Year-end comments list 2007

(Or, an annual ritual where I save myself the trouble of writing a post by putting up a selection of comments from the year gone by. Previous editions here and here)

This year, I received lots of comments about my bad attitude towards things that many people hold sacred (including sacredness itself). Among them:

Festivals and children

Anonymous said…
hi jai " the grinch who stole diwali", let kids be kids ..this is what they do .. dont u remember lighting crackers? ...well i hope u also light some crackers and enjoy ..i am noticing that u have something against all hindu festivals and epics,so u keep making fun of them.its getting boring.

Just children

Anonymous said...
lets wait and see J.Wock when u have a kid .. i have a kid baby boy Dhruv and he is my life and more

(Question for the day: if “J.Wock” has a kid, will it be named “Baby Wock” or “Wee Wock”?)

Anonymous said...
hey a child is a blessing and BTW when u r old and grey its my child's taxes that will pay u'r pension and other govt freebies ..

Anonymous said...
carry on DD and J, in a world full of suicide bombers, religious fanatics and moral absolutism, the two of you are right up there with Mr. George W. Bush. Hey, if you're not with you, we're aganist you, right?

(All because I said I didn't like kids)

And the winning entry from this section:

Anonymous said...
dont worry abt my sex life .. my son is proof that its rocking ..

(Does this means you have "rocking" sex with your son? Or that you have sex after rocking him to sleep?)

Mythology (general theme: "Hinduism is the most tolerant religion, so how dare you make fun of it!")

Anonymous said...
why do some people find so much joy in denigrating the gods... the tale is not meant to be taken literally but rather figuratively

(the tale in question being the one where all the Gods do battle outside Parvati’s bathroom and Ganesha loses his head and gets a new one from a white elephant. Yes yes, I can see there’s lots of figurative significance there)

Anonymous said…
hi jai, i dont appreciate your pithy comments about the ramayana/ the mahabharata/ hinduism in general ... for u it is a story/work of literature whatever for us (i am referring to the majority of hindus/indians) it is a divine text.it is sad to see some poeple in india turning away from our heritage while most indians in the west r turning to religion ..

Anonymous said…
hi, jai why do u brand all people who dont eat beef as RSS? i dont understand the logic of analysing the mahabharata..it is not a historical document rather a treatise that teaches u how to live life ....

(How to live: eat vegetables, kill your cousins)

Weddings

PSV said…
Poor post. In bad taste.
The idea about going to a wedding is to interact and mingle with people. If that is something too much for some people then itz better for them to eat the tandoori chicken they so much desire at home itself.

(Where’s the argument? Would I complain if the groom’s parents sent me a tub of tandoori chicken instead of a wedding invite?)

BV said…
btw the reason we dont serve meat on wedding day is because its a religious day .. well with u'r poor attitude and complaining hope no one invites u to any more weddings.

-----
To prove to the above commenters that I had nothing against marriage generally, I went and got married around mid-year (though I didn’t inconvenience people by sending them invitation cards). Many posts about the perils of domesticity followed, some of which got thoughtful comments too.

Twilight fairy said...
Only crows come and dive in your water tanks? Lucky you! out here monkeys are a BIG menace….they gleefully take a dip in the holy tank leaving us practically without water for the next two days…

Anoop Saha said...
Congratulations for your marriage. Wish you a very happy wedded life. Having got married recently, I can totally empathize with your predicament.

(Talk about being ambivalent)

Lalbadshah said...
A 'rinch' is that thing with a small wheel to adjust the width of the hold. Something like a monster vernier caliper.

Amit Varma said...
I'm a huge fan of monster vernier calipers. Especially when they're hungry.

Harish Kumar said...
So...did you get lot of clocks as gifts in your reception? We got so many that we have one in the bathroom as well.

Loony said...
Let me know if you ever want to holiday in a place where they have built separate toilets for man and woman- but same room.
send me a note.

N! said...
the separate toilets bit: hmmm I don't know. What about cleaning them? I didn't get married to clean my own toilet!

(But then, who does? Of all the possible reasons to get married, “to clean my own toilet” must rank pretty low)

Scribbler said...
Oh... gee. you're getting married? man... serious? good luck with that. wish i knew you better to advise you otherwise. anyway. love the blog. keep writing (yea!)

ZZZZ said...
Everybody should get married, because Happiness is not everything in life.

