Asian Lite News Archive

Category: Daily Dose

  • ‘NOT HER FAULT GET OFF HER BACK’

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     How many of you remember the name of the driver when Princess Di died. Don’t be pious and hypocritical. How many of us would have read a single para para about child killed in road tragedy, huh… by using the star’s name there is some modicum of attention…writes Bikram Vohra I am sorry for the…

  • COME ON BABY, DRIVE YOUR CAR

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    My friend is unhappy. His wife wants a new car. She has made the decision unilaterally (means without asking him) because two of her friends have rich husbands who have bought them new upmarket cars and now she expects him to do the right thing…writes Bikram Vohra Tell me, he says in that hollow, mirthless…

  • PLEASE SIR, TAKE MY SEAT, SIR, PLEASE, SIR

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA Hahaha… it is funny, so funny that if you get into the groove of it, you could have tears of mirth streaming down your face. This huge issue they are making of Kiren Rijiju, the Union Minister of State for Home being given seats on an Air India plane at the expense…

  • PLEASE SIR, TAKE MY SEAT, SIR, PLEASE, SIR

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    Hey Sir, Mr. Prime Minister, why can’t this motley crew stand in line like the rest of the people they serve…asks Bikram Vohra. He is commenting on the Babu culture in India Hahaha… it is funny, so funny that if you get into the groove of it, you could have tears of mirth streaming down…

  • Stopping the crimson tide ….

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    Terrorism is a long battle and has nothing to do with retaking lost territory nor does a battle plan for this fight have parameters. It is fluid, nebulous and almost impossible to eliminate for the enemy is unseen…writes Bikram Vohra The plumes of violence continue to spread insidiously. The attacks in Kuwait, Tunis and France…

  • Honey How the Kids Have Grown

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    Bikram Vohra provides some parenting tips on World Father’s Day You know your kids have grown up when: @Their music and yours has nothing in common. @ You find yourself telling your daughter she can’t possibly be serious about going out dressed like that!! You say, ‘No, sorry, you can’t, you are too young’ and that…

  • MR. MARLBORO’S MILLIONS

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA Not sure if you have heard of Mokhtar Belmokhtar who was killed in a US airstrike a couple of days ago. He was on the run for the past seven years. After an Algerian court sentenced him to life in absentia he joined several fringe groups.  He became interested in jihad in…

  • SOMETHINGS YOU SHOULD NEVER BE

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA Whizzkid. Like a meteor you burn brightly and then you burn out. And the party is over. Besides everyone else lays traps for you. The boss. If you cannot be a leader. And that means doing it better than your team. Favourite son. It is wonderful to be the boss’s fav but…

  • We are having a party, just don’t come on time

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    Many years ago I wrote an article about how people never used the RSVP and had no concept of time like if the card says 9.30 pm that does not mean you float in at half eleven. For days after that no one invited us anywhere…writes Bikram Vohra One of my favourite statements is about…

  • WHY WE SWEAT IT OUT

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA Courtesy of a medical situation in Delhi I have spent the past few days with some very patient and dedicated doctors, most of them ex-army but with a great deal of ‘bedside manner’ (a commodity in short supply) and not dedicated to padding the bill but actually getting the patient well and out.…

  • YOU ARE A KING OF THE KITCHEN

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA The gas cylinder runs out an hour before guests arrive. Your pot pie, apple strudel or whatever is in the oven either sinks like the Titanic or is overcooked on the outside and half frozen and raw on the inside. Your delicious mouthwatering that looks absolutely awesome with shining green peas, blazing…

  • CRICKET BORING CRICKET

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA Is there such a state as having too much of a good thing? I think so. The IPL’s 45 day stretch is a perfect case in point. It is like metal fatigue. After a while it develops cracks in the attention span and just becomes a blur. Unless you are a diehard…

  • ARUNA SHANBAUG: AND WILL TOMORROW COME

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA Have you heard of Aruna Shanbaug? Probably not. But you should… for she epitomizes the visceral fear that the devil wins some battles. To even begin to understand her plight you have to first get over your own sense of helplessness and sheer horror. In 1973 she was a nurse in Mumbai’s…

  • SHAKEN WITH IGNORANCE

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA Has anyone read anything scientific about how far seismographic knowledge has progressed and why it is given so low a priority seeing as how earthquakes could destroy the planet before the drones take off. Look. I am ready to admit it. My house is in Delhi and my sister lives on the…

  • LOOKING FOR A JOB?

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA Sometimes I get the feeling that job ads are more soaked with human emotions than the news columns. There is prejudice for one, heaps of it. If you are over 35 you need not apply. What is this fascination with the figure 35? As if at 36 a person crumples like soggy…

  • WHO WAS NURULLAH MEHBOOB SHAIKH?

