SULEKHA SUCKS and SULEKHA knows it!

Update on 3/29/2005 12:30:00 PM:

I posted the link to this blog on Sulekha weblogs on March 28th, 2005 and it was deleted!

Message to Sulekha:
Why was the link to this blog on Sulekha weblogs deleted? Just because it tells the truth and Sulekha knows it? So, Sulekha won't let us tell the truth on their weblogs now. This is yet another reason why Sulekha SUCKS!

Sulekha and I are not the only ones who know that Sulekha SUCKS. Check the comment posted on this blog. Quite a few Sulekha bloggers have moved out and are posting on Dud Sea Scrawls, which is hosted on Blogger.com!

Warning to Sulekha:
The first time, I posted the following only on Sulekha weblogs. Sulekha deleted it. So, I had to host the content here and post a link on Sulekha weblogs. If Sulekha continues to delete the link I post on Sulekha weblogs, I will be compelled to post the link on many more forums on the Net.

Original blog posted on 3/28/2005 06:34:00 PM:

On March 27th 2005, I posted a blog on Sulekha weblogs and someone from Sulekha deleted it! I am reposting the contents of that deleted blog below, as closely as I can remember. To be polite to Sulekha, I originally posted the blog only on Sulekha weblogs and not on my personal blog here on Blogger.com. Sulekha, which knows no respect and courtesy, deleted my blog.

Well, bad move, Sulekha! You leave me with no choice but to post here on Blogger.com that SULEKHA SUCKS AND SULEKHA knows it! Incidentally, the title of the deleted blog was "Notes from my experience with Blogger.com" or something similarly simple and neutral.

What follows is a close reproduction of what I had posted yesterday, March 27th 2005, on Sulekha weblogs:

About a month ago, I stopped hosting my blogs on Sulekha weblogs section (I am deliberately not providing a link to Sulekha here) and moved to Blogger.com. I made this move because Sulekha edited one of my blogs without asking or notifying me. (You can read the background to that here: Moving out of Sulekha weblogs). Following are some of the notes from my month-long experience:

1. The look and feel of this blog, hosted on Blogger.com is much much better than Sulekha's simplistic and primitive weblog.

2. My blog has its own unique URL (http://libranlover.blogspot.com), which makes it very easy and convenient for me to share my blog with people. I can even post my blog's unique URL on message boards, as part of the signature in my emails, and on various other forums which market websites, getting exposure and visits to my blogs. This is so unlike Sulekha blogs where a person has to come and search for your blogs buried among hundreds of others.

3. The editor on Blogger.com is far better than Sulekha's archaic, outdated editor. Blogger.com's editor allows you to play easily with different fonts, sizes, styles, templates to help you get effect you want. It has other tools which make it easy to insert hyperlinks into your blogs, block-quote text, have bullet-lists and numbered-lists. You cannot even compare that with Sulekha's pathetic text-only editor, which is a very very tiny window that displays just 8-lines at a time. Why don't they at least make that window bigger?

4. Blogger.com has the awesome feature to post pictures. Yay! I am more a written words person than a pictures person. So, I have made limited use of this feature. But I would love to see fellow Sulekha bloggers go wild with this feature.

5. You can even post audio on Blogger.com! It is not a very advanced feature though. You have to call a 661 US area code phone number and record your audio blog over the phone. It is not even a toll-free number. I wish they also had the option to record audio blogs through the mic connected to a computer. I sound better when I record my singing through the mic, than on the phone. Well, something is better than nothing! One of these days, I will sing on my blog. However, I think my first audio blog is going to be stupid reports from a party in which we tried to get drunk and failed!

6. My next comment is about my beloved Sulekha readers' comments or rather dearth of it: Ever since I moved to Blogger.com about a month ago, I have had over 800 visits to this blog and I know that most of my readers are my friends from Sulekha. However, the number of comments people have left on this blog are quite low. I wouldn't think much about it, if people generally did not leave comments. But people who are quite unhesitant and prolific about leaving comments on Sulekha weblogs, don't do that on my blog here. I don't understand why. What is the hesitation? Can someone tell me?

