South Asia Daily

The not-at-all slutty Slut Walk of Bhopal

The city of Bhopal hosted India’s first Slut Walk on July 18 when some 70 women and men walked wearing perfectly decent clothes and carried perfectly insipid placards. Called “Besharmi Morcha” in Hindi or ‘Shameless Campaign’ there was nothing shameless or slutty about the walk;nor for that matter anything even remotely offensive.

Radhika Shingwekar, one of the main organizers of the walk, was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying without a trace of irony that the participants were asked “not to dress in a way that would grab unnecessary attention.” Well, Ms. Shingwekar, the whole point of Slut Walk is to “grab unnecessary attention” to counter the absurd argument that women ask for sexual harassment and assault by dressing provocatively.

The idea of Slut Walk was born in April this year  when Toronto policeman, Constable Michael Sanguinetti said that in order to ensure their personal safety "women should avoid dressing like sluts." In effect, the policeman was perpetuating the misogynist non-sense that sometimes women ask for sexual assault. In protest women of Toronto decided to come out in their underwear in what eventually became a global Slut Walk.

The Bhopal Slut Walk turned that rationale on its head and made the whole concept into just another march of no consequence. They carried stirringly inspiring placards such as “Because we’ve had enough” and “The thing that women have yet 2 learn is. Nobody gives you power. You just take it..” I thought using the numerical 2 instead of two was a literary masterstroke. (In case it is not clear, I am being sarcastic).

If the Bhopal organizers did not have the stomach to offend the sensibilities of Bhopalis, they should have just sat at home. In a country like India, where 10,000 people gather to look if you point long enough at nothing in particular in the sky, the 70 odd number that attended the ‘Besharmi Morcha’ does not qualify as anything.

I am sure the organizers’ intentions were heartfelt and they genuinely wanted to bring attention to this very serious problem that often causes insensitive policemen to snigger. However, by tailoring the event to Bhopali sensibilities, they played into the hands of those very forces.

Murdoch is indeed “the best person to clean it up”

Rupert Murdoch

As he thumped the parliamentary desk it was hard to decide whether Rupert Murdoch needed a steady beat to harmonize his jumpy nerves or merely an accompaniment to enhance the impact of his assertions. I suppose it helped both in equal measure.

Watching Murdoch Sr. and son James answer questions from British Members of Parliament (MPs) over the extent of their knowledge and involvement in the phone hacking scandal was riveting in a slow motion sort of way. It was particularly true in the case of Murdoch Sr. who talks in mumbles recorded at twice the normal speed and then slowed down to half that to make them comprehensible. He also speaks like many old men I know who have a difficulty getting their words past their dentures.** I say this not to belittle an embattled media mogul but merely as what I think is an accurate observation.

There were moments during the questioning when Murdoch Sr. showed flashes of his old “lund pe sund” self. (I refuse to translate the Bombay phrase to underscore a couldn’t care less attitude.) But mostly he cut a figure who was struggling to keep himself together. His short initial statement that yesterday was “most humble day” of his career very accurately summed up his state of mind and body. I think it would be a mistake to see that as contrition. To me he came across as a man, who has a tremendously high sense of self-worth,  desperately trying to live up to his own standards. The “most humble” feeling seemed to have much more to do with how he he has plummeted in his own estimation than that of the world outside of his mind. (Oh, the joys of armchair analysis!)

His thumping the desk should be viewed in the context of what Murdoch Sr. must be feeling inside. Apart from the fact that a steady beat like that may have helped him arrange his assertions in a more effective way, it also appeared to help convince himself about the value of what he was saying. We were given a brief glimpse into the very private body language of someone widely regarded as the world’s most powerful media mogul. Murdoch Jr. on the other hand was full of slick, designer corporate PR-speak. A lot of what he said, especially about his sense of shock over the goings on at one of his newspapers, sounded lip-deep.

Perhaps the most effective exchange was between Tory MP Louise Mensch and Murdoch Sr. She asked him whether he would resign, he said a simple no. Then she asked, “Why not?” He responded, “People I trusted let me down. They behaved disgracefully and it’s for them to pay. I’m the best person to clean this up.” Murdoch Sr. sees himself as someone on whom life has imposed inordinately large responsibility. Resigning is not something those with such responsibility can and should do. That is how he sees himself. Left to him he would like to die as the News Corporation boss because even though it is a publicly traded company, he still sees himself as the very reason of its existence.

