(Thanks to Aditya, a regular visitor to the SearchIndia.com blog, for recommending Dil Chahta Hai.)

Not since we smoked pot in secret for the first time – in our college loo of all places – have we derived so much pleasure. (Like our former President Bill Clinton, we didn’t inhale… Ha ha, as if you believe us.)

Really, rarely have we seen a Hindi movie with mucho gusto as Dil Chahta Hai.

Featuring three decent actors Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan and Akshaye Khanna, Dil Chahta Hai is one of the few Bollywood movies that don’t leave you with a hangover or that nagging doubt of whether you wore a rubber last night.

Dil Chahta Hai’s story is nothing to write home about. It’s about three close friends just out of college and their pranks, fights, infatuations, getting bashed up, unrequited love and the like.

But it’s the solid screenplay, lovely songs and overall execution that distinguishes Dil Chahta Hai from the usual Bollywood offal.

Dil Chahta Hai has something for everyone – good acting, nice songs, phoren scenes (Australia), lots of pyaar, the nostalgics have Dimple, and acceptable photography. Wait, there’s even a Troilus and Cressida opera for the snooty high falutin artsy types.

And for the drooling, priapically inclined there’s Preity Zinta.

Yes, Preity Zinta looking absolutely yummelicious (best of all in the opera scene). Yummm, Yummm Yummm. What would we not give to launch a frontal assault, all guns blazing and lob our gonads (oops, did we really say gonads) at this nymph….

If you thought Preity was delicious in that great Bollywood moment Idhar Chala, Udhar Chala, you ain’t seen nothing yet. You ain’t seen nothing, pretty until you see Preity in Dil Chahta Hai. The babe was just an appetizer in Koi Mil Gaya, here she’s a sumptuous feast. Take a bite

How is it that Muslims dominate among the top Bollywood stars and directors despite accounting for a mere 13.4% of India’s population? 

You can’t watch a Hindi movie without stumbling over a Khan or Akhtar these days.

Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Zayed Khan (yuck), Fardeen Khan (yuckier), Saif Ali Khan, Soha Ali Khan, Sohail Khan, Aarbaaz Khan (yuckiest), Irrfan Khan (good), Imran Khan, Salim Khan (now retired), Farhan Akhtar, Javed Akhtar…

Among the directors, we have Farhan Akhtar, Anees Bazmee, Farah Khan and Abbas-Mustan.

What explains this Muslim hegemony among the top stars of Bollywood?

Are Hindu men shying away

Following the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the decrepit dodo Shivraj Patil has quit as India’s Home Minister.

Finance Minister P.Chidambaram has replaced him (Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is holding the finance portfolio too).

Two top bureaucrats need to be shown the door too – Intelligence Bureau Chief P.C.Haldar of the Indian Police Service and Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta of the Indian Administrative Service.

The horrific terrorist attacks on Mumbai since November 26 that cost the lives of 195 people has ended 60-hours later with the last of the terrorists being killed by Indian commandos at the five-star Taj Hotel on Saturday morning (IST).

The coordinated rampage by the team of 12 terrorists at 10 locations also wounded some 327 people.

Although a little known outfit called Deccan Mujahideen has claimed responsibility for the attack, Indian officials have been hinting at the attacker’s connections to Pakistan.

The violence also claimed the lives of 22 foreigners including five Americans and five Israelis.

For over four decades now, it’s been apparent to all but the completely blind or the utterly senile that India is a blundering, doddering democracy that has totally lost its way.

A soft state, to borrow Gunnar Myrdal’s terminology where the government institutions have become so weak and corruption so endemic that the Indian state has failed to provide the most basic needs like water, transport, shelter and uninterrupted electricity to its citizens.

Six decades after independence, India’s Silicon Valley Bangalore reels under massive blackouts because of acute electricity shortage, at least four million of Mumbai’s 16 million people live in filthy conditions that people here in America wouldn’t subject their dogs to and hundreds of thousands of Chennai residents inhale the noxious stench of the Cooum.

And seven million Mumbai commuters travel every day in packed cattle cars that even the most depraved Nazis would flinch from using to transport Jews to Auschwitz or Belsen for the final solution. In the last five years alone, Mumbai commuter trains have killed over 20,000 people.

Let the clowns shout Mera Bharat Mahan and the Alisha Chinais croon Made in India till their throats are hoarse but we say Tera Bharat Bahut Gandha Hai because India’s political institutions have all but decayed and atrophied with the fading from the scene of India’s first generation of political leadership, the Nehrus, Sastris and Patels.

In their place rose a new degenerate political class in the late 1960s – coinciding with the rise of Indira Gandhi and her shameless minions in the different states – for whom politics became the shortest path to the desired trinity of power, pelf and privilege. 

The apogee of the political decline was reached with the Emergency between 1975-77 and ascent of vermin like Sanjay Gandhi and court jesters like D.K.Barooah whose contribution to the Indian political lexicon was the asinine slogan India is Indira, Indira is India.

As institutional structures were replaced by individual fiat, the first casualty was the public interest.

Four decades ago, the foremost political scientist of our age Samuel Huntington wrote prophetically in his classic work Political Order in Changing Societies:

A government with a low level of institutionalization is not just a weak government; it is also a bad government.

How true. Study after study in state after state has documented that very little of the development resources apportioned to the poor actually reach the intended beneficiaries in India, whether it’s Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh or any of the other states.

Neither the Sarkaria Commission nor the Shah Commission, Grover Commission, Maruti Affairs Commision, Bofors inquiry or the numerous other commissions that spent the people’s money to look into alleged improprieties involving the high-and-mighty have yielded anything but employment for a few retirees.

Plunder and pillage is not the mere monopoly of the netas but has seeped

Folks, we just went for a spin to check out the Black Friday crowds and deals (in the U.S.).

On both the crowd and deal fronts, we’d say we were disappointed (our focus was on electronics).

We checked out Wal-Mart (both outside and inside), Staples (inside and outside), Best Buy (parking lot was 70%-80% full), Circuit City (few cars in the lot) and a huge mall.

Shockingly, the Wal-Mart parking lot was not full around 6:45AM EST. There were not that many people inside too.

On the whole, we didn’t see much excitement on shoppers’ faces and we’d be surprised if this Black Friday doesn’t prove to be a damp squib.

At Staples, we did see a few desis (one Tamil guy we’d met once and a few Gujjus).

The deals were for the most part lousy, whether it’s the LCD/Plasma TVs, notebooks, desktops, digital cameras et al.

Wal-Mart parking lot was not full

Lousy Free Breakfast at Sam’s
Like typical desis, we couldn’t resist the free breakfast offer at Sam’s Club.

As we entered, the lady at the entrance made a big deal of the Free Breakfast. We feigned indifference. You see, even if you are cheap you