Other categories:

The Agni Pariksha

Anonymous said…
Dear Jai,
I've been a long time reader of your blog. But let me tell you- your humourous pieces are pretty sad.
and the test of it comes if you can face up to this fact.

Torn between admiration for the blogger and concern about the rudeness of his posts

Priya said…
Brilliant post. But Ramayana is an epic and henceforth we may leave it as it is without questioning.

Stories Untold said…
Too good! Had a hearty laugh going thru this. Not sure whether I want to get into value judgement on the use/ misuse / overuse / abuse of such social networking sites ... I guess each one to their own agendas ... we can just let ppl be!

Neha said...
I enjoy your reading what you write enough to not hold a grudge against your tasteful and distasteful jokes.

Best achievement in a foreign language

Anonymous said…
Salut, ca va?
Il fallait absolument que je te fasse partager un plan pour gagner de l'argent, c'est génial, et super simple! Tu peux gagner plus de 2775 € par mois et tout ca grâce à 1€ seulement!
Ca te coûte rien d'essayer l'inscription est gratuite ;o)

Watching and reviewing movies

Anonymous said...
Clearly you pay more attention to the audience sitting next to you than to the film.

The New Me said...
when I read a piece about Katharine Hepburn and it contains factual errors I bristle. her life was an open book. She lead it courageously and honestly. So when someone makes an elementary research mistake like mentioning Parkinson's Disease which she did not have I find the rest of what they have to say a nit less than interesting. The following is a quote from her autobiography.

"Now to squash a rumor. No, I don't have Parkinson's. I inherited my shaking head from my grandfather Hepburn. I discovered that whisky helps stop the shaking. Problem is, if you're not careful, it stops the rest of you too. My head just shakes, but I promise you, it ain't gonna fall off!"

That took me about 30 seconds to find on the internet.

(The things you can find in 30 seconds on the Internet!)

Anonymous said...
NO SMOKING what a rubbish film ..waste of dollars $$$... anurag kashyap is going the RGV way totally irrelevant with the film audiences
only pseudo intellectuals will like his movies

Anonymous said...
Jai! You're big SRK fan? Thankfully, I join your gang. But I am really surprised not to see any hatemails here accusing you of being a gay. I don't know how many times I have been called a gay/bi for expressing my admiration for SRK's acting (at the Rediff message boards). There at Rediff, you can be straight only when you support all the misdeeds (farmer, tax etc.) of Amitabh. You are gay otherwise!!

(Dude, I feel your pain. But that's what you get for spending time on Rediff message boards)

New taglines for this blog

Chaila Bihari said...
Intelligent words about intelligent cinema. Shows why I keep coming back to Jabberwock

Renegade Eye said...
This blog has something for everyone; sports, books, film. politicc etc.

The tangential

Wimpy said...
totally unrelated comment but why was your face the chess puzzle of this weekend's business standard?

The envious

Anonymous said...
Wow you got so little to do

Anonymous said...
what fucking mediocrity!
with this kind of writing I'm amazed that you can afford a coffee at barista!

Book reviews, author interviews

Anonymous said...
Hey, shouldn't you be heading to a bookstore AT ONCE to post a hundred words on the Booker winner ASAP??? I thought that's what you bloggers do constantly -- rush to add your uninteresting two bits to that mass of language before other bloggers do. Don't worry about being anything but qualified to comment on the book (looking through your blog, I see it hasn't stopped you in the past). Go, at least 12 people desperately await your comments on Enright's novel. Rush. Chop Chop
PS: OOOOOOOOh, 'vagaries' -- a big word for someone from Delhi!!!

KishyCool said...
I really feel bad when bloggers like you misuse the blogs like this. I don't know why u need to write such a long interview of a fanatic, that too a Pakistani. More over, the interview is meaningless and very boring. God save the country from blogs. I really believe that blogspot should be blogged for ever.

And finally

Neha said...
Your comments sections often make me wonder if it were possible to fall in love with a commentor.
I guess, people have fallen in love during internet chats, and perhaps also by reading each others blogs. But if people were to fall in love by reading comments, I am quite sure it would be on your blog.


RAmen to that. As you can see, comment-love is all around me.

On a more sombre note, 2007 was quite a bad year (apart from the bright spark provided by these comments), but that mustn’t keep us from hoping 2008 will be better. So, to all readers of this blog: may the coming year be less terrible for you than the last was.