If Gayathri Sreekanth undertakes her ophthalmological work with the same callous carelessness as her shoddy biography of Tamil film star Rajinikanth (The Name is Rajinikanth), there must be a lot of unfortunate souls moving about in Chennai with blurred vision, or worse, without any vision.

Besides being a pathetic attempt at hagiography, almost every page in the book The Name is Rajinikanth is riddled with spelling errors, grammatical errors, factual errors or arguments that are sheer nonsense.

As every page in this so-called biography amply attests, Gayathri Sreekanth is a literary bimbette who has no more than a passing acquaintance with the English language. If the task of writing in English was too heavy a cross for this dolt to bear, she should have stuck to Tamil and got the book translated.

Great biographies by authors like Carl Sandburg (Abraham Lincoln), William Manchester (Winston Churchill) and David McCullough (Harry Truman) firmly set their subjects in an age and then weave a fine tale that brings both the age and the individual to life.

Neither Rajinikanth nor his milieu, be it the superstar’s early days in Bangalore, his later years in neighboring Chennai or the Tamil movie industry, come to life Continue Reading…

Desi film producer and financier Deepak Nayar has launched a global digital entertainment studio and online creative community called Filmaka for aspiring filmmakers.

Deepak Nayar is the producer of English movies with Indian themes like Bend It Like Beckham, Bride & Prejudice and The Mistress of Spices.

Here’s Filmaka’s mission in its own words:

Filmaka is committed to inspiring, celebrating, and rewarding creativity and talent by providing professional opportunities for undiscovered filmmakers and writers from all corners of the world through a variety of competitions that are juried by industry leaders.

To be announced on April 28, the winner of the first Continue Reading…

Desi Butcher Vikram Pandit, Citigroup CEO, is throwing 9,000 employees on the streets on top of the 4,200 jobs the embattled bank has already cut recently.

As usual, the new round of job cuts are also attributed to expense management.

And did we tell you that Vikram Pandit, like the proverbial pig at the trough, took $26.7 million in stock (1.094 million shares) on January 22, 2008, according to the bank’s regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Citigroup also announced Friday a writedown of $202 million in the value of Continue Reading…

The Desi Butcher Vikram Pandit-led financial mess Citigroup reported a hefty loss of $5.1 billion on revenues of $13.2 billion in its first quarter ended March 31 and will throw another 9,000 employees on the streets.

On a conference call with analysts, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit acknowledged:

To start with, we’re not happy with our financial results this quarter although they’re not completely unexpected given the assets we hold.

Who would be happy with these crappy results? Reaching a new acme of greed, grasping Wall Street pigs in top positions have taken home hundreds of millions of dollars and ultimately left investors and employees holding the bag when the inevitable crash came.

Results include $6.0 billion in pre-tax write-downs and credit costs on sub-prime related direct exposures, write-downs of $3.1 billion on funded and unfunded highly leveraged finance commitments, a downward credit value adjustment of $1.5 billion related to exposure to monoline insurers, write-downs of $1.5 billion on auction rate securities inventory, and a $3.1 billion increase in credit costs in global consumer.

Revenues fell 48% year-over-year because of Continue Reading…

Web domain name registrar Network Solutions has named Kamalesh Dwivedi its Chief Information Officer.

At Network Solutions, Kamalesh will be responsible for overseeing operations, engineering, enterprise data services and program management.

Before joining Network Solutions, Kamalesh worked as Executive VP and CIO of BPO TeleTech Holdings.

Kamalesh previously worked for broadband equipment company ADC Telecommunications and set-top boxes manufacturer Scientific-Atlanta.

Besides graduating from the Harvard Business School’s Program for Management Development, Kamalesh earned BS and MS degrees in engineering from IIT Kanpur and Carleton University, Ottawa respectively.

Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan does not like America, according to an interview he gave recently to the The Times (of London not the Mumbai rag Times of India).

Shahrukh Khan minced no words about America in his interview with Anil Sinanan, Times Bollywood Film Critic:

I don’t like America. I love London as I feel at home here. People say English people are very cold and not friendly but I find them amazingly warm.

It’s not the people of London alone that Shahrukh Khan finds charming.

To me London is the hub of the world and anyone doing well there is a top notch achiever to me…I am not talking about Mr Mittal or Monty Panesar but about every Indian, Pakistani, and Sri Lankan who is there. I love the fact that another country like England has opened its arms and invited us with so much love.

But Shahrukh Khan never tells us in the interview with The Times why he does not like America.

Perhaps Shahrukh Khan is too scared to explain the reason or the interviewer never asked him.

