On 15 December, Indians can switch off their lights for one hour between 7.30 and 8.30 pm, and in one hour of one day assuage any guilt about hurting the planet. Since 2007, the organisers of Batti Bandh have been advocating the voluntary blackout as the best way to ‘raise awareness about the various crises Earth is facing today due to our ecologically wasteful lifestyle’. Plugged through social networking sites, email chains and other GenNext media, Batti Bandh is a feel-good campaign that began in Mumbai, but this year the organisers hope the whole country will switch off.  Folks who don’t like the idea will be cajoled with fun promotional events, even initiatives sponsored by altruistic corporates like Tata and Hyundai.

To light up or not are luxurious options available only to the misguided organisers of Batti Bandh and their tiny audience. Most of their compatriots, even ones living an hour away from Mumbai, would be happy with even a few hours of uninterrupted service. Joslin Pereira, 28, would have made a fine spokeswoman for Batti Bandh. Pereira lives in Kharegaon, on the outskirts of Mumbai, which suffers up to eight hours of blackouts a day. In Kalwa, the nearest town, cuts fluctuate between six to 10 hours a day. The local power supplier has an innovative way to dodge complaints: keep the phone off the hook.

In those parts, blackouts are not pre-empted by campaigns and slogans, usually the lights just go off anywhere between 8.00 am till about 11.00 am and then again after 3.00 pm till about 6.00 pm. This happens to be the state of affairs of electricity in most parts of our country. People like Pereira, who are forced to switch off power eight hours daily, are also unintentionally doing good.

When Batti Bandh first took place in 2007, residents of Mumbai, living in one of the few places in the country that enjoy uninterrupted, expensive private power service, switched off their lights, LCD TVs and central ACs and enjoyed the romance of candles and sea breeze. According to the event organisers, that hour saved 178.5 MW of electricity in Mumbai alone. But do we really know the long-term impact of that one-hour of savings? It certainly wouldn’t have made any inroads into solving the power problems this country faces. After that one symbolic hour, Mumbai continued gobbling more than its fair share of resources because this city’s residents have financial and political weight that Pereira and her neighbours don’t have. Maybe the whole exercise would have been less ridiculous if that power had been diverted to places like Kharegaon. After all, switching off the electricity for an hour is not the most enlightening thing to do.

As the date for the much-awaited Commonwealth Games approaches, the Delhi government is planning to install gender help desks across the city to guarantee the safety of women delegates and officials associated with the Games. According to Rakesh Mehta, chief secretary of Delhi, help desks are going to be established at various entry points to the city such as the airport, the railway stations, interstate bus terminals, sports stadiums and the Commonwealth Games Village. The government is also working with various support agencies to make sure that the rights and privacy of women delegates is respected at all times. These desks will be functional only two weeks ahead of the event and will be operational all day long at the entry points and for 16 hours daily at the stadiums.

The BBC’s always been what the world listened to. Now, for the first time the British broadcaster is listening in. While putting together its new editorial guidelines for TV, radio and online, which are revised every five years, the BBC Trust has invited the audience point of view. Some changes needed include ‘better bleeping’ which thoroughly obscures mouth movement, so you can’t lipread expletives. Also, no unduly intimidatory, intrusive or aggressive remarks to be used for entertainment purposes. Strong language, even post 9 pm, isn’t okay unless editorially justified. Listeners and viewers get to input till the end of 2009.

Serena Williams may be making waves with her sensuous nude photo on the cover of ESPN magazine’s ‘Body issue’. But she’s not the first sportsperson to do the full monty.

German figure skater Katarina Witt and winner of two Olympic golds struck more gold at the newsstands when her nude spread for Playboy in December 1998, which became the first issue of the magazine to sell out since their first issue featuring Marilyn Monroe in 1953.

In 2000, there was Canadian water polo player Waneek Horn-Miller, outfitted in an eagle feather and a ball, on the cover of Time magazine, no less.

In 2001, US volleyball player Gabrielle Alysee Reece did a pretty stunning turn on the cover of Playboy magazine’s January edition. What a way to begin the new year.

In 2007, three years after her Olympian glory at Athens (she won three medals, totalling seven in her career),  American swimmer Amanda Beard appeared in all her naked glory for a Playboy spread in the July edition.

Believe it or not, usual suspect Anna Kournikova has not done a fully nude shoot (at least our research on the matter says so). The barest she’s got is a pretty sedate photo shoot for Jane magazine in June 2005.

Ravikant Sharma, a prison inmate at one of the world’s largest prison complexes, looks set to bring about a minor telecom revolution at Delhi’s Tihar jail. His petition to the Delhi High Court for installing a telephone facility in Tihar jail is being considered by the Delhi government. Available only to foreign nationals till now, the facility is eagerly awaited by the 11,000 inmates of Tihar jail. “We are supporting the petitioner’s request. We are looking into it,” says a Tihar jail spokesperson. Last week, the Delhi government sought three weeks’ time from Delhi High Court to file a report on the matter. Setting up a system that will record and monitor calls made by inmates seems to be one of the concerns in setting up the facility. Tihar receives about 3,000 visitors everyday. Introducing the telephone is expected to ease this visitor traffic. This has been a good year for technology-enabled perks at the prison. About four months ago, Tata Sky become available on the 1,000-odd television sets in the prison. Wonder what Tihar makes of Bigg Boss.