Fowl Play!

Dear Mr. Eoin Colfer,

It has always been a delight to me to read your works. I have been following the exploits of your young criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl. I cannot tell you in words how much I adore him and his adventures. I have just finished reading your latest book, and I found it simply awesome! I finished the book in one go, without putting it down. You are simply a genius. But I guess you must be getting a lot of such mails from Artemis's fans...

...and maybe that's why you've lost your brains.

...for that's the impression I got after reading "Artemis Fowl and The Lost Brain" (er...sorry, "The Lost Colony"). I have indeed read the previous four titles. I loved the first three and managed to read through the fourth last year (though I don't remember what it was all about) . It was only recently that I laid my hands on Book V of the series. The blurb seemed quite interesting - Artemis Fowl has a competition! Wow! Now that's something to read for...

Read, I did - until 11:30 on Saturday I read and read and read, and it was impressive - No.1's dilemma, Minerva's plans and Artemis's execution of the counterplan. And then, you seem to have thrown in the kitchen sink. Maybe it was something you ate in Taiwan. Speaking of Taiwan, how much did you get for promoting the tourism industry there? Or do you have some strange fetish for Taipei 101?

What the hell were you thinking when you wrote those last 100-odd pages? Time-warp, time tunnel, some goddamn extinct volcano...huh?? Someone get me outta here...and so much for the good side of Artemis, puberty and all those mushy stuff. What are we in store for in Book VI? The "Harry met Sally" version of Artemis Fowl? Are you seriously suffering from the JK Rowling Syndrome?

-The Klansman

The call that never came...

It was like waiting for Godot. On 25th January, as I was gleefully loitering along Fergusson College Road (ogling at the girls) in Pune, I got the call from Arindam informing that I was one of his choices for the "phone-a-friend" lifeline on KKK...KBC.

The opportunity came a year late perhaps (I would've loved to talk to the Big B), but I was delighted - not for the fact that I would be talking to whatsisname. It's not everyday that you get to feature on prime-time television.

To say the least, the news did not go down well with you-know-who's fans in the office ("why not me?") - some of whom wanted me to put them in conference when the call came. I was given a one page instruction sheet that informed me the modalities for attending the call - above all, to "sound surprised" when I receive the call - "After all, it is not everyday that you get to speak to Mr. Shah Rukh Khan".

As the D-day loomed, I was getting more and more jittery - not at the prospect of hearing whatsisname stutter, but at the thought of making a fool of myself in front of the zillion people who would be watching. To compensate for the change of the anchor, at least the quality of questions had gone up (to give an example: "Which product was voted by TIME magazine as the Best Invention of 2006? a. Google Desktop Search b. Ipod Nano c. YouTube d. Orkut", compared to "Which of the following animals would you come across in a desert? a. Bull b. Elephant c. Camel d. Cow") , and being the quizzer that he is, I was sure Arindam would gimme a call only when he was THAT desperate.

On the 14th of February, on St. Valentines Day, I refused to attend any other calls on my mobile - something which I guess, many others would not approve. But THE call never came...Later I found out that Arindam had lost the hot seat by less than a second. How Sad! After all, it is not everyday that Mr. Shah Rukh Khan gets an opportunity to speak to me...

I feel for him...

-The Klansman

What's in a name??

Courtesy: American Heritage Dictionary

klutz (klŭts): n. Slang

1. A clumsy person.
2. A stupid person; a dolt.

[Yiddish klots, from Middle High German kloz, block, lump, from Old High German.]

klutz'i·ness n., klutz'y adj.

Before you take offense to my change of name, let me assure you: Personally, I do not have anything against blacks, or any other so-called 'coloured' individuals. In fact I am not any "fairier" than you (and neither is life). Rather, I would consider myself to be a thoroughly colourful personality.

The emphasis is more on the second word, which perhaps (v)indicates my brain.

As they say, "what's in a name anyway?"

Bombay....

The city of dreams...Yes, we'd heard of it. And now, we got a chance to see it. But what did we see?

Before I embarked on the trip, I was told: "Chowpatty is a must-visit".

The truth is:

• We didn't visit Chowpatty
• We didn't vist Juhu beach
• Neither did we loiter around the Marine Drive (of course, the customary visit was included)

For a day and a half, we walked and walked....in and around Old Bombay ("Bombay" should have been old enough, what with all the renaming crap, but for me, they're still "Bombay", "Madras", "Cochin" etc.), revelling in the splendour of the grand buildings from the bygone British era - enticed by the Taj Mahal Hotel, enchanted by the old University Building and enamoured by the Old Lady of Dadabhai Naoroji Road (they called her "Victoria Terminus" in those days).

That's me for you...and that's why I changed the name of my blog...