In a way, the man who delivered Murdoch Sr. a shaving foam pie unintentionally did him a favor. That one act created for a charming little vulnerability about an otherwise seemingly invincible media mogul. It humanized him and that could only be good under the circumstances. However, it was utterly risible for Mensch to extol his “immense courage” in the face of the “common assault.” Does she watch Fox News and what it hurls at those with whom it has ideological differences? To Murdoch Sr.’s credit he remained unmoved by the assault. Now whether that was because of his naturally slow reflexes on account of age or his innate ability to take everything in his stride is a matter of opinion.

** I do not know if he wears dentures. But people who wear dentures often face this problem because dentures do not have any gaps between the teeth like our natural teeth do. Speaking is greatly modulated by the way air escapes from between these natural gaps. With dentures the air is released in bursts. (This is my theory.)

Rare undercover footage of Rupert Murdoch’s ways

As part of my intensive investigative research into the methods that media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his editors employ to get their stories, I have unearthed this rare footage that irrefutably proves everything that is being said about them these days. 

The only caveat I would add here is that Murdoch looks like Jonathan Pryce and goes by the name Elliot Carver. Also, for an undercover video the clip shows extraordinarily high production values reminiscent of a James Bond movie. It is amazing how the undercover reporter managed to pull off sync sound and near perfect lighting. However, once you get past all these minor failings it does offer a rare look inside Murdoch’s fiendish world.

On a more serious note, when ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’ was released in 1997, dark hints were dropped that the main villain was inspired by Murdoch. Many believed it was an amalgam of Murdoch, Robert Maxwell and William Randolph Hearst. So in short it was fictional.

Most importantly, what effectively countered the rumors that Carver was Murdoch inflated with cinematic liberties was that his fictional media empire called Carver Media Group Network actually manufactured news in order to scoop it. In order to get exclusive broadcasting rights in China, Carver starts a war between Britain and China. So far there is nothing to suggest that Murdoch’s media actually manufactures news so long as you disregard Fox News, which merely enables it.

So…so like that

“So…so like that,” is frequently how the Dalai Lama ends his long discourses. So that’s how he ended one in Chicago yesterday as well.

He spoke for one and half hours at the Chicago Pavilion on ‘Bridging the faith divide” organized by the Theosophical Society of America. Spiritual and philosophical discourses are an acquired taste which I have not fully acquired, even though I have sat through some because of the demands of my profession. My close journalist friends tell me that I exude an aura of having figured it all out whenever I am at an event of the kind I was at yesterday.

I concede it certainly comes across that way but that’s because I have indeed figured it all out for myself. What I have figured out is really quite simple. It is all futile and irrelevant. The collective impact of sentient beings (that would be you and I and everything else that has any measure of consciousness) on the universe is so miniscule that it may as well be non-existent. That is my strictly individual approach to life in general.

Today’s post is not about me. It is about the Dalai Lama. He made a couple of telling points which he has made many times before in different settings, including during his interviews with me. I could not assert this with unimpeachable certainty but there is no comparable religious/spiritual figure who has repeatedly said that moral principles do not have to be based in religion. The idea that morality is not the sole preserve of religion and that non-believers can have a strong moral grounding is, at the very least, unusual for many people in this part of the world. In India, a civilization built on situational logic, it is another matter. Everybody buys into everything.

There is also no one of his global stature who has repeatedly discouraged people from changing their own religious traditions and joining another faith or philosophical system. “You see, it is better to remain in your tradition because changing it can cause confusion,” is how he puts it when asked whether he would like people to convert to Buddhism.

Those two points set the Dalai Lama apart from other major religious/spiritual figures whose literalist certitudes of their particular faith can be quite stifling. He was asked why Buddhism has become popular in America. His short answer was, “I don’t know. Ask them ( those who like it).” But then he went on to give a long answer which in essence said it could be because Buddhism is open to investigation and inquiry and analysis. In that context, he said Buddh was a strong proponent of people rejecting his philosophical constructs if they did not meet the standards of common sense.

So when the Dalai Lama says, “So…so like that” he gives you the impression that he is saying, “Believe what you want to and don’t if you don’t.” Or as the saying goes ‘Yatha Bhutam’or “the way it is.”

