Thankyou Zornslemon. I suppose you are right but I cannot help feeling that waiting outside a marriage venue is such a pointless waste of time. People get married for the sole reason of producing a few brats which happens in due time. There is no need for any skill, any practice and no opponent to spoil your performance. Any idiot can do it and millions in India do just that , unfortunately. As a physician I see many men, dirty, illiterate and with almost no intelligence and yet father of half a dozen children. Even baseball, stupid though it is, needs some skill and practice to defeat opponents. Men love to drink, watch sports and swear, so if all three can be combined it makes for a highly entertaining evening with your mates. But to stand on a Mumbai pavement breathing fumes of passing vehicles, being jostled by rude policemen intent on showing their muscle without any alcohol to sustain you would be my idea of torture. What did these people achieve? What pleasure did they get out of such a fruitless exercise? Lots of people turn out to see the stars on Oscar night which has always seemed to me to be a stupid thing to do but here they got to see nothing. However, it takes all kinds to make the world and if these people obtained pleasure form this harmless activity then they are welcome to it. I may think they are a bunch of loonies but true freedom allows you to be foolish which is a good thing.

Delhi Government Financial Commissioner, Rakesh Mohan, an IAS officer was arrested for accepting a bribe of thirty million rupees from a contractor in exchange of giving him a juicy government contract. Apparently he asked the fellow to buy a house in Los Angeles and then take out a special power of attorney in his son's name so that his son could borrow that amount against the property. Very clever. Bad luck he got caught. First International Curacao Bank was shut down in the Netherlands last year on charges of money laundering but the same fellows started a software firm called Transworld ICT Solutions Pvt Ltd in India which laundered over nine billion dollars for persons in India. The Central Bureau of Investigations ( CBI ) is asking for powers to scrutinise financial accounts of 'highly influential' persons, probably a euphemism for politicians and civil servants. It appears that the CBI is barred fron scrutinising the accounts of these people by ' strict privacy laws '. These people can send any amount of money to Swiss banks without having to answer any question while we have to go running if any two penny government fellow calls us. No wonder there is great pressure for capital account convertibility for the Indian rupee. Make it easier for the villains to tax us into penury and enjoy our money abroad.

Member of Parliament from Gujarat, Katara, was caught trying to take to Canada a woman and her son on diplomatic passports issued to his own wife and son. This woman, a sardarni, had paid one million rupees to an agent to get her to Canada where her husband is living. She thought she was paying for legitimate travel and did not know that she was to be smuggled in. She also did not know that Katara was carrying a load of sildenafil ( sold abroad as Viagra ) with him. Whether he was hoping to impress her or the Canadian babes is not known but possibly being vegetarian he lacked confidence in his own prowess. Wonder what Indian brand of sildenafil he was carrying. There are Manly and Manforce for the weak, Uplift, Erectra and Lifty for the droopy, Target for the short sighted, Religra probably for the religious, penetrating Penegra, Rocky 50 for the soft hearted, and Stallion for the wimps. Niagra, I think, would have just the opposite effect. After all you do not want it to fall and Adams Delite is plain wrong. Should have surely been Eves Delite. The Indian justice system being what it is he will most probably wriggle out of the criminal case against him but I can imagine how let down he must be feeling. All those pills and all those Canadian babes. Wonder what the police have done with the pills. In Punjab this would be described as a classic case of KLPD.

Aishwarya Rai married Abhihek Bacchan yesterday. Thousands of people came from all over to stand on the roads kept back by 500 security men. Hundreds of people protested against Richard Gere kissing Shilpa Shetty. Who are these useless people who have nothing better to do but to hang around outside Bacchan's house or march in procession for an absolutely stupid reason? Is India the only country in the world which is home to thousands of idiots? These must be the same people who drink and beat up their wives, breed half a dozen children and send them out to work to finance there drinking habit, force their wives to abort female foetuses and sell their under age daughters to middle aged men for Rs. 5000. These are also the people who do all the dirty work for politicians, cut down jungles and poach wild animals. They justify their dirty deeds by saying that they need money for food and so are not really responsible. They are ready to follow any politician for some money or a bottle of cheap liquor and ready to kill for a few thusand rupees. It is one thing to have criminal politicians but when you have thousands of mindless idiots who are ready to do anything no matter how illegal or meaningless then it is a frightening situation for the country. Is there any solution? Is the country going to survive without somehow eliminating these creatures?