7. Anonymous comments! Blogger.com allows one to post comments anonymously. There have been a few anonymous comments on my blogs which are quite personal. It would be nice to know who posted those comments. I am not asking for the reader's name, last name, the whole story with kula-gothra. Just the reader's Sulekha handle would suffice. Imagine getting an anonymous email, which has personal comments in it. Wouldn't you be disconcerted? I don't mind anonymous comments which are non-personal and generic.

8. I am very happy with hosting my blog on Blogger.com. I feel safe and free. I don't have to worry that some insecure, discourteous moron from Sulekha will edit my posts or delete them. It would be great if the Sulekha bloggers tried Blogger.com and experienced the wonderful features for themselves. I know that at least one other Sulekha blogger, d_w, also posts on here. However, he does not share his Blogger.com blog's links on Sulekha, like I do. So, I won't post his blog's link here.

9. If Sulekha cannot provide great features with its own weblog tool, it should seriously consider doing what I am doing: Sulekha should encourage its bloggers to host their blogs on Blogger.com, and share their links on Sulekha weblogs page. Sulekha could easily continue to provide the feature of displaying the blog title, along with the first few lines of the blogs, on its blog listing page. There are simple, ready-to-use tools available to do this. This makes everyone a winner: the bloggers get the best world-class features, Blogger.com gets more users and Sulekha continues to have its vibrant blogger community intact.

10. In its current form, Sulekha's weblog feature SUCKS and Sulekha knows it. To make that worse, SULEKHA SUCKS because of its discourtesy and disregard for its user community, the very same community which makes Sulekha what it is today. I have said this before and I say it again, Sulekha's user community is the probably the only good thing about it.

Freedom of Women & Loss of Womanhood

The following paragraph is from an email sent to me by a dear friend, Priyamvada K, who happens to be a single-mom with an office day-job. I am posting it here with her permission.

Today we claim women are educated, go out do this do that blah blah and how great that is. But the sad part is we don't get to exercise our nurturing side, not to the extent we want to. In the quest for freedom, more education, earning power, money etc - are we losing out on family? Is society or women as a group thinking a woman can do it all, and pushing her to be everything to everyone - that she may not be able to be? I mean, energy is finite. Where is the energy to sit down make someone's favorite dishes, spend hours playing with one's child teaching her stuff, telling stories, taking time to relax, having a place where child comes straight from school and relaxes, the time to swap the day's stories and share.....really share as a family? Instead one is out till 6:30 pm and then in the remaining 2 hours the kid is rushed from one task to another and then off to bed. And the cycle repe! ats. Is this freedom for women? I'm not so sure about that....perhaps its financial insurance for her in this uncertain world where marriage/family structures are changing and men may not be dependable - or don't want to be depended on. But freedom? I think it probably gives less freedom for a woman to be a woman - and exercise her nurturing, feminine self. It seems to me that family life has become like an assembly line - go from task A to task B to task C and finally rest. Somedays my heart weeps at this, but I have no solution at this time.

My heart goes out to Priya and to others like her. At least Priya realizes that she does not have the time and freedom "to be a woman" and she most probably does her best to make up for it. I wonder how many women there are, who don't even realize this, who are quietly losing their womanhood without even being aware of it themselves.

We are in a time and place of increasing androgyny in roles and responsibilities. These days, women also undertake activities which were conventionally considered to be masculine, and similarly, things that were normally done by women are also being done by men. I believe that this is basically good. I think that an amalgamation of the masculine and feminine talents, the union of yin and yang energies leads to an increased awareness and wisdom, accomplishes more and is the higher stage of evolution.

