K Balakumar

Raiders of the last arc

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ISuggestThatYouTryReadingThistAloudWithoutAnyPauseAndWithoutLettingYourIntensityDownEvenForASecondAndWhileAtItYouCanAlsoTryTwistingTurningTwirlingKickingAndRunningAroundBecauseItWillGiveYouAGoodIdeaOfWhatItTakesToBeA… Tcha! I lost my breath there. I guess you too would have, unless otherwise you happen to be Ajay Thakur. But if you are Ajay Thakur, you can probably read this entire column in a single breath. Ajay Thakur is capable of this because he has no lungs. Okay, that is an obvious lie. Ajay Thakur is capable of… Read more →

Tamannah’s cleavage & other festival attractions

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A look at how new ads reach out to people by being totally stupid Chennai, Oct 4: Thanks to the recent India-Australia one-day series, we at Crank’s News watched a lot of cricket. Sorry, correction: We apologise for the incorrect previous sentence. What we did was, we attempted to watch cricket, but what we did was: followed a lot of… Read more →

Crazy Thieves of Ambattur

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The other day a friend cattily suggested that with the nation’s economy tanking many of us may soon need to resort to burglary. And my response as a responsible journalist was, “we better, especially because there is an alarming decline in the quality of existing criminals”. My statement was based on what had happened last week at the residence of… Read more →

Doll tadka

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The nine-day Navarathri in South India, which is 10-day Dussehra in North India — days are shorter in North India due to global warming — is upon us now. This year’s Navarathri is doubly special because — religious almanacs say this phenomenon occurs only once in 144 years — it helpfully telescopes into Gandhi Jayanthi and brings along with it… Read more →

Newspapers should not pass off letters to the Editor as humour column

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Exasperated reader Panchabootham deplores state of journalism Dear Sir/Madam, Straightaway, I want to ask you whether there are any more journalists left in the newspaper industry or not. Is journalism like clerical work at the AGS Office these days? I have to pose these fundamental questions because I have been seeing a big newspaper palming off one person’s letters to… Read more →