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA Everyone is behaving as if Indian justice has been served unfairly for the first time. It has always been elitist. That is the core of an adversarial system. The better your lawyer the better your chances. OJ Simpson. Oscar Pistorius. Salman Khan. Justice is blind. Justice is selective and if there are…

  • SIR MAURICE FLANAGAN 1928-2015

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA A good man. More than a good man. An officer and a gentleman to the core. He brought to the table grace, dignity and an aviation acumen that was unchallenged. And yet, he was approachable, down to earth and blessed with an often self deprecating humour. Sir Maurice Flanagan. They don’t come…

  • WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?

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    By BIKRAM VOHRA Indian media, in recent years, has begun to believe in an irrational sense of entitlement. It is manifested in an odd conviction that it is owed an advance warning. There seems a rage over the Rafale purchase deal fuelled more by indignation that its mandarins were not told about it and were…

  • Waiting for Wassabi!

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    If the Boko Haram wants to kidnap little girls, the Taliban blow up a village and some mentally deranged idiot shoot up a Mall, that’s life. But to make Kanye West and Kim Kardashian wait 30 minutes for a sushi table in Calabasas, California is just not acceptable. The world is going to hell in a…

  • THE DAY OF THE ‘ITTING SON

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA Just read about the Baltimore Mom who spotted her teenage son taking part in the present riots and marched up to him as he was proceeding to combat the police and larrupped him one. ONE RESOUNDING WHACK.  Then she dragged him back home yelling, whatchathinkyouaredoing. Good for you lady. Far too many…

  • IN LOVE WITH MY MPS

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA I am thrilled. Indian Members of Parliament have been reassured that their VIP status at Indian airports will be maintained and they need not worry about these privileges being rescinded. Some idiot had suggested that these over 500 MPs should curtail their pushing and shoving and wanting special waiting rooms and lounge…

  • YOURS MINE AND OURS

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA All these years we have laughed at people who never lose an opportunity to show pictures of their grandchildren. Silly folks. Where do they get off? We have warmly congratulated ourselves on being restrained. When we have them we told each other, we shall refrain from inflicting this imposition on others, it…

  • WHY CARE ABOUT THE ORPHANS FROM THE SEA

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA It is one of the ironies of our times that the ripple effect of internecine conflicts wash up like flotsam on foreign shores and the world does not care. Although Europe has become the favoured destination it is an accordion that traps every nation in the world because no nation is an…

  • WHY THE RICH OPINIONS COUNT

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA Why is it that rich people have worthy opinions? I have never seen the connection between someone making a fortune from manufacturing sticky tape and suddenly becoming an authority on all things. Make your sticky tape, miles of it and be the man the bank manager stands up for when you enter…

  • IPL: DISASTER OF THE DANCING GIRLS

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA Ah, my favourite hobby horse. Can’t help but take one more ride on it. The hideous hypocrisy of having only white women doing that silly jump up and down stuff at the IPL cricket venues ad nauseum is a testament to our double standards. See, we are so chaste, so pious, so…

  • WHY VIOLENCE WINS

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA If it bleeds it leads. In 45 years of journalism that was the diktat common to every paper I worked on or ran. The worse the news the more the sales. Scandal, death, blood and gore wrapped in cynicism sold. We always convinced ourselves that was what the reader wanted, print and…

  • THE BALD AND THE BOUNTIFUL

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA I am told that you can get a robot to fix your bald patch for the princely sum of $15,000. You could buy a half way decent car with that money. I don’t understand why you would bother. For one, unless your hair fell out when you were 25 and life stretches…

  • SHOT IN COLD BLOOD

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    Think about it. And it is so frightening. Nothing provokes it and yet, a life is lost. Somewhere is South Carolina, a young Afro-American woke up and had breakfast, then took his car for a drive unaware that his tail light was crushed. It happens. We do not make a circular inspection of our cars…

  • REALLY, JUST LEAVE ME ALONE

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA There you are at the airport all checked in and waiting to board, looking forward to a few hours of anonymity and solitude. Time to read a book, watch a movie, switch off that horrendous mobile phone, have no intrusions, actually ease off and savour the flight. Might as well start the…

  • Why? Why? Why?

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    Questions to ponder. Wisdom in a capsule. Why are outgoings always more than incomings? Why are bargains always dramatically slashed after you bought something for three times the price? Why do the contents of a can of anything not look anywhere near like the picture on the cover? Green, large happy and shiny peas in…

  • NEEDS A LOT OF INVESTIGATION

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA The suicidal pilot who flew the A320 from Germanwings into the Alps taking 150 people with him makes for a bizarre page in aviation history. When the news broke I had written that aircraft of this generation do not simply fall out of the sky at cruising altitude. The words I used…

  • VIPS AT WEDDINGS

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA If you are having a wedding in the family and you are inviting VIPs or celebrities please don’t call me. There is nothing more disconcerting than standing there looking fatuous holding a pink wrapped gift when three guys with sten guns suddenly barge in to sanitise the place before the Minister pops…

  • WHEN THINGS GO WRONG

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA People have purple patches where everything goes right for them. What is the opposite of that? When things just go wrong in a series. You lose a document. You get a throat infection. The car breaks down. The domestic help ups and leaves. A dead debt comes alive and dances hideously in…