Bollywood is big in America. Most of Shahrukh Khan’s films are screened across the U.S. and the star makes good money in America through his movies and tours here.

Does Shahrukh Khan’s dislike of America include the $$$$ (hint: money)?

If his dislike of America includes the $$ too, will Shahrukh Khan deprive us of his movies and tours in future?

Since Shahrukh Khan has many fans among the Indian diaspora in USA, many of whom are also American citizens, would he elaborate on why he hates America?

What has America done to Shahrukh Khan that he should dislike this country? Has he ever been treated badly by America?

Is Shahrukh Khan’s dislike of America prompted by American foreign policy and its impact on Muslims?

But Muslims are treated no better in Shahrukh Khan’s own Continue Reading…

After days of dilly-dallying, the Mumbai Police finally gathered the courage to arrest Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray, who has been inciting locals against Mumbai residents who hail from other states of India like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Raj Thackeray, who is the nephew of Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray, was arrested on Wednesday after a First Information Report was filed against him for inciting violence.

Bollywood star and long-time Mumbai resident Amitabh Bachchan (who is originally from Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh) was also at the receiving end of some of Raj Thackeray’s outbursts against “outsiders” in Mumbai.

In the violence that followed Raj Thackeray’s inflammatory comments, many poor people like taxi drivers suffered at the hands of goons. Many of the taxi drivers in Mumbai are from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

Following Raj Thackeray’s arrest, violence has broken out in parts of Maharashtra.

One person died in a stone-throwing incident in Nashik.

Samajwadi Party leader Abu Asim Azmi has also been arrested.

Both Raj Thackeray and Abu Asim Azimi were later freed on bail.

Bollywood star and Bombay blast convict Sanjay Dutt has scored a hatrick with his recent third marriage.

The Bad Boy of Bollywood married his girlfriend Manyata on Monday.

Manyata is wife No-3 for 48-year-old Sanjay Dutt, a former drug addict and the son of late actor and politician Sunil Dutt and late Bollywood heroine Nargis.

Sanjay Dutt’s first wife Richa Sharma died of brain tumor.

His second marriage - to model Rhea Pillai - ended in a divorce.

Will wife No-3 be the last for Sanjay Dutt?

We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

Watch this space.

Murlidhar Devidas Amte, popularly known as Babe Amte, has died.

The 94-year-old social worker died of cancer at his Anandwan Ashram (in Chandrapur district of Maharashtra) on Friday.

A follower of Gandhi, Baba Amte took up several worthy causes including care of leprosy patients and rehabilitation of tribals impacted by construction of large dams.

Transcendental Meditation guru Mahesh Yogi has died.

The 91-year-old Indian died at his home in Netherlands, a month after he stepped down as head of his vast organization and retired into silence.

Mahesh Yogi’s followers included the Beatles, Mia Farrow, Beach Boy, Mike Love and British singer Donovan.

Many summers ago, we attended a short course on Transcendental Meditation and have been practicing it on and off over the years.

The feeling of thoughtless when the mind goes into a state of complete rest is bliss indeed.

Read the NY Times Obit here.

Rupert Murdoch’s social networking site MySpace has named Amit Kapur Chief Operating Officer.

Kapur will be responsible for leading development and implementation of all global business operations.

Amit Kapur

MySpace is said to have 110 million users worldwide.

Kapur will also oversee growth and expansion of MySpace partnerships across the upcoming Developer Platform and popular features including MySpace Mobile and MySpaceIM with Skype.

Kapur, 26, joined MySpace in 2005 as the company’s first business developer.

Before joining MySpace, Kapur worked at NBC-Universal in the strategic planning and business development group.

Kapur received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

Sanjay Mehrotra is a co-founder of Silicon Valley-based SanDisk, manufacturer of removable storage cards, flash drives and MP3 players.

SanDisk’s products are used in digital cameras, multi-function mobile phones, USB flash drives, digital audio/video players and other digital consumer devices

Before becoming President and COO of SanDisk in April 2006, Sanjay worked as Director of memory design and product engineering, VP of product development and Senior VP of engineering.

Sanjay Mehrotra

As SanDisk’s President and COO,  Sanjay is responsible for manufacturing operations, engineering, marketing and sales.

Besides SanDisk, Sanjay is also involved in another semiconductor company FlashVision as Executive VP. FlashVision is a joint venture of Toshiba and SanDisk and manufactures advanced NAND flash components.

Sanjay previously worked for Intel, Seeq Technology, Integrated Device Technology and Atmel in the area of design engineering and engineering management, mostly in EPROM and EEPROM product development.

Sanjay has BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.