Mid-Week has passed.

I don't know why but Wednesday night scares the heebeejeebies out of me. Because invariably, every Wednesday since I started calling this city home (OK, so its only been three weeks) has inadvertently led to alcoholic disaster. Which means a lot of beer/whiskey/vodka (plus some schapps last week) enters my system and Thursday morning usually begins with a bloated face (which in my case makes my already large face look gargantuan) and a late start. But getting drunk does have one major plus side - drunk sleep. I mean passing out is good at times, its good to get the passing out out of your system as early as possible.
Now, the Bombay papers are carrying on about corrupt contractors, corrupt housing officials and dilapidated houses. Again, no-one is talking about the biggest change needed - amending the Bombay Rent Control Act. The act, which froze rents at 1940 levels to prevent large-scale evictions post-independence has made downtown Bombay into a high-class ghetto. So, the residents inside a hundred-year old building might have a Mercedes or two parked outside, but the building itself is on the verge of collapse, and areas like Tardeo are full of such buildings. I don't get why no journalist in this country questions the existence of 50-60 even 100 year old pieces of legislation littering our penal and civil codes. The Telegraph Act, which is used to determine such late 20-th century things such as uplinking, radio broadcasts and TV rights sharing dates back to 1884 if I'm correct. And there are hundreds more, I mean section 377 of the IPC would have half (nay, all) of Bollywood in jail for 'unnatural' sexual acts (not just homosexuality, because 'unnatural' includes either giving or recieving oral sex, among other things, you never know, maybe even heavy petting can be seen as 'unnatural').
While, foreign publications galore praise the existence of a ferociously independent media over here, after four years of working and nearly twenty years of observing the industry, I'll agree with the ferocious part. The media will ferociously defend its independence - but is a meek as a pussycat when it comes to hardcore news gathering or for that matter balanced reporting. This may sould cynical, but its the truth. The media here is all about finding scapegoats - it rained in Bombay - who is to blame - no not the fact that we've let development run mad - but the Science and Technology Ministry for not warning us in time. Everybody just wants to point a finger and blame someone. No-one ever says sorry, and the desi media is just as bad we are either always right (by the way, when was the last time you read a corrigendum in any Jain&Jain publication) or its someone elses fault.
I caught TVTN's new channel yesterday. Its called 'Tez' and I'll say this much, its 'tez' all right. But I like the concept and I believe yet another TVTN channel is on the way soon. Plus two new NDTV channels plus two channels from TV18. A lack of objectivity it seems will not stop the viral infection of Indian news channels from spreading. And no, this is not a tired old print hack speaking, this is a person who has seen too much TV news talking. I watch only VH1, AXN and Discovery Travel and Living. Trust me, watching dumb bimbos on AXN showing off their tits and ass or dumb bimbos with electronically altered voices strutting around on VH1 is better than watching dumb bimbos spewing out knowledge they have no idea about on news channels. (OK, as a quick self rejoinder - not all TV news anchors are dumb bimbos - Vishnu isn't a dumb bimbo for example, kidding, actually there are some really smart women in TV News, but they all seem to be working for one network - NDTV and this doesn't mean that all NDTV anchor women have their nuts screwed in tightly)
Got to work now, and I have changed the comment system after a bit of great advice from Cyborg.
EDIT : Two months since I added the Statcounter (I added it on 27th June) the blog has crossed 5000 hits. (minus about a few hundred of mine - but it still says 5000 plus - hah!). I know my update frequency is a bit less nowadays, but thanks everyone for dropping by to my little space on the interweb.