I am not against the education, independence, equality and empowerment of women. I am all for them and have consciously made choices to encourage them in the women in my life. But what is the price we are paying for this to happen? In their drive to be financially independent and "equal" to men, women are certainly losing certain aspects of being a woman. Some losses are welcome - such as the loss of weaknesses which enabled men to oppress women, treat them badly, curtail their freedom, etc. Along with these, we are also losing some things which are invaluable and cannot be replaced, things which have implications at all levels - family, society, the world. It is a case of throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Despite having an active, aware yin-side to my psyche, I am not a woman. I don't know enough about women. So, I would never be able to make a comprehensive list of all the aspects of womanhood that are lost or will be lost in the future. But as a grateful receiver of many blessings from women, I can think of a few things -

• 100% nurturing time and care for the children and family cannot be provided.
• "Quality time" for the family as a whole is greatly reduced.
• Parents may not be aware of everything happening in their children's lives, and of all their needs and requirements.
• Women do not have enough time to take care of themselves and their personal needs, to form sisterly bonds with other women, to gather in women's circles to share, support, gossip and help one another.
• Old recipes are lost. The talent to come up with new ones is eroded. Families are not as nutritiously and healthily fed as they used to be.
• Family lore, traditions and practices are lost. On a wider scale, the traditional cultures of whole societies and nations are getting eroded.
• Home-grown knowledge, wisdom and medicines are vanishing.

That is just a short list that came off the top of my head. I am sure women themselves can add more items to that list, items which are more relevant and valuable to themselves, to their families and societies. As I mentioned before, these are invaluable things which are extremely difficult or almost impossible to replace once they are lost. If you think of more things which can be added to this list, please post them in this blog's comments.

I have to pause here to clarify that all women who work outside the home are not losing all of the above. There are certainly awesome women who do a great job on multiple fronts - career, family, personal, feminine. But looking at society/world as a whole, the erosion and loss of womanhood and feminity is undeniable. The fact that many women do not even perceive the loss, caught up in sweeping societal and global trends is lamentable.

My heart is as sad as Priyamvada's heart, when I think that my sons will not know women in a way that I've known them and my daughters will not be women, in a way that I've known women to be. I mean that in a very good way, especially as excellent care-takers of children and family. However they are, I can only hope that my children will be safe and happy, loving and well loved.

PS: The increasing androgyny in roles and responsibilities is also causing erosion in masculinity, but that is a different discussion.

Beware Girls: I am just another guy!

I am just another guy… with the same damn expectations… with the same damn goals, as someone put it. I don't know if I was always like this and am only now realizing it, or if something changed to turn me into just another guy.

I used to be different before. I used to be more innocent and loving, kind and considerate with women and girls. I genuinely respected, admired and loved them. I treated them with a special feeling which was beyond mere desire or chivalry. It was a genuine appreciation of their value and worth as feminine beings, as representations of the goddess, as someone to be pleased and pampered.

I did not treat them as just sex objects. I did not look at them as inferior or weaker humans. I was into feminism - the real, positive, empowering kind - and more aware of it than most women I knew personally. I was attuned to women's feelings, emotions and aspirations, to their pains, fears and doubts. I was deeply affected when I saw them suffer. I sincerely believed that every woman who comes into my life should have positive experiences. There used to be a time when almost all the girls who knew me thought of me as a different guy, as the "better than others" kinda guy. That is how I tried to live.

All that has changed now. Now I am just one more lecherous guy, with loose principles and barely enough smartness to justify almost anything I do as being right. There is no smartness or wisdom in me to know better. The ability to justify that everything I feel or do is right makes me selfish and inconsiderate. Often unyielding and uncompromising.

Women are no longer representatives of the goddess. They are just sex objects to be taken advantage of whichever way I can. Beyond that I barely think about what to do or share with them. Most of the typical feminine characteristics, fears, hesitations, clumsiness bring out mild contempt and resentment, instead of the fond indulgence and affection I used to feel in the past. If the woman has a strong personality or talks too much or is too assertive or looks too good, the contempt and resentment I feel at her feminine wiles, needs and demands is more than mild.

There is anger towards the attitude of the modern women who expect to have all the good things and preferential treatment that women traditionally had on account of simply being women, plus equal rights and privileges as those of men, plus more. There is bitterness towards the ease with which women get attention, admiration, affection, love and sex, simply because they are women, while the average guy does more than his fair share of donkey's work and may not even get a kind word thrown his way.

