Indian fashion wants to have its apple, eat it (no one here eats cake) and complain that the mineral water isn’t Evian. Fashion designers bare their bleeding hearts and talk about the injustices the government is piling on their poor souls, while sipping on Chivas 12 (Rs 2,700 a bottle) which they drink only because Chivas is a sponsor.

The fashion industry is struggling to come to grips with the 7.5 per cent entertainment tax that the Delhi government has imposed on fashion weeks. That 50 per cent of the tax has already been waived is hardly consolation to a child who’s just been told to split his chocolate.

The fashion fraternity throws the word they love to use for the Fashion Week—B2B (business-to-business) event— to argue that the entertainment tax is unfair because it’s not for entertainment. Unfortunately for them, fashion weeks are by now well known for being an entertainment circus. At the India Couture Week in Mumbai earlier this month, Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) President Sunil Sethi proudly announced, “Full Entertainment Guaranteed here.”

Though fashion designers publicly turn up their noses at Bollywood celebrities on the runway and look down on Bollywood designers, everyone is secretly sending desperate messages to rope in Bollywood actors. Often, with disastrous results. Remember politician-turned actress Jaya Prada walking down the runway like a plucked peroxide chicken at the recently concluded Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week? Another designer paid around Rs 1 lakh to get Brazilian-born Bollywood actress Giselli Monteiro to walk the runway.

If there are any doubts about Indian fashion being more entertainment than business, the show of designer Sanjana Jon (of unverifiable design antecedents) sealed it. The show had Salman Khan, Sohail Khan and half a dozen others walking in clothes that would have had Karol Bagh stores shrieking in horror.

Designers like Rahul Mishra are clear that fashion can be called business only once Bollywood show-stoppers are stopped. And when the fashion fraternity treats fashion weeks like business fairs and stops wooing the media. Instead, we have the  man supposed to be the head of the B2B fair being perfectly happy with shows starting 45 minutes late. Reason: Kapil Dev, a show-starter for a designer, got confused between the gates of Pragati Maidan.

Hell, the government should just rescind the 50 per cent tax waiver, irrespective of whether fashion weeks are business events or not. If it is a business event, the government is justified in asking for a piece of the pie. And if it’s an entertainment event, then even the circus could use the tax holiday.

Obama’s proposal to shutter the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison has got unexpected support from musicians, including Pearl Jam and REM. It has emerged that music was used to torture detainees, by pumping up the volume. “The US government turned a jukebox into an instrument of torture,” said Thomas Blanton of National Security Archive, an independent  research institute. But CIA spokesperson George Little says music is used only for security, “not for punitive purposes — and at levels far below a live rock band”.

Post Slumdog Millionaire, America’s going through a jhatka revolution and the troupe leading it is Dhoonya Dance, with branches in New York and Washington DC, some 300 students, 15 instructors and multiplying. Dhoonya teaches Bollywood dance, performs at events, and uses filmi moves in fitness routines. At the YouthAids gala in 2007, they performed for Bono; in October Dhoonya was on The Oprah Show, where they had a surprise visit from Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan. Indian-American girls Kajal Mehta and Priya Pandya set it up in 2005, but this year’s been their best yet. “After the Oscars, we’ve had more students, and there are more Bollywood themed parties now... with Indian food and dance performances,” says Mehta.

The Oberoi Hotel in Delhi played host to a gathering of intellectuals earlier this week as part of the international conference against terrorism. According to Jama Masjid United Forum (JMUF) president Syed Yahya Bukhari, there is a need to generate awareness about the fact that Islam is opposed to the concept of terrorism and that any indiscriminate act of violence is against the tenets of the religion. National leaders and religious heads participated in the event to discuss how to eradicate terrorism in the country.

An insurgency simmering since Obama was sworn in has exploded in American living rooms. After losing its best friend George W Bush, Fox News has been aiming political cannons at the Democrats targetting Afghanistan, the economy, reforms and even swine flu. Last month, Obama appeared on all major news channels except Fox. Sound bytes:

Obama: “I’ve got one television station entirely devoted to attacking my administration.”

Anita Dunn: “Fox News often operates as… either the research or communications arm of the Republican Party.”

Many of us (grown-up) Indians have the toddler-like habit of licking the tips of our thumbs and making a sticky sound of it while counting wads of currency notes. Well, if you want to add a touch of grace to the practice of salivating on your riches, there is way out of the saliva for you. You can replicate the contraption called currency note counter (which you find at the cashier’s cubicle in any bank), into something you can carry around. Mumbai-based online retailer Shop Online India has come out with arguably India’s first portable currency counter. The automatic electronic money counting machine is priced at Rs 3,800 apiece and comes with a one-year warranty and counts up to 100 currency notes in five seconds. Among other things, it has a digital LED display and can run on batteries as well as an adapter. To boot, it weighs only 450 gm with batteries. And you can put in 999 notes at a time. That’s what you call a non-stick currency counter.