Column

One thing you have to say about this twenty-twenty cricket, it is very entertaining. The players slap each other, they cry, they get into slanging matches, there are dancing girls and boys, sometimes with clothes and sometimes without.

The only thing missing are performing monkeys… oh dear, I didn’t really just use that word, did I?

I don’t know very much about cricket so this is a marvellous way to learn. What an intriguing sport. I know that wrestling stuff is all made up, but what about this? Is it real as it happens on the field?

In either case, wow. Words fail me. And I just love the television channel which shows it. Hardly has a ball been hit, when you go to an advertisement. There’s whitening cream for men (men really use this?), there are coffee drinks which give you those yucky icky mucky milk moustaches (does anyone really find this attractive?) and other such scintillating stuff.

I haven’t once managed to pick a winning team, but with all this additional excitement around, it’s hardly my fault.

For me, though, the government is always the most entertaining. So Maharashtra, one of India’s richest states, wants to refurbish its headquarters in Mumbai. How does this richstate go about it?

By approaching a builder of course, who will add some floors and spruce by the Mantralaya building. In return he will get a triangular plot in Nariman Point to develop for himself. Sounds a bit like the slum redevelopment scheme to me.

Now we can have special development rights for redoing government offices (extra FSI for making bigger cabins for mantris and their munims) and greater access to the corridors of power. Why run the government from the outside when you can just as well do it from the inside? Bah! I think I’ll go back to watching cheer leaders.

Top show of the week:
Actually I don’t know. With my natural arrogance, I’m sure I’m smarter than a Class V kid. I knew this when I went from Class V to Class VI because I had passed all my exams. So what if I don’t know the capital of Burkina Faso? Okay, I do. Do you?
b_ranjona@dnaindia.net