Last week, the Commonwealth Games Federation President Michael Fennel suddenly got a taste of what it means to deal with India. Rather belatedly, with just a year to go, he realised that the Indian Olympic Association was perhaps not on top of things to hold the Games in Delhi in October 2010. ‘Our concerns are such that unless there is significant change in the management culture and operation of the organising committee, these Games will fail from an operational perspective,’ said Fennel’s letter. It is a rather long-winded sentence but the gist of it is: if something does not change, we will be in a big mess.

Fennel wanted audience with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for assurance and maybe to discuss rescue operations. This is a fair demand from his point of view. But it does lead to a few questions: 1) If Manmohan Singh could will it, every project would run on time but not one does, so should Singh waste his time meeting him? 2) why should the Prime Minister—who has to decide on things like how soon to press the nuclear button, how firm his handshake should be with the Pakistani President, how to tackle an approaching drought and how to get his ministers to fly economy class—waste his time on a competition that not one Indian has a clue about?

There are of course arguments to be made for why Manmohan Singh should meet Fennel. The Games are important to India because they will enhance our global image. One popular television anchor, Barkha Dutt, termed it a matter of national pride. This is all slightly ironical. Because if national pride is so important, then why are we even participating in something which celebrates our colonisation by a foreign power? The only thing that links participating countries in the Games is that they were all connected to the British Empire.

As things stand, 14 of the 19 venues and nine transport projects are behind schedule, says a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General. The report apparently deals with last year’s progress, but if that is true, there is still no transparency on what the current status is. In answer to Fennel’s letter, Suresh Kalmadi, head of the IOA, says that everything will be completed on time. He’s a career politician, and hence exempt from hows and whys. It’s the old Indian circus playing all over again, except that Fennel has somehow inveigled his way into the cast of characters. But it is good that he is there now. We will all have interesting times ahead. The days, weeks and months before the Games promise to be much more entertaining than the Games itself.

Ladies and gentlemen, the vagina is back as the centre of discourse. Fiery feminist and journalist Naomi Wolf has been signed on to write A Cultural History of the Vagina (tentative title) by Ecco Press, an imprint of Harper Collins. Wolf’s books are pretty much publishing events in the academic world. Her 1990 book, The Beauty Myth, is regarded by many, including formidable feminist thinkers Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem, to have ushered in the third wave of feminism. The Rhodes Scholar famously argued in the book about the unattainable, patriarchal concept of the ‘iron maiden’ that women are made to measure up to. ‘More women have more money and power and scope and legal recognition than we have ever had before; but in terms of how we feel about ourselves physically, we may actually be worse off than our unliberated grandmothers,’ she wrote. We’re waiting. And expecting fireworks, if not fatwas.

Now, you can make music on the moon. And you don’t need to be a multi-billionaire with tickets on the next space exploration trip for it. Automated music generator moonbell.com, in association with the Japanese aerospace exploration agency, Jaxa, uses the data generated by its satellite Kaguya and transforms it into musical intervals. There are two modes of playing: orbit play and free scratch, which puts the conductor’s baton in your hands. In orbit play, the music is produced by following the topography along Kaguya’s circular path around the moon. But the real fun is in free scratch, where you make music by scratching the surface of the moon by drawing your mouse over a picture of it. The website also has a few samples of moon music. We tried a piano creation and found it suitably ethereal and mystifying. Be warned though, the site doesn’t work very well on Mozilla and Explorer. The Safari browser on the Mac may be your best bet.

When Chirantan Patnaik, a 25-year-old investment banker and avid gamer, was flipping through the book of Guinness Gamer records, he had a crazy thought. He reckoned he could beat the record of 28 hours, 1 minute for the longest continuous play session of Grand Theft Auto, a game he hadn’t even played. “For my record to be eligible, it would have to take place in a public space, with witnesses, including someone connected from the gaming industry. I would have to record the whole event too,” he says. He would also be allowed to take a ten minute break each hour.

So he decided to announce his attempt through blogs and social networking sites, keep his home’s doors open to the public and stream it live via webcams. September first week, he played for 40 hours, 20 minutes, and is now awaiting Guinness to announce his achievement. While playing, Chirantan, being a good citizen, avoided killing cops.