The more I gather, the more it scatters

Ben Whishaw as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in Tom Tykwer’s ‘Perfume: The Story of a Murderer”

I am no Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in Patrick Suskind’s ‘Perfume: The Story of a Murderer’' but I have had my moments. And here I am referring strictly to the olfactory genius of the protagonist of the novel and its fantastic movie version of the same name. What becomes of Jean-Baptiste as he goes about trying to capture feminine fragrances to create the ultimate perfume is revolting and terrifying in a tragic way. Mercifully, that did not happen to me.

Before I began using nasal drops every night to subside my inflamed passages more than 30 years ago, I was gifted with a particularly sharp sense of smell. In a way this runs in the family as all my siblings have demonstrated some degree of elevated sense of smell. For instance, I remember all of us could tell from a mere whiff  whether the daal in the neighbor’s kitchen was any more safe to eat. This was before the middle class in India could afford refrigerators.

However,the excessive use of the nasal drops has very significantly blunted my olfactories over the years and I no longer consider myself out of the ordinary. So when I first saw Tom Tykwer’s brilliant 2006 film version of Suskind’s 1985 novel, I thanked in my mind the manufacturers of the nasal drops. Who knows where my sense of smell would have led me?

These thoughts came to my mind while reading an article in The Boston Globe by Courtney Humphries about a growing movement to preserve smells and their history. The movement may also lead to recording for future generations smells that may be lost because of natural attrition. It has been known that while smells are by their very nature ephemeral, they do remain embedded in one’s memory for a long time. “Smell is unique among the senses in the way it is processed by the brain - olfactory information travels directly to a brain region linked with the hippocampus and the amygdala, sites of memory and emotion. Scientists have suggested that the way smell is processed makes smell memories particularly strong and persistent,” Humphries reports.

She also mentions James McHugh, an assistant professor of religion at University of Southern California, who while studying Sanskrit as part of his dissertation at Harvard found detailed olfactory information in ancient and medieval texts. Based on McHugh’s descriptions of some of this literature, perfumer Christophe Laudamiel created “two scents that represented a Brahmin’s ideal - clarified butter, milk, mango blossoms, honey, and sandalwood - and his worst nightmare - smoke, rotting flesh, alcohol, and garlic.”

Despite having lost a lot of my olfactory sharpness I am still primarily driven by smells and fragrances. In what their French makers might consider sacrilege, every morning I splash and spray two or three different kinds of colognes and perfumes. Since their quantities vary randomly, they create a new fragrance everyday. Some of my mixtures sometimes contain a hint of what my wife wears and that invariably brings me great compliments from people irrespective of their gender. One of these days I am going to add a dash of toilet freshener to see what that does.

Speaking of fragrances, let me end today with these charming lines from poet Alam Taab Tashna’s ghazal ‘Voh ke har ahd-e-mohabbat.” The lines go:

“Mere pehlu mein voh aya bhi to khushboo ki tarha

Mein usey jitna sametun voh bikharta jaye.”

(She came to me like a fragrance, The more I gather it, the more it scatters)

Note to self: That’s the power of smells and fragrances. They waft from the ancient to the medieval to the modern and from laboratories to literature to movies to poetry and yet not be fully captivated.

Obama-Dalai Lama meeting and Chinese number crunchers

A file photo of President Barack Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama in the Map Room of the White House, Feb. 18, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

US President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet the Dalai Lama at the White House today. The meeting will take place in the Map Room and not the Oval Office.

Those are the bare facts behind which lurks geopolitics fraught with serious implications. The timing of the meeting is particularly audacious since it is taking place in the midst of a deeply rancorous political atmosphere in Washington over whether to raise the US debt ceiling, a subject in which Beijing has a direct vested interest since it owns more than $1 trillion in US debt.

As the largest holder of US debt Beijing is watching with a great deal of anxiousness the highly fractious debate between Obama’s Democratic Party and the opposition Republican Party. Just how interested China is in seeing the Obama administration settle the issue of debt ceiling can be gauged by the comments made by two senior Chinese officials. While they may not be political heavyweights, their comments could not have come without some  orchestration from the top levels of the Chinese government.

The New York Times quoted Hong Lei, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, as saying on Thursday, “We hope that the U.S. government adopts responsible policies and measures to guarantee the interests of investors.”  It is a sober but telling statement.

