Recently, a multiplex in Chennai put up a board barring patrons in lungis from visiting the complex. The protest against the dress code was quick and furious. An angry columnist of a Tamil weekly went clad in a lungi for a movie at the multiplex to make a point against elitism; city bloggers ranted against the snobbish dismissal of the humble garment. The board was withdrawn. The lungi people had held their own against the multiplex generation.

The lungi people are easy to spot: while going to a first day, first show Rajnikanth caper, you’d see them in hordes. Within, they would hitch their lungis up their thighs and fold them adroitly, letting their cotton underwear show. When the hero appeared on the screen, they would rush to the theatre pit and throw flowers and money at the screen. The lungi people were whom the stars loved most, for they ensured repeated viewings of their potboilers, fanned their political ambitions and believed in their superhuman abilities as much as the stars themselves.

The lungi or kaili is also a sensitive garment because it is more than just a piece of cloth. It is a sartorial emblem for the Tamil male. It denotes a rite of passage into adulthood. The lungi serves as his passport to casual freedom and as a flexible garment that makes life easy for him in the heat and dust of the tropics. It is not surprising that Erode, a town near Coimbatore, is said to produce the highest volume of lungis, even exporting to neighbouring countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

The lungi has gone up the class ladder too. From the engineering student in Tambaram, a suburb in Chennai, or a college professor, to even the Chief Minister not shying away from being photographed for the morning’s papers in his lungi and vest, it’s found its rightful place as an indigenous casual outfit. A ban on it was the kind of stupidity that only those who are blind to an entire universe can envisage. That’s the multiplex generation, the neo-elitists. “A western outfit like shorts and vest is seen as casual and trendy on the roads or an entertainment complex, but the humble lungi is dissed,” says Selva, an angry employee in the infotech sector of Chennai. While the war is going to be drawn out, the first battle is decided. Word is out on Chennai’s streets: the lungi will not be judged.

Early November, the world got what could possibly be the only white tiger cub born in the wild. Julie, the mother, had been brought from a US zoo to the Tiger Canyons reserve in South Africa by conservationist John Varty. She gave birth to a litter of five tigresses, of which one was white. But it is still not certain if the cub will survive. Since Julie has only four teats, Varty believes nature will take over and ensure the survival of the fittest. He had planned not to interfere, till the white cub became ill. He wrote on his website: ‘When crisis arrives, I’m sure emotion will overtake me and I will interfere. The fact that there is a white cub involved makes the emotions all the more powerful.’

An inventor in Italy has made it easy for priests, perhaps for doctors and maybe for God. Luciano Marabese, from the romantically named northern Italian town of Fornaci di Briosco, has devised an electronic holy water dispenser after worrying over the possibility of people in public places contracting swine flu. The terracotta dispenser works like an automatic soap dispenser in public washrooms. You put your hand under the contraption and the sensor gets into the action and holy water issues forth. Now that he has outsourced God’s work to a machine, Marabese’s place in ‘paradiso’ seems assured.

There is excitement in the placid backwaters of Kerala. Its legendary snake boats with long hulls may figure in the next Olympics to be held in London in 2012. A report has been submitted to Sebastian Coe, the head of the London Olympics organisation committee, and a decision will be taken some time early next year.  A couple of boats are also taking part in the famous Oxford-Cambridge annual boat race as a demonstration. A snake-boat is manned by four helmsmen, and 100-125 oarsmen who row in unison.

Becoming the first Indian publishing company to debut on Kindle, Wisdom Tree’s two titles are now available for download on Amazon. With 15 more books on the way, the publishing house intends to e-format its entire catalogue. Explaining the choice for the first two books, Shobit Arya, publisher, says, “We believe in creating books that are Indian in essence. What could be better than books that share the timeless Indian wisdom—Mantras: The Sacred Chants by Swami Veda Bharati and Yogini: Unfolding the Goddess Within by Shambhavi Chopra.” Eight copies were sold in the first week, says Arya.

Leopold Cafe, the starting line of the terror attack last year that held Mumbai hostage for 60 hours and killed over 160 people, is milking it for everything its worth.

The owners have even introduced ‘Bullet Proof Mumbai’ coffee mugs. Pay Rs 300 for a cheap piece of ceramic that probably cost Rs 50 to produce and you get a white mug that bears a picture of ‘the actual bullet mark at the Leopold Cafe’ and a badly-printed tribute to the security forces and victims of 26/11. 

“We feel that the bullets are a part of history that was created here that night. We didn’t ask for it, but it happened and now we should not let it go,” says Farhang Jehani, a member of the family that owns the 138-year-old eatery. He says they have sold more than 3,000 ‘bullet-hole mugs’ in the last several months. On the cash counter, the mugs and T-shirts (Rs 400) outsell their former bestseller, Gregory Roberts’ book Shantaram, which had made Leopold a pop culture icon.

So as horrific as 26 November 2008 was, as one Leopold staffer said, it was “also good for the Cafe, because before it was only foreigners who came, now everyone wants to be here”.

It’s been so good that the Jehanis recently added an extra floor to the two-tier restaurant to accommodate spillover customers.