Heart upon my sleeve

On one hand we have the Maharashtrians, especially the Punekars, coming together, not like they do at 4pm outside Chitale Bandhu Mithaiwale, but this time with their pens as swords, to slam Bhansali’s Bajirao Mastani.  On the other hand we have Bhansali and the film fraternity who stand by the movie in the name of ‘Creative liberty’. Whose side am I on? Doesn’t matter. No one cares. Will I watch the movie? Hell, yes! I have even watched Humshakals in the theater. My tolerance (a very popular word these days) for low IQ cinema is very high.   Bhansali justifies that when the audience comes to watch his movie they would want entertainment and he is giving them just that (a biopic on Sunny Leone would have been more appropriate for that purpose, IMHO, but that’s besides the point). And then, this is his style – Grand sets, a love triangle and a dance sequence with the leading ladies. His movie should have that Bhansali stamp, right?! So while I read the amusing WA and FB ...

“America is a land of immigrants”, they say. About Dubai they say “It’s a land of expats”.  I would think immigrants and expatriates were synonyms. Until now. The Oxford dictionary defines an immigrant as someone who comes to live permanently in a foreign country. An expatriate on the other hand is someone who lives outside his native country. The main difference you would think is the thought of being ‘permanent’. Could be. Yet, I see so many Indians returning back from America, either willfully or just because their visa had expired. On the other hand I know of many Indians living in Dubai for close to 20 years. The H1 and L1 visas are called non-immigrant visas. That itself takes away the ‘permanency’ from the word. If they are not intended for permanent immigration why are they not called ‘expat’ visas? Could there be a racist connotation, I wondered? Looks to me, there is. When white folk/westerns work outside their country they are called expats. When Asians/Africans ...