However, what Chinese central bank advisor Li Daokui said was more damning. According to Reuters, Li said the U.S. is "playing with fire" over its debt ceiling debate and, "there is a risk a U.S. debt default may happen." 

He told a conference in Beijing,"If a default happens, the Chinese government should have a consultation with the U.S. government. China can promise that we will not sell our holdings of U.S. debt, but the United States must also promise that you will not hurt our interests by guaranteeing the safety of our investment... I really worry about the risks of a U.S. debt default, which I think may lead to a decline in the dollar’s value.”

Viewed against this backdrop the unexpected Obama-Dalai Lama meeting acquires significance. One can always explain it away saying that it is purely out of social graces that President Obama has invited someone of the Dalai Lama’s standing who has been in Washington for the past 11 days. However, the White House could not have been unaware of how the meeting would be viewed in Beijing. Even under much more agreeable circumstances, Beijing does not take kindly to anyone of any consequence having anything to do with the Dalai Lama.

When the last time the two met in February, 2010, in the same Map Room, the circumstances were much less fraught with implications for China other than the fact one of their most despised figures was being hosted by the US president. Notwithstanding that Beijing went ballistic. Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai summoned then US ambassador Jon Huntsman and lodged "solemn representations" over the meeting.

"The US act grossly interfered in China's internal affairs, gravely hurt the Chinese people's national sentiments and seriously damaged the Sino-US ties," the official Chinese news agency Xinhua had quoted quoted foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu as saying.

"Tibet is an inalienable part of the inviolable territory of China and the issues concerning Tibet are purely internal affairs of China," Ma said.

China opposes leaders or government officials of any country meeting the Dalai Lama and any country or anyone using the Dalai Lama to interfere in its internal affairs, he added.

"The Dalai Lama's words and deeds have shown he is not a pure religious figure, but a political exile who has all along been engaged in separatist activities under the pretext of religion," Ma said.

He said the Dalai Lama-Obama meeting "grossly violated the basic norms governing international relations".

"It also went against the repeated commitments by the US government that the US recognizes Tibet as part of China and gives no support to 'Tibet independence'," he said.

For some reason, I have this vision of the number crunchers in the Chinese Ministry of Finance adding up US debt figures over the weekend and calling it by Monday.

P.S.: For those of you who may wonder why Obama is meeting the Dalai Lama in the Map Room instead of his office in the Oval Office, let me just say it is largely about diplomatic symbolism. The Oval Office apparently has its own unique gravity that the Map Room or any other room lacks. Only the heads of state get to be in the Oval Office.

Better being a beta baboon

 

I have never classified myself in terms of the alpha male or the beta male. But if you insist, I would say I used to be the omega male for most of my adult life; someone who stood at the end of the line and wondered what he was doing standing in a line. I have since fallen off the Greek alphabet. So I record with some amusement a new study that shows that the beta male is not such a bad thing after all.

The study carried out by Laurence R. Gesquiere, a research associate in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton, and his colleagues has been written about by James Gorman in The New York Times today. The field biologists studied wild baboons in Kenya for nine years and concluded that alpha baboons lead a life of great stress unlike the beta ones. They could have studied me for a day and concluded it’s even better to be off the Greek alphabet altogether.

An abstract in the Science magazine says this: “In social hierarchies, dominant individuals experience reproductive and health benefits, but the costs of social dominance remain a topic of debate. Prevailing hypotheses predict that higher-ranking males experience higher testosterone and glucocorticoid (stress hormone) levels than lower-ranking males when hierarchies are unstable but not otherwise. In this long-term study of rank-related stress in a natural population of savannah baboons (Papio cynocephalus), high-ranking males had higher testosterone and lower glucocorticoid levels than other males, regardless of hierarchy stability. The singular exception was for the highest-ranking (alpha) males, who exhibited both high testosterone and high glucocorticoid levels. In particular, alpha males exhibited much higher stress hormone levels than second-ranking (beta) males, suggesting that being at the very top may be more costly than previously thought.”

There are many advantages to not being on the Greek alphabet. In my position you do not have to fight to retain your primacy. Unlike the alpha baboons, I do not have to worry about forever maintaining secure access to fertile females or fight rivals.

