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I was woken up at 6 this morning by a PR executive — let's call him O — who had last communicated with me one year ago. In late 2008, he had sent me an email — a mass mail — wishing me Happy Diwali. I don't reply to mass mail, so I didn't wish him back. After this, we didn't communicate — we didn't talk on phone or meet or exchange any form of virtual, electronic or physical communication - till today morning, when at 6 am, he sends me this sms: "HAPPY DIWALI!!!!!!!!! My best wishes to you and family!!! And have a great and prosperous NEW YEAR TOO!!!" I am not exaggerating here. I did count the exclamation marks and what you see here is the exact number he sent me in his 'greetings.' His message was preceded by some kind of digital rangoli that he'd managed to create using slashes and semi-colons and some other characters I didn't even know my phone could generate till I saw his 'greeting.'

Now, I have nothing against people wishing each other on Diwali. I have nothing against people using as many exclamation marks as they want. I am even — believe it or not — agreeable to being woken up at 6 in the morning with a Diwali greeting. But. Only if you are waking me up specifically and not waking me up by default because I happen to be one of the 72 recipients of your non-customised, industrial, mass-produced Diwali wishes. There has to be something in your greeting that tells me that you have a connection with me that goes beyond the possibly accidental presence of my cell number in your phone book; something that says you wanted to wish me, specifically, and weren't just adding a name to your forwarding list.

Let me say right at the outset that I am a huge fan of Vishal Bhardwaj. To me, he is easily the most complete director in Hindi cinema at the moment. And what he's done with Kaminey hasn't changed that, for I can't think of another director who could come close to him even in failure — except perhaps Anurag Kashyap.

With Kaminey, for once, I was fully prepared to believe all the hype, and every word of all the rave (at times fawning) reviews. And then I went to see the film, ready to be blown away, as the reviewers said I would be. But it didn't happen.

In the brief history of my blogging career, my previous post on Sunny Deol has attracted more number of comments than anything else I've written. I must say I am deeply overwhelmed. Taken as a whole, I would have to admit that the outpouring of reader feedback hasn't been exactly laudatory. Among other things, I have been called a moron, a fool, an idiot, a clown, a 2 cent journo, an insensitive man, and an "irresponsible section of the media". One very observant reader has also drawn my attention to my "dumpy cheap taklu head and unwashed face". Others have made generous offers to have me slapped for free, not to mention forceful suggestions that I ought to simply shut up.

Well, first of all, I want to express my extreme gratitude to all you losers out there for coming out in strength to express your solidarity with Sunny baba. Please accept my apologies. And I apologise for two things: my gigantic naiveté and my equally colossal stupidity.

There is something Sunny Deol, the self-proclaimed macho man of Bollywood, doesn't realise: it's that there is nothing more ludicrous than a macho man who takes himself too seriously. So seriously, in fact, that: one, he can't laugh at himself; two,he can't appreciate free publicity when he's getting it; and three, he doesn't know how to say "thank you" when a radio station has almost made him a part of urban folklore.

Instead, what does Son Funny do? He goes and sends a notice to the radio station, owned by a poor man called Anil Ambani, who is already so weighed down by gas problems that the last thing he needs is a dhaai kilo ka haath crashing down on his head. What Sunny doesn't know is that: firstly, he was funny even in his presumably "serious," "macho" roles ('This 2.5 kg of heavy arm, when it falls on a man, the man doesn't get up, he goes up" — pardon me, but that's the best translation I can come up with. And despite the pathetic quality of the translation, I am sure everyone, excluding Sunny of course, can see how funny the original line in Hindi must have sounded. 2.5 kg of arm? What is he? Beef? Pork? Not Chicken for sure, since wings don't qualify as arms.)

The brilliant Portuguese novelist and Nobel laureate Jose Saramago crafts the ultimate nightmare of ballot box democracy in his novel, Seeing: after a national election, polling officers discover that over 70 per cent of the votes are blank. The voters have en masse conveyed their disillusionment, "not with one party, but with all, thereby rendering the entire democratic system useless." The government orders a re-poll, and this time 83 per cent of the votes are blank. The terrified authorities declare a state of emergency. I don't want to spoil the book for those who haven't read it, so I won't say any more about it.

But I wish somebody would distribute free copies of this novel to all those hyper-energetic Jaago Re types who have taken it upon themselves to protect the modesty of Indian democracy.