When a woman is displeased or angry with me, I no longer feel inspired to do much to make her feel better. Instead, I am ready to ignore her and move on. When I don't get enough attention from her, I am even more ready to move on. Contrast that with the olden days when I would have literally worshipped the girl I loved, made her the queen of everything I have, loved, cherished, pleased and pampered her, and been devastated when I learned she did not reciprocate the affection. All that is in the past.

Today, there are only two groups of women who can expect anything good from me:

1. Those who work with me - I am a no non-sense professional. I look at them as just other professionals who help get the work done. It's only about work. No feelings, no emotions.
2. Those who are in real trouble/pain - I am deeply empathic. When someone is in real trouble/pain, I forget myself and try to do what I can to help them. It's only about them. Not about me or my selfish needs or messed up emotions. So, they are safe.

Every other woman/girl must beware of me. At this stage in my life, I am not good or right for any woman. Any closeness or close interaction will only result in pain for one or both people. I am not in a place of balance and contentment. I am not in a place of love. Nobody deserves that!

Two-Minute Cooking School 2: Lemon Rice

Lemon Rice, Lime Pickle and Chutney Powder! (Click for bigger pic)

Come on over for dinner! :-)

Recipe for Lemon Rice:
Lemon Rice is a rice dish from South India, containing a very simple seasoning, mixed with hot cooked white rice and fresh squeezed lemon juice. It is extremely easy to make. I think it's a fabulous summer dish because it is not too spicy and the fresh squeezed lemon gives it a light, breezy flavor. The following recipe may not be 100% authentic compared to how the dish is made in South Indian homes.

All of the ingredients I use in the following lines must be in just enough proportion to mix in with the quantity of rice you will cook.

Start cooking white rice in a pressure cooker or rice cooker.

While the rice cooks, chop a little onion and tomatoes. Add 2-3 teaspoons of oil into the frying pan and heat. Add some mustard seeds, and when they begin to pop, add minapa pappu, senaga pappu and dried peanuts. Fry these. When they start to turn slightly brown, break a dried red chilli into pieces and add. Fry everything till they turn brown. Be very careful not to burn them. Next add the chopped onion, and fry till it turns a very light brown, losing the pungent smell of onion. Then add a few curry leaves, if you have them, and a pinch of turmeric. Fry slightly. Add the chopped tomatoes and salt, fry some more until the tomatoes are slightly cooked. The lemon rice seasoning is ready!

To the seasoning in the frying pan, add the hot cooked white rice, squeeze fresh lemon juice, mix well adding more salt if necessary. Hot, yummy lemon rice is ready!

It is good to have curry leaves, but even if you don't, that is quite fine. If you want, you can grate some fresh coconut into the rice at the very end.

Sides:
Lime pickle - this was made by a friend, with fresh lime grown in someone's garden in the Phoenix area, Arizona. This is the best lime pickle I have ever tasted! The flavor of the lime is different from the Indian ones and the pickle seems to have preserved the fresh taste and aroma of the lime, in a way that I have not seen any other pickle do. I got a small cup of this pickle from the friend and I made it last as long as I could. When it was over, I moaned about it to the friend and she was kind enough to give me more, in a bigger box. I am gonna make this last and last.

Chutney powder - This is MTR brand chutney powder.

Two-Minute Cooking School 1: Vaangibaath

Vaangibaath and Flamin' Hot Chips! (Click for bigger pic)

Come on over for dinner! :-)

Recipe for Vaangibaath:
Vaangibaath is a rice dish from South India, containing primarily eggplant and some special spices, mixed with hot cooked white rice. The following recipe may not be 100% authentic compared to how the dish is made in South Indian homes.

Chop brinjal (also called eggplant) into medium sized cubes or 2 inch long pieces. Chop onions, just enough to season the amount of brinjal you have.