In so much as one can classify male behavior in terms of alpha and beta, I have seen enough alpha males, who, while being obviously successful and dominant, are also tightly wound. These are the kind who think life is a profession. They are the type who like to live life on the ledge.

Stating the obvious and reiterating it

If Indian television anchors had their way, they would like perpetrators of any crime, particularly terrorism, to be identified, arrested, prosecuted and punished within minutes of it being committed. They would like it even better if they are identified, arrested and punished in their own studios by skipping the boring detail of prosecution. A public hanging of the guilty would be fantastic for ratings.

The triple Mumbai blasts naturally compelled me to watch the live broadcast of the unfolding story yesterday. It is amazing how quickly such events are sought to be made subservient to the demands of 24/7 news channels. I do not mean to single out any particular anchor and certainly do not mean to hand down sanctimonious pronouncements about the way they conducted themselves. However, it was difficult to escape the impression that they would rather that the reality became tailored to their whims and fancies just as soon as it broke.

Before I get into the more substantive aspects of what ails broadcast news in India, I want to declare a ban on stating the obvious on television. Let all concerned remember that they work for an audio-visual medium where descriptions of what is going on a couple of inches away from their toes are superfluous. The viewer can see precisely what the reporter and anchor can see. So if there is a blast resulting in an orange fire and black smoke, there is no particular need to assert that there is an orange fire and black smoke.

Similarly, remember that while discussing a blast adding qualifiers such as “The blast had intensity” would sound ridiculous because it is ridiculous. That’s because if a blast has no intensity, it would not be a blast. It would just be a Ratnagiri mango.

There is no need for television reporters to start every other sentence with, “As you can see…” because we indeed can see.

There is no point saying things like, “Rain could affect forensic evidence” or “The injured are being rushed to hospital.” Tautology does not enhance the quality of the report. It also does not accentuate the drama of an already dramatic story.

Speaking of stating the obvious, there is no need to repeat what a spokesman or a witness just said because we all heard it as well. By prefixing it with “As you heard..” a television reporter is not bringing any new insight or information.

There is an advisory that I have been meaning to offer to Indian television reporters who are at the scene of a major story. Remember breathing normally would not come in the way of your articulation. If anything, it would help you sound more cogent. So please breathe. Breathing never killed anyone.

The immediate aftermath of this tragic story had some unintentionally funny moments.

One of the witnesses, himself a diamond merchant, interviewed by NDTV had this to say about the death of someone he knew: “He has lost his life. And he has lost his diamond also.” It sounded as if it was bad enough for him to have lost his life but losing his diamonds too? That’s where he drew the line. Come to think of it, he was looking at it as a diamond merchant for whom people are perishable but diamonds are forever.

Another witness, on being asked to describe what his reaction was immediately after the blast, said he thought a building might be collapsing. “Diamond market mein kain itni buildingen hein jo girne ko taiyyar hai” (There are so many buildings ready to collapse in the diamond market),” he said. And in the same breath, he spoke about the district exporting diamonds and jewelry worth 700 billion rupees (about $15 billion). The disconnect between so much wealth being generated in a district where buildings just collapse because of their age and poor upkeep was striking.

Another witness at Dadar, one of the three sites under attack, said, “Dhamaka itna jor ka tha ke kaan mein kuch sunai nahi diya. (The explosion was so loud that one could not hear anything).” Of course, he was referring to the temporary loss of hearing caused by an intense blast but under the circumstances it sounded hilarious.

In one instance, while a witness was describing in some detail how he carried a blood-soaked victim, a guy behind him was calling his family on his mobile phone to say with a triumphant laugh that he was on television. He even waved to them.

Coming back to my original point about how television anchors look for instant resolution of everything, here is an exchange between NDTV managing editor and high profile anchor Barkha Dutt and Maharashtra state Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan.

Remember this was happening within less than three hours of the first blast. Cue the clip to 1.54 for the portion I am talking about. Before this bit Chavan had already said he would not like to “speculate” as to who might have carried out the blasts.

Dutt: “And sir, you are saying it is too early to make any guesses about who may be behind this and why?

Chavan:"No I don’t think I would like to speculate on that. Let the police come to you officially…”

One cannot fault Dutt for trying to get as much information from the state’s leader as she could and that too first on her channel, but in the process she ends up asking a question which is devoid of rational reasoning. Why would the state’s chief minister “make any guesses” on television about who could have carried out the bomb blasts barely within a couple of hours?

