WWW = Wierd Wild World

Much's been happening. And almost all of it is quite hilarious. For instance, that ultra-secular obsessively-casteist party, otherwise known as the RJD has decided to field a rather deserving candidate in the upcoming Assembly elections in Maharashtra. Ladies and gentlemen, would you please welcome ... Mohammed Afroze. What! Never heard of him? C'mon! Here we have a man of such impressive credentials and you claim you haven't even heard of him? Mohammed Afroze, an erstwhile Mumbai slum-dweller, is a brilliant pilot, tutored at the very best and costliest flying schools in US and Australia. Since then, Afroze has been charged by law enforcement agencies with planning a conspiracy to use his newly obtained flying skills to crash aircrafts into prominent buildings across the world.

Here's what BBC had to say in an earlier report about our MLA wannabe,

"Detectives from Scotland Yard in London and the Australian police are currently in Bombay to discuss the case of an alleged member of Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda organisation, Mohammad Afroze.

Mr Afroze offered to make a confession in a city court here on Friday that he was part of a conspiracy to blow up the House of Commons in London, the Indian parliament and the Rialto Tower in Australia."

But if you think real deep, you'll hardly take a minute to get to the bottom of this puzzling affair. See, Afroze is an al-Qaeda member and al-Qaeda is not part of the Sangh Parivar. So according to the de facto law of the land, Afroze represents the secular forces. The RJD of course is another secular force, one which has for years been making commendable sacrifices in its fight against the communal forces. So isn't it but natural that these two join hands?

While the above may be humorous, another even funnier fiasco has come to light in the Delhi University campuses. As HT reports here, this July's payslip of all Delhi University employees has a curious item under 'deductions'. It says: Sexual Harrassment: Rs 10. Understandably, it's become something of a joke in DU circles. The truth behind the matter being that amidst rising cases of teacher to student sexual harrassment, the university has decided to set up a complaints division and is charging its employees for the expenses incurred for the division's operation. The least they could have done is come up with a less accusatory, more benign name for that innocent ten rupee deduction on employee payslips.

And while Delhites laugh themselves to nuts at the DU's fumble, residents of Hubli have a strikingly different trouble on their hands - a woman in red! Or rather a woman in saffron who is wreaking havoc on that otherwise peaceful place. Uma Bharati, the erstwhile Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, has decided to extract every ounce of media sympathy from the unexpected turn of events around her. So we get quotes like, "I smell the revenge of Sonia Gandhi. By seeking revenge against me, she forgot she is insulting the tricolour. To protect the honour of the tricolour, I am ready to face any consequence."

Revenge for what? is a reasonable follow-up question. Here's what Miss Uma says to that, "[because] I was the person who blocked Sonia Gandhi from becoming prime minister." Some ego that!

Political pundits are understandably confused as to who's come out on tops in this your-party-is-more-corrupt-than-mine game. First the Congress targets the NDA government for having George Fernandes as Defence Minister while his name was not cleared in the Tehelka scandal. The NDA returns the favor by creating unprecedented furore in the Parliament over tainted ministers in the current cabinet. Much hublaboo is heard about a guy named Sibhu Soren. Advantage NDA, it seems. But the NDA's jubiliance dies a quick death when an arrest warrant is issued against Uma Bharati in a decade old case about hoisting the tricolor at a disputed site. Advantage UPA! But in a brilliant last minute flourish, Uma Bharati turns the tables on her opponents by squawking phrases like "tirange ka samman" and stuff. Add to that the age-old Bofors scam, the millions of charge-sheets filed during Narsimha Rao's times, cases relating to Ayodhya and the coffin scam during Kargil and no one can say for sure who has the better of whom!

And to top it all, here's a classic soundbyte from the director of the film Julie, "Sexy films need not be sleazy!" I must say that the above quote raises some rather grave questions about Deepak Shivdasani's mental health. Surely, anyone who's managed to survive Julie will testify that the lesson to be learnt from the movie is, "Sleazy films need not be sexy!" But then Bollywood's the land where even hyper-liberated women like Mallika Sherawat shy away conservatively from discussing their past broken marriages. Hypocrisy's just not an issue here!