Heat a few teaspoons of oil in a frying pan. Add some mustard seeds. When the seeds pop, add minapa pappu (Telugu for urad daal) and senaga pappu (Telugu name; I don't know what it is called in Hindi; it is used in South Indian seasoning). Add a dried red-chilli, broken into small pieces. Fry until the pappus and chilli pieces turn brown. Take care not to burn them. Add some chopped onions and fry the whole thing until the onion turns just slightly brown. This is the seasoning. Keep this aside in a plate or cup.

Start cooking white rice in a pressure cooker or rice cooker.

While the rice cooks, add more oil into the frying pan, heat it. Add brinjal pieces and a pinch of turmeric. Fry until the brinjal is cooked. Add a little tamarind extract and salt. Fry just a little bit more, mixing in the tamarind and salt. Add MTR (or any other brand) vaangibaath powder, mix it in with the brinjal, continuing to fry. Lower the flame and add the seasoning of mustard, pappus and onions you kept aside earlier. Stir everything together a little bit more, without removing the frying pan off the stove. The whole mix of vegetables, spices, seasoning and oil is called vaangibaath gojju. When properly done, the gojju should look an exotic reddish-brown, with an awesome aroma and yummy taste.

Add hot cooked rice to this gojju and some grated kobbari (dried coconut). Mix them all together. Squeeze a little lemon juice into it, if you so desire. Garnish with fried cashew nuts. Hot, yummy, vaangibaath is ready!

Vaangibaath is normally spelled vangibath, I just like to spell native Indian words as close to the pronunciation as I can.

MTR Vaangibaath powder ingredients:
Coriander, Black Gram dhal, Chillies, Cumin, Fenugreek, Cinnamon, Refined veg. oil, Cloves and Curry leaves.

Flamin' Hot is a new flavor of potato chips from Lays. It is alright, although not as good as the jalapeno flavor.

Old Groucho Marx joke & The Coolidge Effect

I just don't want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member!

- Woody Allen's characater in the movie Annie Hall

I don't know what context Groucho Marx made a similar statement in, but Woody Allen's character says this in the movie when he realizes that he is avoiding sex with a woman who is good in every way, who likes him and who wants to have sex with him.

This is a situation most people would be familiar with. Somehow, the person who is far from us, who is almost a stranger, who won't have us, who outright rejects us, ends up inducing more interest us, grabbing more of our attention than the person who is close, who is familiar, who is open and available to us. Never mind if in actuality, the former is a very ordinary person and the latter is very special.

It is the age old Chaser-Chasee syndrome. The typical "familiarity breeds contempt" funda. It is the stupid, maddening Coolidge Effect!

And no one tell me it is true for only men and not for women. It may be more obvious among men, but I have known, seen and heard confessions from enough women to know it is true of women also!

Caste System in India

Caste system is not unique to India! It has been practiced by civilizations around the world. It's just that Indian civilization has been around for so long. Hence, the system had more time to become established, institutionalized, percolated into family and social life.

Identifying and differentiating other groups by various factors like economy, education, cultural and religious practices, as well as birth seems to be a way for humans to establish their own identity as well as dominance.

Caste can be used or abused:

Uses: For self identification, for building supportive communities, for preserving tradition and similar positive things. This is good and even necessary.

Abuses: For establishing one group's dominance, suppressing other groups, highlighting the differences and provoking fights, tearing apart society and country, suppressing individual ambitions, suppressing individual relationships, breaking love and marriages. These are obviously very bad things.

The role of caste for the purposes identified in "Uses" section above is becoming increasingly irrelevant in modern times. Supportive communities are built in other ways. Identities are formed in other ways. Tradition... I will come back to this later. The fact is that, we don't need caste for these purposes in today's world.

Unfortunately, the purposes described in "Abuses" section above have gained prominence over the recent centuries and decades in India, with active provocation and support from powerful political, intellectual and economical groups/individuals. Other groups not directly involved in the Indian caste system have taken advantage of this system and may be, also unwittingly (or not) caused it to continue. Examples of such groups are the British, the missionaries, the historians with vested interests, etc. The reality is that today, the caste system has become more representative of the abusive purposes than the useful purposes. For that reason, it has to go.

