India’s Eyebrow XI; And 12th Man Arnab Goswami

1. Kapil Sibal: Proud owner of arguably the most powerful pair of eyebrows in contemporary Indian politics. A recent NASA study claims his flourishing eyebrows are the only man-made structure, apart from Great Wall of China, visible from space.

2. Arun Shourie: Legend has it as India’s disinvestment minister, he came tantalisingly close to divesting himself of his eyebrows before better sense prevailed.

3. Ram Jethmalani: Country’s best criminal lawyer, he at times needs just to shake his eyebrows to unnerve his rival lawyer and win case.

4. Hamid Ansari: Thanks to the unruly MPs, the Rajya Sabha chairman’s eyebrows are greying faster than a Sebastian Vettel on a Red Bull.

5. Ashutosh Rana: As best demonstrated in ‘Dushman’, the hedge over his eye had the same effect on heroines as does Shakti Kapoor’s 'Lolitaaaa'.

6. Kajol: Few heroines made better use of a unibrow to eke out a career in Bollywood. In that way, film historians claim, ‘Dushman’ was the coming together of two of Bollywood’s biggest eyebrow pairs;

7. Shilpa Shetty: She entered Bollywood with a caterpillar over each of her eyes and butterflies in her stomach. The caterpillars have paved way for shapely arches and she now cracks a smile so wide that, eyewitnesses claim, it meets at the back of her head.

8. Virat Kohli: While he considers his middle finger as his most prized possession, it was Kohli’s eyebrows which caught the selectors’ eyes first. It convinced them the kid was special.

9. Jaswant Singh: A proud Rajput who wears his robust eyebrows like his badge of honour. He mumbles, only because his mouth shoots the words upwards where they lose their way in his bushy eyebrows and are reduced to gibberish by the time they emerge out of the vegetation;

10. Imran Khan: While his released films haven’t succeeded in proving he can act, some still believe his thick eyebrows hide his rumoured acting talents.

11. Karishma Kapoor: She was all eyebrows when she burst onto the scene and has clearly not been the same force since the ill-advised plucking of the arches.

And 12th man

12. Arnab Goswami: Owns the biggest proverbial eyebrow which he routinely raises every evening, demanding an answer to what the nation wants to know.

Sugarpova Effect: 8 Indian Cricketers And Their Potential Brand Surnames

A recent NASA study reveals only two human voices reach Mars – the first being Arnab Goswami’s when he’s collaring the Newshour debate with aplomb; and the second, Maria Sharapova’s grunt when she is whacking the ball.

The tennis tsarina, and I’m not talking about Mr Goswami, recently appealed to a Florida court seeking to temporarily change her surname to ‘Sugarpova’ for the duration of the US Open before abandoning the marketing stunt.

For the uninitiated, Sugarpova is the candy line Sharapova owns

In the end, Maria Sugarpova didn’t materialise. In fact, the poor richest female athlete pulled out of US Open with a shoulder injury.

Taking it from there, Doosra lists eight Indian cricketers and what should have been their natural brand surnames.




1. Sourav Scholl: When things got tense, Sourav Ganguly chewed his nails as if they were Greg Chappell. Legend has it Scholl patterned their nail-clipper after Dada.

2. Rohit Maggi: The first joke an average Indian kid learns is that you put maggi two-minute noodles on oven when Rohit Sharma walks out to bat and serve it hot when he’s back in the pavilion.



3. Shikhar Moustache: Shikhar Dhawan possesses contemporary cricket’s most famed handlebar and Moustache jeans can’t sign a better person to revive the brand that was fairly popular in small-time towns.



4. Harbhajan KFC: Even his detractors would admit he was a ‘Finger-licking good’ spinner before being reduced to a thumb-sucking has-been.

5. Ajit Nokia: Ajit Chandila has been connecting people so that they could fix IPL matches.

6. Sir Ravindra Good Knight: He is as efficient as the mosquito repellent brand. Has also assumed Knighthood without waiting for the queen to confer one on him.

7. Mahendra Singh Pawan Hans: There is a general consensus even among the armed forces that Dhoni manufactures India’s best helicopters.



8. Virat Cisco: If you closely look at the Cisco logo, it resembles human digits with two rather outsized middle fingers, jutting out as if Virat Kohli’s.

P.S. The Bounce list of T20 cricketers who might change their surnames is here.

Thank You All : IBAwards 2013

x

7 Reasons Why I Hate Cats

Did one of them facilitate a meeting between my ex and incumbent?

Did one of them left on my boss’s table the piece of paper in which I had scribbled, in a fit of natural rage, exactly what I think of him in rather unforgiving terms?

Did they ever leave a half-eaten pomfret under my pillow, leaving me with stinking linens?

To be fair to them, the common answer to the questions above is NO.

Which automatically leads us to the next question – why I dislike cats. Especially when so many allow, even pet, them. But then some allow Osama Bin Laden too.

Primarily, it is their insufferable insolence – an amalgamation of annoying arrogance, supreme smugness and humongous hubris -- which completely puts me off.

And if you insist on the specifics, below are seven reasons why I remain immune to, what I consider non-existent, charm of a cat.

1. Cats have nine lives and worse, they wear that smugness;

2. I love most exotic foods but ghee-rice-garnished-with-cat-fur is not among them;

3. Despite their religious and political differences, cats across the world follow the standard feline transportation method of grabbing their kitten by the scruff of the neck to carry them. I find it disturbing, also an unnerving reminder of my tumultuous childhood replete with such treatments from my parents.

4. They never trim whiskers.

5. Cats are the worst professionals among animals. Imagine yourself recruiting a gardener, who appears the next day to announce he doesn’t feel like gardening anymore and it would be nice if his salary cheque is mailed to him. Cats have practically mastered this art. Here you have an animal whose sole professional reputation is built around its appetite for domestic rats, which invariably vanishes the moment you pet them! Nobody has pulled off a bigger con on humanity.

6. Cats have a wicked sense of humour which is evident in the way they playfully chew grass just to mock poor cows.

7. I may not own a Lamborghini but I can afford a leg-warmer. And I prefer it in winter. I just don’t want a ball of fur around my ankle when mercury is in the upper 40s.

P.S. Couldn’t resist the temptation of quoting a PG Wodehouse character from “The Story of Webster”.

‘Cats’, proceeded the Pint of Bitter, ‘are selfish. A man waits on a cat hand and foot for weeks, humouring its lightest whim, and then it goes and leaves him flat because it has found a place down the roads where the fish is more frequent.”