What Twitter tells me about Bollywood is that I am wasting my time reading its tweets. For a long time, I have been, intermittently, going to Amitabh Bachchan’s blog and taking everything that he lays out for the media on the chin. When he said that slanderous news items made it to the front page but clarifications are buried inside, I nodded in agreement. I read with relish his accounts of being a struggler and his memories of his parents. I got a slice of his life and I thought it was an interesting life. When I went to Ram Gopal Varma’s blog, not only did I get a slice of all the evil he has done but the abuse he rains down on those who are brave enough to comment on him. It satisfied the voyeur in me.

Early this month, Abhishek Bachchan joined a trail of Bollywood celebrities who are now tweeting and, on the strength of my online experience with his father, I joined him immediately as a follower. So far this is what I know of him: he’s in the movie Paa, he gets caught in traffic jams, he likes Chelsea, it rained, he woke up, more Paa, more Paa and more of Paa.

I follow other Bollywood celebrities too and they are not more illuminating. There’s Preity Zinta. This is what Twitter tells me about her.  She had flu, like everyone else she can be happy and sad, her day was hectic, she loves Sachin for his 4s and 6s, she’s doing a course abroad in negotiations. Strangely, I didn’t find her plugging a movie but then I deduced that if she’s doing a course abroad, she’s probably not doing any films. I got little information about things which interested me: like her break-up with Ness Wadia or how they decided on player prices for the IPL.

The most interesting tweets by Vivek Oberoi, who I follow for some reason even I cannot fathom, were clumsy 30-word match updates on the Hyderabad ODI. He also ponders a lot though it is not always easy to understand what he is trying to say. Like this tweet: ‘I’ve traded my innocence for experience, my ego for humility and my complacency for a raging fire in the belly. I like the new me’.

Then there are others like Karan Johar and Riteish Deshmukh, who give me useless updates on their life. ‘Shooting cancelled’ or ‘meeting with Tarun’. But that is still tolerable. The man who really tests my endurance is Mahesh Bhatt. From him comes a non-stop litany of aphorisms. Example:  ‘The consumer’s mind is full of emotions that are connected to experiences which when fused with your brand can do wonders for it.’

Whenever I read him, I feel like I am in class.

It’s been a bad news dateline for as long we remember. And in one of the cruellest coincidences, things will start to get better solely for butterflies, the most short-lived residents of the junta-ruled Myanmar. While Aung Saan Suu Kyi, remains incarcerated, our neighbour is about to start building its first butterfly park in the northernmost state of Kachin. All five of the world’s major butterflies are found in Myanmar and this park will have 1,500 resident species. Putao has been a hub where butterfly-thieves have caught several rare species, with one team alone stealing as many as 500 winged beauties.

The beautiful yellow and black Papilionidae, the bright orange coloured Pieridae and yellowish brown Nymphalid are all rare butterfly species, once commonly found in Putao region. Watch this space for coming flutters.

At a recent conference held in Kolkata, delegates from South Asian countries discussed how the rights of physically challenged women could be secured in mainstream society. Representatives from Nepal, Pakistan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh talked about the discrimination they faced on a daily basis.
“We did a survey in Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal and Orissa and found differently-abled women go through hell,” says Debarati Sarkar of the Association for Women with Disabilities. Government officials and members from various industrial sectors were also invited to speak.

Parents of toddlers, beware of which stroller you are using. Maclaren, the popular British stroller company, has recalled about a million Chinese-made buggies from the US market following several reports of children’s fingertips being sliced off after being caught in the hinge mechanism. In India, these strollers are still being sold through Mothercare outlets in Shoppers’ Stop department stores. Shoppers’ Stop representatives said they hadn’t been informed about the product recall. Maclaren’s local representative also admitted they were in the dark. “We have not heard anything so far,” said manager Girija Ramachandran.

It has already been established that each one of the 6.7 billion human beings on this planet carries a unique odour. But this characteristic is now being used to aid law enforcement, as evidence in court, or to diagnose an illness. Agencies, including the FBI, are considering the installation of odour print-sniffing devices at airports and train stations and other high-traffic areas. The US Department of Homeland Security is putting out bids for a study to determine whether odour signatures can indicate deception or previous contact.

A strange bestial head has reared itself between religion and freedom of expression. James Cameron’s next film Avatar, a digital 3-D feature, has ruffled Hindu right wing feathers before its release next month. The Universal Society of Hinduism wants Cameron to attach a disclaimer saying the movie and its title have no relationship with Hinduism or its concepts.  In the movie, humans fight the native species of a distant moon called Pandora, two centuries in the future. Pandora’s natives, the Na’vis, are digitally modified blue human forms with bestial features. They wear loincloths, fight with bows and arrows, use winged creatures for transport and the women braid their hair.  No word from Cameron yet. One wonders how much he could add to the standard disclaimers that come with all movies—‘Any similarity to any person living or dead is merely coincidental.’