By the unwritten codes of hierarchy, the defence minister of one country is as good as the foreign minister of another. Which is why when Hillary Clinton got off her jet, it would have been a good idea to have asked her to take off her coat and shoes, and spread her arms. This was what George Fernandes, when he was India’s defence minister, went through not once, but twice—in 2002 during an official visit and then again the next year while transiting.

If Hillary had been frisked, Fernandes would not have been among the long list of politicians who have lined up claiming shock at former president APJ Abdul Kalam being humiliated on our own soil by Contintental Airlines, a US entity. Instead, it would have been the US that was outraged. (An apology would have taken care of that as the US found out when the Fernandes incident became public.)

Frisking Hillary would have ensured that Indian dignitaries precluded by protocol from security checks, would never have been humiliated again. That opportunity alas, is now lost. So, we’ll just have to wait for Bill Clinton or George Bush to take an Air India flight to stage an exact replica of the Kalam humiliation, but the chance of that happening is next to nothing.

If Kalam didn’t want to fly our national airline, why would ex-American presidents?

But Contintental is not entirely at fault. They just got the wrong person. Just look at the kind of people who are exempt from such checks. Union ministers, for one. It has not been too long since we had a Shibu Soren who was convicted of a murder when he was a Cabinet minister (he was acquitted later but has other cases against him). Or take our many chief ministers like Mayawati who face corruption charges.

How does a nation like the US, in its redneck ignorance about the rest of the world, know that the man who has a security exemption is not actually just another dangerous character who has made it big in politics. So, they really don’t care if it’s Kalam or Soren. They are more worried about planes crashing into skyscrapers. Also, there is the question of why a certain bunch of people should be exempt. As we all know, the morality level of those who govern (and not just in India) is far lower than the average citizen. Either everyone is a risk or no one is.

That is precisely the argument for India to enforce the same treatment on the US and all its senators and secretaries of state. Hillary would have been a good beginning. But that’s all right. Let’s wait for Obama.

Aaditeshwar Seth, a 29-year-old  IIT Kanpur and University of Waterloo grad, has devised a system that could transform a laptop directly into a radio station anywhere in the country. Last year, his idea bagged a $200,000 prize from the Knight Foundation.  The day’s not far, Seth says, when “a villager can sell his cow or bicycle on the radio, in his own voice”.

In 1995, the Supreme Court decided that “airwaves are public property” and in 2006 rural airwaves were further liberalised. Now NGOs, government agencies and campuses can all apply for radio station licences. The result can already be seen in ventures like Radio Bundelkhand, the radio station which deployed Seth’s technology successfully.

Druk White Lotus School in Ladakh believes in leading by example when it comes to energy conservation.

Druk White Lotus School in Ladakh believes in leading by example. The school has been teaching students about energy conservation by creating a sustainable building of its own. The building, designed by Arup Associations, combines traditional Ladakhi architecture with contemporary engineering techniques. And it boasts of features such as ventilation-improved pit latrines, passive solar heating, gravity feed water system and seismic resistant design.

Two Manchester United Restaurants are opening in Mumbai around Diwali. The first will be at the Nirmal Lifestyle Mall in Mulund. The second will be in Central or South Mumbai. The interiors of the restaurant will have football and ManU motifs. Importantly, there would be food, beer and large TV screens on which to watch sport (not just football). The food will not be as expensive as Cristiano Ronaldo. “A burger would be around Rs 250 and a beer Rs 100,” says Jatin Suri of Billionaire Sports Pvt Ltd, a company involved in the project.

Mao may have said don’t have more children, but he didn’t say no to sex. Without any ban on carnal instincts, the Chinese don’t simply pop a little blue pill. Their Viagra is extracted from endangered animals and birds, both dead and alive, many from our forests.

Consider these ‘traditional’ Chinese aphrodisiacs: tiger privates for $1,700 and tiger penis broth at $320 per cup, bear gallbladder, liver, bile and testicles turned into meds and swiftlet nests melted into soup.
Poaching is a woeful word to describe steel traps that clamp paws or the bullet that burns through a tiger’s body, all for an impotent Asian. Big cat rout has been relentless in our reserves, while our neighbours blow to cool tiger penis soup.

So too with bears. Over 10,000 Asian black bears have been captured and caged, with metal catheters stuck in their gallbladders to drain their bile till their agonising death. Suffering less pain on this scale called excruciating are deer. Their antlers are sawed off and sold at full price only if they are blood-embedded. Read sliced closest to the head.

Blowing the lid off the bird’s nest soup, Time magazine recently ran an exposé on a boom in the illegal swiftlet nest harvesting industry.

Found in Southeast Asian locales which are bereft of branches and twigs, the birds build nests by regurgitating saliva. The poachers swoop down to claim this healthy sex caviar of the east.

With insatiable demand from China’s prospering economy, illegal swiftlet condos worth over $200 million have popped up all across Malaysia and Thailand. For freak aphrodisiac seekers, here’s a freak being, an amalgam of all creatures who prop up the manhood.