Go here now for a bunch of links to re-hear/ re-see/ re-live all of your DD nostalgia. This where I got a link to "Mile Sur Mere Tumhara" as transported to MIT, Boston. The funny part is when ze desi geeks take out a rowboat into the Charles River in imitation of boatmen back in the Desh. Other choice bits over there include links to He-Man, Jungle Book etc. Now if only someone will put up clips of those old DD advertisements, starting with the Nirma girl with her twirly skirt.

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Finally over at YouTube, this song as well as this one by Kannada star, Dr. Raj Kumar had me rolling on the floor. "Doooling you pick the time..."

Also in a roundabout nod to feminism (?), this Lux ad features Shahrukh Khan. Also what's up with that Angrezi inflected Hindi accent?

Let's now bring in Gabbar from evergreen Sholay. "Kitne aadmi the?" Also the "Hum agrezo ke zamane ke jailer hain" scene, the Mausi scene, and the Veeru Suicide scene.

of Shankar Nag's "Malgudi Days" TV serial links for your downloading & bhiewing pleasuaah:

Episode 1: A Horse and Two Goats - East is east, and West is west, and the twain shall meet in this one. In Hindi with English subtitles

Episode 2 : The Hoard

Episode 3:

Episode 4:

Episode 5:

Episode 6: Old Man of the Temple

Episode 7: The Postmaster

Password required for access: "malgudi".

Also the $$$ readers can now buy thirteen of the episodes of this TV serial on DVD for $19.00 only.

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Does anyone know where I can find a map of Malgudi? I know that it is included in some edition of the book "Malgudi Days". Also searching for the map led me to this tribute to Narayan written by the old scold V.S. Naipaul, and this one by Amit Chaudhuri, both of which I hadn't read before.

Iran is one of my fetishes, which surely began in my childhood, (in Grade 5 more precisely I think) because of a casual conversation with a classmate, in which she revealed that she had spent her early years in snow covered Tehran. For a kid, who was given to Bruce Chatwin’s “What am I Doing Here?” like geographical escapism, the actual fact this girl had actually lived elsewhere soon proved to be irresistible point of departure into fantasy. Soon afterwards I was looking up Iran in an encyclopedia in one of the 'library periods' we had, instead of reading the usual dose of Hardy Boys adventures. Finally, I have had the chance to indulge even more this Iranian (or Persian as I prefer to refer it) fetish here in America, fueled in large part by the discovery of Rumi's and Hafiz's poetry.

Given this, my eyes perked up when Sepia Mutiny featured this article on the arrest of Dr. Ramin Jahanbegloo, a Iranian scholar recently in the Kafkaesque Mullah-Land. As the odds go, I had actually encountered Ramin Jahanbegloo in the Indian blogsphere before that, specifically through this post at Chandrahas Choudhury's literary blog "The Middle Stage", in which Chandrahas discusses a book of conversations titled "Talking India" that Ramin had collaborated on with Ashis Nandy. I would also recommend reading this exchange of letters in which Ramin discusses the relevance of 'The American Dream' to other countries of the world, and pray that he would soon be able to escape the Islamo-Kafkaesque situation he currently is trapped in, safe and sound.

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More coincidentally, it was only last week that I happened to pick up, for $1 in the trash racks of a second hand bookstore, Elaine Sciolino's excellent chronicle of her own Iran watching as a reporter for Newsweek and New York Times starting from the cusp of Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution in 1979, titled "Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran". While the book is a bit dated - it came out six years ago when it appeared that Iran was undergoing its own version of Perestroika under Khatami - it still provides thinking points to a lay observer in view of all the war of words going on between far out folks sitting there in Tehran, and here in Washington DC.

First point: yes, life in Iran can be a bitch if you are any kind of a free thinker, who is engaged in or want to engage in any kind of creative production. If you are a rock musician, you better kiss your electric guitar goodbye before your ass is transported to Evin prison (built by the American 'puppet'/ shah) for the crime of 'westoxcification'. But then didn't Alan Bloom, the godfather of many of the Washington Neocons, in his best selling polemic, "The Closing of American Mind" indicate that one reason behind the decline of thought and great souled longing for love vis-à-vis sexual promiscuity is the devil of rock music? I am sure Ayatollah Khamenei would have enjoyed parts of this book.

Second point: Even though dissent is suppressed in Iran, the conservative clerics are still far from attaining the Stalinist perfection of the Gulags. This is mainly because dissent and argumentation is inbuilt into Shia theological world that supplies many of the Iranian ruling clerics. As Sciolino details at length in her book, this has been on an ongoing low intensity jijuistu between those who think clerics should get out of the business of government and powerful clerics who would like to maintain status quo. So yes, while the Iranian regime is very well capable of sending out assassins on hit jobs to eliminate dissidents abroad, as well as prosecute horribly perceived opponents within Iran, it is still a far cry from Kim Jong-il’s supremely surreal totalitarian North Korea, another vertex of Small (everything is small except the bring-it-on swagger) B's Axis of Evil.