Is it possible, not to mention prudent, for any state agency to crack the identity of the perpetrators and announce it on national television barely as body parts have been scraped off ? What’s the point of asking that question to someone whose immediate task is to ensure that things do not go out of control any more than they already have?

There seemed to be genuine bafflement on NDTV that the government had “absolutely refused” to talk about who could be behind the blasts. Unfortunately, terrorists do not plan their operations keeping mind the considerations of 24/7 news channels. What compounds the problem is that even the government refuses to “make any guesses” about the perpetrators. The notion that it may be too early to make any guesses is genuinely incomprehensible for the 24/7 news channels. I am not even getting into the dangers of “making guesses” about such crimes.

Rupert Murdoch and his trashcan

There is a frequently played and somewhat dated television clip of Rupert Murdoch where he is shown walking into his New York office and going around a particularly large trashcan. I have often wondered why the world’s most powerful media mogul needs a trashcan that large. He must have a lot of junk to throw. As we are discovering these days, he does indeed.

Going by the daily disclosures of the rot in parts of his British operations, it seems he might soon need a whole dumping ground next to him. Every time I see the trashcan, I half expect a British politician to pop out. It is that large. I am not so much obsessed with the trashcan as I am amused by it. It is almost as if Murdoch is saying to his visitors, “If you have nothing worthwhile to say, you would end up in this trashcan.”

 

Cue the clip to 1.55 to see the large trashcan

In the past few days the trashcan has been used to dump the News of the World. If the pressure continues to mount on him at the rate it is going now, it could well be BSkyB followed by Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International and one of his favorite people. Murdoch has been around too many of these bareknuckle fights in his long career to see himself jumping into it but the hacking scandal is perhaps the closest he has come to it.

If they ever auction Murdoch’s assets, I would like to bid on the trashcan.

Bhaag BoseDK

This post is rated NC-17

 

It has been a while since I engaged in gratuitous dissection of some piece of India’s pop culture. And nothing symbolizes pop culture these days more than the song “Bose D K” from the movie ‘Delhi Belly’ written by Amitabh Bhattacharya. (I think it is Amitabh who wrote it, but I am not sure because song credits are shared).

It must reveal something about a country in thrall of a song that basically says, “Run, you dumb fucker.” * It is just that I don’t quite  know yet what it reveals. I am sure I would crack this one if I spend sometime on it.

The song is actually quite inventive once you get past the obvious and somewhat juvenile double entendre and pun on the name Bose D K. It begins with the lines “Daddy mujhse bola tu ghalti hai meri, Tujhpe zindagani guilty hai meri” and sets the mood for easily one of the most pessimistic takes on life to be heard in a Hindi movie song. It is not everyday that in a Hindi movie a son acknowledges that his father thinks of him as a “mistake.” I particularly like the bit where it says,'Sabun ki shakal mein nikla keval jhag’ and ‘Dekha to katora, jhanka to kuan.” Both these bits have the feeling of having been flattered to deceive or disappoint.

The day I heard the song I kept thinking of another song from another time articulating a more upbeat mood. It is interesting that the song was from a movie featuring Aamir Khan, who happens to have produced ‘Delhi Belly.’ The other song I am talking about is ‘Papa kehte hein bada naam karega’ written by the ever reliable Majrooh Sultanpuri for the 1988 movie ‘Qayamat se Qayamat Tak’. Although that song did underscore the uncertainties of a young man (Aamir Khan) not knowing where he was headed in life (Magar yeh to koi na jaane ke meri manzil hai kahan), the overall mood of the song was optimistic.

I am sure none of what I am saying here has any real basis to it, but it is interesting to speculate how in a span of 23 years the mood has changed from ‘My dad says I will make a name for myself, He says my son will do something big,’ (‘Papa kehte hein bada naam karega, Beta hamara aisa kaam karega) to ‘Daddy says you are my mistake, my life is guilty of you’ (Daddy mujhe se bola tu ghlati hai meri, Tujhpe zindgani guilty hai meri).

* Note: Bose D K is a thinly veiled version of the widely used Indian swear phrase ‘Bhosedikey’, which does not have an effective equivalent in English. I think the translation dumb fucker sums it up well. One may also translate it literally to mean ‘Run, you cunt’ because bhose does mean cunt.