting their stuff in his pocket.

Google as we all know, is God. Google knows everything. Google Baba will answer all your queries and solve all your problems.

If you go to Google.com and start typing a question, it will start suggesting some questions that people have been looking for, and a number of the results matching that query.

Great way to find the popular searches and results.

Got this idea from Chirag’s post on a search for India. Presented below, are Google’s thoughts on some of the bigger questions bothering humanity.

About the world…

Apparently the world is going to end in 2012.

A quick search later, google told me that thanks to some alignment of the stars on 21 Dec 2012, the earth might just come to an end. For this reason, the Mayan (who, did you say?) calender ends on that date! Whoa.

About Earth…

This one’s interesting. Looks like there is still some debate on whether the earth is flat or not. And to think that Aristotle answered that question for us a few hundred years before Jesus Christ was born.

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“Russell your show was mind blasting. Mmmind Blaasting. Not mind blowing…anything can blow the mind. You just blasted the mind”

Russell Peters, talking about Indians complimenting him after shows.

The venue was the Borgata at Atlantic City, where the Amreekandesi family spent their weekend. We were going to to the Vegas of the East coast as it is, and were pleasantly surprised to find Russell Peters performing this weekend. Me and the missus managed to get prime seats very near the stage.

Close enough, but not too close, if you know what i mean!

Russell Peters and Friends, they called it. Mr Peters and some other stand up comics performed over a couple of hours, and at one point my stomach actually hurt from all the laughing.

First though, for those who don’t know what i am talking about, Russell Peters is probably the most famous south-east Asian stand up comic. You can watch some videos of his earlier performances here and here.

Back to this show. The thing about Russell Peters is that most of his jokes are on race. The others are about sex. Sensitive people will likely not like him.

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