me in a mangrove (no pun intended)

The surgence of Star News seems to have done one good thing atleast as far as AajTak's concerned. It made AajTak look like a credible news channel. Not that AajTak has started getting its news right or that its reporters actually know what they are talking about. But Star has allowed news to hit such a low that even AajTak seems measured and responsible.

Case in point road repairs in Mumbai close to Chitra Cinema. I take the road everyday. And if you live in Bombay you'll know what I mean. It's right where the Dadar flyover meets Chitra Cinema at that thoughtlessly located traffic light. The point where the road, badly in need of repair, is being concretised. Traffic on any given day piles up across the flyover and even more so due to the re-surfacing work. But lo-behold when Star finds out about it. It's suddenly a national calamity. The BMC is slowing down traffic with its stupid road project. A reporter pops up on location, multiple windows surface, showing you the same 20 meters from different angles. And it's all the fault of the BMC, which had nothing to do with the work to begin with. It was work being done under the MUTP by the MMRDA.

If the authority had not done its job, you could flog them. But how can you fault them for doing their job just because it causes some delays to commuters. Like they could possibly take the road elsewhere to repair it!

Case in point 2: Kunjilal and his prediction of death. A man in the middle of no where predicts he's going to die. On a particular day and a particular time. Not one, not two but three supposedly responsible national news channels decide to beam out of his village, from the very temple he says he will breathe his last.

Everyone including Kunjilal's neighbour's dog that's lost its bark is interviewed. The Star and AajTak reporters duel on-air as to who will get the first interview with Kunjilal who's sitting in a little hole of a temple dedicated to goodness-knows-who.

Till 3pm the headlines read Kunjilal the saint... or a variation thereof... Suddenly at 4pm... the headline changes.. "dhongi baba ka parda fash"

Jesus!

My constant worry is how does one battle such non-issues. That's when I thank my stars and say thank god I no longer work for a hindi news channel.

BANGKOK WALK... Just got back from a walk in Bangkok. Ok that's a bit of stretch it was more like 10days and some excursions thrown in. But I think I've sort of understood what makes the city and the country tick. It's pretty simple actually: Food, sex and some more food. Food's everywhere and cheap too, much like the sex. Sold from the sidewalks and off it, again much like sex. In a bizarre bizaare way it almost makes sense. As much sense as Karen Walker does in all her Botox injected, upper induced glory. So in all my non-botox injected, non-upper induced glory a few pearls of wisdom, a few street truths on: how to walk the streets of Bangkok, not to get cruised, solicited and yet find something edible and vegetarian.

If you're a carnivore and better still an omnivore you're in paradise, but if you're not, well it's bad but there's hope. Look around and you'll find by the wayside Thai style banana bhajjiyas except they are often sweet and laced with some yummy white sesame seed. You can actually get just about any vegetable that you can point out fried in the sweet batter. But then yes it’s sweet. My answer: buy yourself salt in one of those shaker kind of packages and sprinkle away. Wash it down with fresh fruit juicies or a cola slurped right out of a plastic bag.

And what is it with the Thai and plastic bags??? The Thai eat and drink just about anything from plastic bags. Vilasrao if you’re listening you could certainly learn a thing or two from these guys. They use plastic bags for just about everything but you don't seem 'em lying around much less clogging their drains. Get a coke and pour it into a plastic bag full of crushed ice, stick in a straw and its all ready for you to carry away. And what's with this nation of straw obessed people?! No one ever drinks straight out of a bottle. Not even beer!

Also unlike in other parts of the world here shrimp paste is considered vegetarian, as is chicken stock and fish stock, hell the water imbibed jucies of any animal for that matter of fact is vegetarian. And when you finally get through to the cook on what you want you're still in danger of half cooked veggies in a watery gravy of goodness-knows-what. You see unlike the "authentic" Thai dishes you get served up in India the Thai themselves prefer their veggies half-done. After many a hit and miss I discovered the magic words from the back side of a Bangkok-by-night map. Tan Jay the two words to use to make most dishes vegetarian. Loosely translated the words mean no animal extracts please or something to that effect.

Then there are the desserts made from milk and coconut. The Thai you see don't have dessert at the end of the meal. Dessert's often a meal by itself. So you can gorge on the sweet stuff (Warning: not for the calorie conscious) and then wash it down with some salty fruit juice.

So while you take all this in, and stop to decide what you want to eat in between a bout of shopping and hear a sudden buzzing in your ear don't turn around! It's just someone trying to ask you "Want sex?" How do I know? Well I turned. Right in the middle of deciding on what that yellow piece of fried batter actually was, I heard someone ask me "Want sex?" I turned around smiled and said no and went back to my pondering. The buzzing continued. "I got sexy lady, she do what you want". The buzzing continued. I turned around and said no but thanks and the track changed like a switch. “I get you lady boy, very reasonable”. I managed to shake off the pimp only to realize they were every where. I jumped into a tuk-tuk, their version of the rickshaw, asked the driver to take me to my hotel. Halfway through the ride, the driver pulled out a catalogue of girls and when I didn’t look remotely interested asked me if I wanted "ladies boys". A catalogue with names, pictures, the works for me to choose from. And the lady boy would be sent to my hotel door step at a bargain price.

Another thing that really struck me were the Huge! number of trolly white men with young, really young, thai boys in tow. Wherever you went, at the Telephone, at the Babylon everywhere old men young boys. Rather sad if you ask me. And the boys are actually looking for the sugah daddies. Sick and sad. Not to pass a judgement call on anyone but then I guess it is one too.

But the one funny thing I realized was that the gay ‘relationships’ somehow seemed more sanitized then the straight ones. The straight ones were all these red-light bars where dozens of women waited hoping to seduce a man, again most often white or south asian foreigners, to go off with and earn a fistful for a fuck.

The one sight that I doubt will ever get out of my mind is the Walking Street in Pattaya. A 200 meter stretch with what seemed like 2000 women in their barest of clothing watching TV, chatting with their friends, playing with their children and yet calling out to the next foreigner who passes by offering their innards. A sad, sick, sad road that leaves in my mind a deeper impression then all of the choreographed neatness of the Thai government; the bizarre lollypop pictures of the king and the queen and the chaperoned visits to their temples and gem factories.

The one thing though that struck me as a gay man is that my sexuality was so very accepted. No rude stares. No funny whispers. Just a casual disregard that’s generally reserved for straight pairings.