India's answer to Oprah?

History, at times, is made in the most unpretentious ways. Looks like, in its own way, Vijay TV, is setting new benchmarks and breaking barriers with the launch of Ippadikku Rose, a talk show to be hosted by Rose, billed as India's first transgender celebrity host.

Bold and dramatic, Rose in no way fits the aravani stereotype and is honest enough to want to wear her gender on her sleeve and tell the world how beautiful it makes her feel. All of 28 years old, the US-educated Rose, with a masters in biomedical engineering, is to India what Oprah Winfrey is to the US, The New York Times would have us believe.

Watch her in action here and you would not be able to hold back your hurrahs.

Whether the show will match substance with hype or whether it becomes another Truman Show, this is the third dimension of Indian-style reality television.

Death by blogging

I now dont need to look for an excuse to explain away my increasingly irregular blog posts. Looks like it is a going to be a question of life and death, literally.

In those heady days when I first created this blog, I just couldn't get it off my head. Wherever I turned, the world was full of blog-postisms.

I never became a blogaholic, like some of my friends did over the years, peace be unto them. Thanks partly to a large dose of inertia and mostly due to a cussedness in finding things worthy of blogging about, this blog never got around to grandstanding on anything. Back then, I would feel guilty and jealous when some of my more prolific colleagues averaged at least four posts a week.

Now, it seems as ever, the tortoise was indeed smarter.