Ironically, the most precious and permanent casualty of the caste system is our culture and tradition, the very culture and tradition which practitioners of caste think they are protecting. In a new world where everyone can and does almost everything regardless of congenital identities and status, caste system cannot be sustained. With modernization, we are fast losing our culture and tradition. People who have been conditioned by centuries and decades of caste-based thinking, are not able to come up with innovative ideas of preserving culture and tradition. Seemingly educated and intelligent people who nevertheless support caste system, instead of coming up with innovative ways of preserving and continuing our culture, want to stay back or go back to the old system with all it's inherent abuses.

Although untouchability, denial of facilities/services for caste-based reasons and similar practices seem to be almost completely absent in much of Inida, other harmful practices like caste-based reservation for academic and job opportunities, and casteist politics are as strong as ever in our society, across the length and breadth of the country. A surprisingly large percentage of people - even urban, young, educated people - are not free of casteist mentality and thinking in certain aspects of life. Meanwhile our culture and tradition is being irredeemably lost. Loss of culture is a huge loss for our country, for our present generation and for countless future generations to come, for our very Dharma!

Some people argue that the caste system helped India flourish and grow for centuries; so, it is not a bad system and we should continue with it. This argument is analogous to the following: We had a machine that used to function very well. Over the years it degenerated and started causing more harm than good. This machine is on the way to being phased out now. That is not good. Let us clean and repair it and bring it back into usage.

The problem with this argument is that the machine has some inherent design flaws which led to its degeneration and harmful effects, in the first place. These inherent design flaws cannot be discarded or repaired away because that is the nature of this machine.

It is better for intelligent people to realize this, hasten the phasing out of the caste system and think up other innovative systems to preserve our culture. The urgent need is to protect, preserve, help the evolution and adaptation of our Dharma!

Soulmate

Someone asked on a message board:

Soulmate: What the heck does it mean?

My response:

The concept of soulmate(s) is similar to the concept of god(s). Most of the arguments, thoughts and theories about god(s) can be applied to soulmate(s) with little or no modification:

1. Does god / soulmate exist?

2. Is there one god / soulmate or are there many?

3. What is the gender of god / soulmate?

4. People have debated god(s) for centuries. They will continue to do so. Reason: It is impossible to reach any one conclusion which applies to everyone, everywhere, everytime. The same can be said of soulmate(s) also.

5. Any person who argues that their idea / experience of the god(s) is the only true experience is being foolish and short-sighted. The same applies to soulmate(s) too.

6. The experience of god(s) is very personal. For the same person, the experience is different at different times. This is true of love and soulmate(s) also.

So on and so forth.

--- End of Message --

PS: Here's a soulmate story published on this blog: Soulmates

To My Users: Take your business elsewhere!

Dear Users,

Just a note requesting you to stop using me and take your business elsewhere. I wish I could tell this to you personally, but I don't have the heart... nor the guts, I suppose.

You know who you are. If not, check the following list. If one or more of the following applies to you, then this note is addressed to you.

1. You disappear for days, months or even years, with barely a word to me, and then when things are no longer going well, you come back seeking my time, attention, friendship, advice, comfort, whatever.
2. You hardly remember me or think about me when things are going well. You get in touch with me only when things go bad or you are absolutely bored and don't know what else to do. You disappear again the moment things get better for you.
3. It has been a long time since you truly and genuinely wanted to know how I am doing. Even if we keep in regular touch, you don't know exactly how I am.
4. You almost never make time for me. You talk about doing it. But I am the least priority in your busy life, coming even after the hospice for which you volunteer or the refugees to whom you teach. So, of course, you can never find time for me. But when you need my time, you just come and take it for granted, without knowing that even I have a busy life and I make time when friends need it.
5. You flirt, suggest, lead me on, use me for your amusement, use me when you need help, use me when you are feeling low and need a "lift", use me when you want to be reassured that you are still attractive, desirable and have a nice ass.