  • GETTING OLDER: WHEN I AM 94

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA My friend’s dad is 94. He is spry and alert and loves to eat. But they won’t let him. Everyone else is cutting out pieces of his life to prolong it by making him miss it. The dimensions of what is allowed gets smaller by the day. He tells me how tough…

  • I GOT SPAMMED

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA Okay it looked like an urgent mail from someone I know. I opened it and it did not open. Ergo, it was dispatched to my mailing list. It’s a virus. It has blocked my email. I can’t access it. I have driven several friends mad with frustration because some of them might…

  • SHOUTING AT THE WRONG PERSON

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    What is wrong with Jeremy? The Top Gear host unleashed a heap of F words on a crew member. What is going wrong with us…writes Bikram Vohra Do you know how much energy you and I expend shouting at the wrong people. We are paying a bill at a hospital and the man in front…

  • ENTER THE VIPS

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA So I came home with these two tickets to a very popular sold out concert and my wife had that look of reluctant admiration well married wives have for their husbands when they do something extraordinary and rare and my tickets were just that. Row A 16 and 17. Smack right dab…

  • YOU AND MURDEROUS RAGE

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA This is not an earth shattering, world shaking observation. Just a thought. All of us have a pet peeve, something that is our red rag and enrages us beyond normal limits. It could be simply someone slurping his food or fibbing openly or spraying malice or killing your time by being unpunctual…

  • DANGER FOR INDIA’S DAUGHTERS

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA For some reason anything the BBC does is given great importance by the Indian mindset. Something to do with the ex-empire I reckon but we all respond with predictable indignation at their efforts to project India’s warts. A part of our psyche sees the BBC as the benchmark of quality and par…

  • NOW JUST BEEF, WHAT’S NEXT

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA There are many things that underscore hypocrisy in Indian politics but the severe sentence to those who eat beef in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh is plain prejudice in a secular nation. If I am not a Hindu then I really have no right to stop a non-hindu from eating what he or…

  • CROSS OVER THE CHEQUE

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA Thanks to all this keyboard communication and the hi-tech lifestyle we have kind of lost our ability to write more than 20 words in longhand. Also, as we grow older our handwriting changes. This is a scientific fact. it turns soft and becomes a scribble and age impacts on the control factor. …

  • THE IDIOTS UNLIMITED

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA You can legislate till you are blue in the face but some men are louts. They will misbehave. Look at these two clowns. Typical Delhi. They think they are smart, cool, like no one takes them on. They are the type who grope in the bus, who have to touch women, flipping…

  • WHAT MOTIVATES THEM

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA The three British schoolgirls, ostensibly on their way to Syria to join the ISIS (Daesh) in Syria may think of it as a bit of a lark but it boggles the mind that these reportedly academically proficient children should be so easily led into militancy. What is it about extremists that they…

  • WHO IS DOING ALL THE WORK

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    A friend of mine has sent me this mathematical self sell. It is especially for those of us who believe we are doing most of the work in this world while others goof around. For a couple years I’ve been blaming my foul moods on lack of sleep and too much pressure from my job…

  • COLLATERAL DAMAGE: A SHORTAGE OF BLANKETS

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    Why is it that certain acts of terrorism and gratuitous violence simply slip off the news page while others garner attention? Bikram Vohra explores… Why is it that certain acts of terrorism and gratuitous violence simply slip off the news page while others garner attention? The obvious response would be that faceless people in weak…

  • THE INDIVIDUAL TERRORIST

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA He didn’t just get up and decide, ah well, nothing much on the TV, so let’s go kill the neighbours. This was a religious hate crime and there were just three young people minding their own business in their own home when they were made into targets. Just another neighbourhood turned into…

  • INDIA AND PAKISTAN: NOT THAT HOT

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA What is it with people that they can actually get mean over a sports fixture. A little bit of fun humour that comes out from both the Indian and Pakistani sides is earthy, hugely imaginative, and win or lose, you tend to laugh with it and enjoy the surge of imagination. That…

  • COLLATERAL DAMAGE

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA Why is it that certain acts of terrorism and gratuitous violence simply slip off the news page while others garner attention? The obvious response would be that faceless people in weak nations or parts of nations who are already marginalized don’t really count. Consequently, a bomb explosion in upmarket Mall in some…

  • GOOD TO BE INDIAN

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA That sure shut up all those moaners who were anti the sprucing given New Delhi for the Obama visit. As a PR exercise in visual splendour for a nation whose tourism image is shoddy at best and dreary in presentation this display of pomp and ceremony was enough to instil the whole…

  • WONDERFUL LIFE: NOT A CARE IN THIS WORLD

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    BY BIKRAM VOHRA Life is funny. On one side of the spectrum people fighting to save their lives, stuck in no man’s land, staring death in the face. Getting up in the morning to the sound gunfire, not birds. On the other, at exactly the same moment, people worrying about whether their hairdresser’s appointment will…