The shootings at Virginia Tech were horrible. It is hard to imagine the anguish of all the parents who lost their children, not to some incurable disease, but to a madman's bullets. Nothing can be worse than attending your own child's funeral. I cannot even begin to imagine the anguish of Cho's parents. Not only have they the sorrow of their son's death but also the knowledge that their son's name will be spoken forever in tones of hatred. Their guilt must be killing them. If only they had recognised his illness and forced him to get professional help. If only. However I feel that the killings are the fault of the US government and its refusal to control guns. We have seen the campaign against smokers and tobacco companies but nothing aginst the companies manufacturing death in the form of guns and nothing aginst the evil organisation that is the National Rifle Association. Why look outside for the ' axis of evil ' when this is inside the country. It is easy to lecture others about democracy but why do its people need to carry guns? At least the US has an amendment in its constitution but India has no such excuse. Yet increasing numbers are being given licences to carry guns. If the people have to carry guns for protection then what use is the police force and the government?

The kidnapping of BBC correspondent Alan Johnson is tragic and it was sad to see his parents suffering. We have to ask who has been responsible for making jounalists into targets. It was the US who bombed the Serbian tv station during the Kosovo crisis and have bombed AL Jazeera offices in Kabul and Baghdad killing j0urnalists. In Iraq US and UK journalists are said to be embedded with the US army which, to me, sounds like a giant gay orgy. Thus journalists have been seen as part of the US propaganda machine and legitimate targets. After all the British hanged Lord Haw Haw after the war. The BBC churns out constant propaganda. Whatever Bush and Blair, both confirmed liars, say is broadcast without question but anything Russian is criticised. During the Beslan siege even as little children were being slaughtered BBC was trying to blame it on the Russian government and President Putin. It was cynical, cruel and nauseating.Whenever they show anything in India they will show some slum. Thus they may be broadcasting a report on the software industry but they will not show Infosis or Wipro offices but instead will show how some poor child somewhere is missing out. Alaan Johnson's parents should ask Bush and his poodle, Blair what has happened to him.

Extorsion comes in many guises in India. In West Bengal it is the Communist party. You have bought a new car, built a house, want your son admitted to a good school, you have to pay, what is known politely, as a donation to the party. In Bombay there are the gangs. Whether Dawood Ibrahim, Chota Shakeel or any other Bhai you get a phone call telling you that you have just bought a new car for five million rupees so put fifty thousand in a bag and give it to our man without any trouble because we know which school your son goes to and what he looks like. However no one pays any attention to the biggest extortion that is carried out openly and is ubiquitous. I am talking about transvestites or 'hijras' as they are known in local parlance. If you have a new house, a new baby or if there is a marriage in y0ur house these creatures invariably turn up demanding money with threats and abuses. There is nothing physically wrong with them. They have no handicap, they have no chromosomal or genetic abnormality or any hormonal mixup. They are normal men, usually strong and muscular, clean shaven and dressed either in a sari or in salwar kurta. They will sing and dance off tune, create a lot of noise and will demand huge sums of money. No one dare refuse them because they will use filthy language and may throw rubbish, even faeces, at you. The police will not register any complaint against these horrible creatures. Clearly the municipality, where they are provided the information in the first place, and the police are in with them and you are forced to pay money because these men decide to dress as women. And so it goes on.

At last my daughter received her MBBS certificate from Delhi university. She sat for a qualifying exam back in 1999 and came 84th out of thirty thousand candidates. The results of the test were pasted on a wall of a verandah on the 4th floor. There was no lift and no light. Someone had brought two little candles and I was crawling along the floor to find her roll number. Her high rank ensured that she got into Maulana Azad, supposedly the best medical school in Delhi. The college office is dirty and the staff rude, slack and totally unhelpful. Collection of examination fees is announced on the last day creating panic among the students. After finishing her course she underwent one year's internship following which she should have received her certificate but two years passed and we were still waiting. We visited the college office, a distance of at least 20 kms across Delhi traffic, at least six times without any help. They sent us to Delhi university where the staff are a bunch of snarling barbarians. We went to North Campus and were sent to South Campus, backwards and forwards many times. At last when I showed the copy of the letter from the college they managed to find the certificate. Even so they shouted at me, made me come back at least six times and then went on strike for over a month. I feel like whipping these sub humans till they are begging for mercy. Am I wrong?

The Comptroller and Accountant General of India (CAG) has just said that money marked for education and compulsory rural employment scheme is not reaching the target. It is being stolen. On the other hand the Reserve Bank just increased interest rates and th Cash Reserve Ratio to suck liquidity out of the system so as to being down inflation. these two news items are linked in that vasts amount of stolen or 'black' money is being used to buy property and is being made white by round tripping to invest in the stock market. The phenomenal rise in the prices of both, more than any other country in the world, has also led to a feel good factor raising public spending on durable goods. The RBI will not be able to control inflation until it raises rates to the level that it hurts borrowers and reduces spending thus leading to a recession. This is what happened in 2001. Asset prices had risen towards the end of the 90s until interest rates were so high that banks were giving 14% on fixed deposits and company bonds were paying 18-20%. This led to recession and lowering of interest rates sparking off the present boom. Unless the politicians and civil servants are stopping from looting this boom and bust cycle will continue. Only the people will suffer as they have been doing since independence.