March 23, 1998

With the Aussie cricketers stealing headlines (for the wrong reasons), we thought we'd take a look at manager Steve Bernard's diary. That didn't quite work out, but here's how we think it might read:

Bad news. The baked beans and spaghetti Shane Warne asked for from Australia are late. No wonder Sachin beat him up, poor Shane (a mere 95 kg) was starved. Good news. Shane's going to endorse the bean company. Bad news. The spaghetti guys aren't happy he eats their stuff on toast. They're right; who would?

Asked for our own Darrell "The Impartial" Hair to umpire the next Test. In Chennai we had a Pom and a native and they couldn't get a thing right. Thank God for match referee Peter van der Merwe. He never fined us; he knows we always sulk on the field.

Mark Taylor's going soft. Our players made some impressive protests on being given out, yet he said, "I believe players should get off the field as soon as possible."

I hate the Third World. We were actually asked to go to Jamshedpur by train! My guys are polished, sophisticated, unspoilt -- it's a plane or nothing, fellas.
(To be continued)

Our Common Wealth

Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things is a fine book. It sold more copies than we remember, won the Booker. But in case you haven't noticed, there are some other books out there too, a few other Indian writers who can put an English sentence together. Like Vikram Chandra who wrote Love and Longing in Bombay. It's not too bad either. Good enough to win the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Eurasia region) last week. And no, he wasn't anxious about the competition. "Any writer, any artist, who worries about awards is on the fast track to an early nervous and aesthetic breakdown," he says. Roy, we can confirm, is not having a breakdown either; she came in second.

Unparalleled or Unapparelled?

You thought Bollywood heroines were under-dressed? Take a look at the guys. Well, Salman Khan in particular -- fellow can't keep his shirt on. At the Filmfare Awards this January, he tossed off that garment on stage. In the yet-to-be-released Pyar Kiya to Darna Kya, he prances through a five-minute dance sequence, in all his bare-chested glory. And if that isn't enough toplessness for a season, in Sanjay Bhansali's Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, he's done it again. Point taken, dude. Nice muscles! So why is he getting so upset about the attention? "You want to write that I take off my shirt at the drop of a hat," he fumes, dropping his cool. "I don't want to talk to you." A shy exhibitionist. That's a first.

Not the Knot, said Dad

It's tough enough being members of the same House subcommittee, tougher still touring the state together with your families. But when daughter dearest ties the knot with an opposition MLA ... it can't get worse. When 21-year-old Anshu Priya -- daughter of Bihar's Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MLA, Nagendra Yadav -- eloped with Dulal Chand Goswami, her family was fuming. The groom, you see, is a BJP MLA. Papa was not amused, and it was left to some BJP leaders of Bihar to take the tense bride and groom to a magistrate's office in Patna where they signed on the dotted line. Next stop: Goswami's home town for a traditional wedding. Says BJP leader Sushil K. Modi: "It was a simple love story, no political colour to it." Adds Goswami, at 30, the youngest BJP MLA in the Bihar Assembly: "We had not anticipated so many problems, but we are sure sooner or later everybody will give us their blessings." The voters usually come around, so why not dad?

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