Noted, well, racist and popular politician Bal Thackeray died on November 17th. In response the entire city of Mumbai shut down, partly out of loyalty and muchly out of fear. One girl, however, wrote something rather innocuous on Facebook, basically her opinion. Then her and one friend who ‘liked’ the post were arrested. India is sitting on a tinder keg of tensions on a good day, so there were obviously being cautious. This, however, was a bit silly and a bit much.

Westerners have long sought some sort of hippie enlightenment from the Beatles to Steve Jobs to thousands more. Actually, from doubting Thomas to perhaps even Jesus himeself. As yoga and meditation get exposed to money and naked need divorced from culture, however, things can go very bad.

Wow. This is a cavalcade of retardation. Via Dinidu, this is advice from The New India Express on choosing a bride. This advice from Dr. Titus Sankaramangalam in insanely dumb, it’s like Scientology in that he uses a lot of scientific sounding words to describe a crazy and offensive thesis. For example: “Look for symmetry. An easy way to find this out is to look at her elbows to see whether they are shapely and symmetrical. Large breasts are no good unless they are of the same size and shape” (How to choose a bride? What science has to offer?).

Groundviews is freaking out about an admittedly cartoon of Indian Prime Minister Manomohan Singh looking up Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalithaa’s sari. They’re calling for the paper, Lakbima News, to be reported to the Press Complaints Commission and seconding a tweet from someone calling for the cartoonist to be fired. I mean, really? The cartoon is tasteless and – worst of all – not funny. I don’t get it and it’s just unsavory. But to say this is out of the bounds of free expression is just wrong.

‘I Want Fakht You’ means I want just you in Hindi, but it obviously comes across differently in English. It’s from the movie Joker, which apparently is quite odd and interesting. The video alone is priceless, especially at the end where a whole village is singing ‘Fakht You’.

When I travelled in India I always used my Sri Lankan passport. People were nice and quick to mention two famous Sri Lankans: Ravana and Sanath Jayasuriya. The only place I felt unwelcome as a Sri Lankan was in Rameshwaran, the point nearest to SL, which was strange. I’ve since been to Chennai and Pondi in Tamil Nadu without problems. Hence it’s troubling that Sri Lankans in TN and now being attacked and harassed, by mobs and politicians alike.

Indian women are renowned as some of the most beautiful in the world, but they still haven’t appeared in Playboy. Until now. Bollywood C-lister Sherlyn Chopra (Twitter) will be the first Indian to appear nude in the softcore glad rag this November (Hollywood Reporter).

The day consumer goods companies discovered the Indian vagina was a bad day for everyone. First we got vagina whitening cream, now this. This is a vagina tightening cream called 18 Again. This is wrong on many levels.

India, like Sri Lanka, has ubiquitous stray dogs, especially in urban areas. These street scavengers exist because of poor garbage practices, but also because of policy – not managing dog birth control and never euthanizing strays. Hence you get about 80,000 people bitten in Mumbai alone last year. And somewhat weird responses like this: “In Mumbai, where more than 80,000 people reported being bitten last year, the government plans to conduct a census of the strays by using motorcycles to chase down dogs and squirt their fur with ink.”

Look, bad stuff happens all the time, but the gall of the Minister presiding over the world’s largest blackout is pretty, uh, galling. And he’s just been promoted. Seriously, this from the NYTimes: ‘Despite presiding over two of the biggest blackouts in human history, Mr. Shinde declared himself to have been an “excellent” power minister. Rather than focus on the loss of power, people should appreciate that power was restored across India within a matter of hours, Mr. Shinde said’