Khatola Tribune

While the Times of India can always be relied upon to dish out nonsense of a uniformly high level, Vidushi Dubey from Lucknow sets a new high water mark in ToI journalism.

LUCKNOW: Graham Bell could hardly have imagined that the device he invented would play such an important role in people’s lives.

Today, all your needs are just a phone call away. Welcome to the era of “phone-in” services. Just dial. Everything, from pins to plane tickets, will reach you in a jiffy. Groceries, food, medicines, movie tickets, doctors, pathology services and even barbers are available at your doorstep.

The days of “ghisna” and “peesna” to look beautiful are passe. Make a call and the parlour reaches your home.

Read the rest of this breathtaking piece of stupidity at Graham’s bell rings in every walk of life- The Times of India

From Drunk monkeys attack humans- The Times of India, a report of domestic discord —

BHUBANESWAR: A group of monkeys descended on an Orissa village, quaffed down pots of an intoxicating brew lying in the open and then set upon the villagers, injuring three of them.

According to rumors, the monkeys and the villagers misbehaved with each others’ wives.

You do know what to say when someone asks, what is the situation under? This nugget is a little old, but good. In fact, good enough to be quoted in entirety.

The police had to use force to disperse an irate crowd from attacking a couple at Kidwai Road in Malegaon of Maharashtra’s Nasik district on Monday night.

The people objected to the couple talking as they belonged to different religious communities.

According to the police, the crowd attacked the couple and took them to a place of worship.

A local cable channel crew was also beaten while trying to shoot the incident.

The situation in Malegaon is said to be under control, sources added.

Let me make it clear, though, that our editorial department doen’t approve of their making each sentence into a paragraph of its own. Tut tut, fellow journalist.

Cops rescue couple from irate mob

The Bengalis are such a religious bunch, Temples of Doom doesn’t do them full justice.

…in Burdwan district, a group of worshippers in a local festival danced with the blood-soaked head of a child who had died hours earlier.

Meanwhile, in another village –

…the heads of another five-year-old boy and a 35-year-old woman were severed and used for the same ritual. The boy was identified as Surajit Biswas and the woman as Bimala Mandal

I suppose “Hi Surajit! Hi Bimala!” would be in order, if you ran into them. One young woman was quite nonplussed to run into her dad’s head at the ceremony.

Human heads offered in ritual fest- The Times of India

Our favourite source of bedtime stories is ToI, which brings us this noir tale.

Pay close attention now:

1. A buddy of Tendulkar, “Chamundi”, gets kidnapped.

2. This fellah, who drives around in a Mercedes, is an Andhra cricket selector.

3. He chats with the police for a couple of hours on his cellphone after the kidnapping.
(more…)

Evidently, they have banned
the “dance bars” of Bombay to prevent the eminent corruption of youth. For some reason it is only the youth that people always worry about the corruption of, but tat’s the stuff of an editorial.

For the moment, we note (and we quote) that –

The state government on Tuesday decided to extend its ban on dance bars to include the 700 in Mumbai. Officially, there are only 307 dance bars in the city, the rest are illegal.

Now if you are wondering how big a deal that is, the Times of India is again yourready reckoner:

The Mumbai ban will put 1.5 lakh people, including 75,000 bar girls, out of a job.

Which adds up to over two hundred “workers” for each bar, including a hundred dancing girls.

How much room does that leave for patrons anyway? Nobody thought of closing these things down for being a safety hazard?

Now that’s a new trick to promote hockey! Throw in some dancing eunuchs, I say.

Veteran hockey players from India and Pakistan will battle it out on the field on Tuesday while a huge TV screen at the stadium will telecast the cricket one-dayer live from Ahmedabad.

Having failed to sell too many tickets despite big names like Ajit Pal Singh, Mohammad Shahid, Zafar Iqbal, Akhtar Rasool, Hasan Sardar and Shahbaz featuring in the teams, the organisers are banking on the cricketers to bring in the crowds.

According to The Telegraph, our jolly Bhajpamen are annoyed that Sonia does not “condole” the Pope’s death. That’s apparently “communal”, depriving them of a chance to call her “anti-national”.

Sources said members had suggested the government had taken the ?unprecedented? step in deference to Sonia?s Roman Catholic origin and that she was being ?deliberately communal? by not paying her respects to the departed soul.

?Obviously, she thinks if she condoles the Pope?s death, people may connect it with her Italian background. But this shows that she has not been able to rise above her roots and recognise that the Pope was a statesman, a world leader and not just the head of the Vatican,? said a senior national executive member.

(And she must be secretly munching on cow, no?)

Again, BJP claws into Sonia

One female runner was shot in the leg; some policemen were also wounded.

Pakistan’s conservative society does not encourage women to play sports. They are strictly forbidden from wearing shorts and T-shirts.

Now what could that mean — run a marathon in undies?

Yahoo! News - Nine wounded in clash over women’s race in Pakistan: police