I admit that I have allowed myself to be used. I did that partly out of love and equally hoping that I would get your nice ass. Now that we know there is no chance of my getting your love or your ass, I ask that you take your business elsewhere. Let me save my time and energy for those users whom I can't avoid (my employer, for example) and for those few people who have some love and some ass for me.

I am starting to feel bitter towards you. Let's stop this before I start hating you.

So long.

Libran-bitter-Lover

Fantasy - My own radio talk show in Bangalore!

One of my favorite fantasies of life on going back to India involves hosting a morning talk show on FM radio in Bangalore. My primary fantasy, of course, is to be a filthy rich writer, wherever I am. But hosting a radio talk show comes right up there, along with owning a successful landmark middle-class-family-institution kinda restaurant.

Hosting a radio talk show in my own city Bangalore, interacting with all kinds of Bangaloreans, having a finger on the pulse of the city, being part of the city's cultural makeup, helping the city get up and get going every morning... how cool would that be!

I think I am well-suited to do that. I am born and brought up in Bangalore. I lived there for the first quarter century of my life. Like a true Bangalorean, I know five different languages, which are most spoken locally in Bangalore. I love interacting with people, facilitating discussions, and I can get them going quite nicely with my ability to see different sides of an issue and my penchant for playing the devil's advocate. I can just see how it would all play out.

I wake up at 4 AM every weekday morning, get ready and go to the radio studio. I am joined there by my team: a young vivacious talkative female co-hostess with plenty of attitude and pizzaz, a totally wacky male co-host who is good at doing all kinds of crazy pranks, a "hottie" female phone operator and a guest host of the month or quarter.

My female co-hostess is smart, quick with the words and more than an effective counterfoil to me. While my views might tend to be idealistic, controversial, playing the devil's advocate, wacky or downright weird, my female co-hostess will be the voice of common sense, reason and sanity. The male prankster is probably the guy who got into all kinds of trouble when you were in school or college. And that is precisely the talent which will come in handy for my show. We will get him to play all kinds of tricks and pranks and dares with our listeners. The phone operator looks and sounds hot. People will call in just to hear her voice, if not anything else. She will effectively field the countless calls we receive day after day after day.

The wild card of our team is the guest host. This is my original idea. We will choose the guest host from countless everyday Bangaloreans who would like to appear on our show. A guest host will be chosen for a period of one month or one quarter, during which they will be on the show with us every single weekday. For the next month or quarter, a new guest host will join us. I will have lunch once or twice a week with people who apply to be our guest host to select a person with the attitude and talent our show needs. The guest host is very important because they will provide us the perspective, the point of view of the everyday Bangalorean. They will bring their background, their culture and conditioning, their language and slang, their attitude, their personality to the show. For example, imagine having a college student on the show daily. S/he would provide the student perspective and the student slang that the rest of us in the team would have lost touch with. The guest host will put us in closer touch with our listeners. Nice idea, huh?

Apart from the core team above, we will of course, have our sound technicians, etc. who are the regular fixtures in the radio station. But what I've described above is the core talk show team.

So, every weekday morning, I will reach the studio at 6 AM and meet my entire team. We'll spend half an hour daily, taking a walk or working out or whatever to get warmed up and get into the groove of one another. We will come back to the studio at 6:30 AM, have our breakfast, coffee, tea and start the show at 7. And for the next three hours, from 7 AM to 10 AM, every weekday morning, we will have all of Bangalore listening to us, laughing with us, being entertained with us. We will play music. We will initiate debates and discussions on myriad interesting and often controversial subjects, including politics, social and family matters, entertainment, sports, religion. We will be frank, we will be bold and we will not compromise on the truth. We will have interviews of celebrities and common people. We will play pranks, practical jokes, experiments on the phone and in real life. We will generally have a ball! And doing all this, we will make a lot of money and hopefully help make things better for Bangalore, India and the world in our own way.

We will end the show at 10 AM, to get out and do whatever each of us does. I probably will write and/or run my own restaurant, do the legwork and preparations for the next day's show, participate in various events in Bangalore in my capacity as a local celebrity. :)

What a fantasy! Now I will go sleep.