Is Bollywood ready for Snoop Dogg?

These days Bollywood music is heavily influenced by American Hip Hop music and every other song seems to have Hip Hop tunes. However there is nothing new in that, I still remember the music from 80s when Bhappi Lahari's songs were so much influenced by Western Disco music and the 70s when music of RD Burman and other composers was influenced by Elvis Presley and others. In those days it never used to be official and those composers never accepted that they got influenced by Western artists.

However now there is a stamp of authenticity to it as American Hip Hop singers are themselves frequently lending their voices to Bollywood songs and even Snoop Dog is singing the title track of movie Singh is King.

As per this interesting article in New York Times, Snoop Dogs has big plans about his bollywood partnership. He wants to capture the mainstream Indian audience for his future albums and wants to do stage shows there.

Statue of Liberty and Immigrants

Here is a nice observation about statue of Liberty and immigrants, I found somewhere on internet.
The Statue of Liberty which was donated to the US by France, in 1886, still serves as a symbol for immigration in the United States. Some pages of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service web site still contain her picture, as does many immigration related web sites and materials. But the statue is engraved with a poem by Emma Lazarus, which is no longer valid, (I don’t think it ever was valid).

Instead of saying:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

It should say:
Give us your money and wait forever
Before you can breathe free
Do the wretched jobs that we won’t do
And we will debate about whether to let you in
Whether to let you live our dream

Bears everywhere on stock Market

In the few one month we have been seeing Stock Markets around the world loosing enormous wealth. Sensex is at 2 year low now and so is Dow Jones. Chinese mainland stocks have fallen almost 50% from their peeks this year and are at almost on par now with their Hong Kong counterparts.
After the unprecedented bull run that we have been witnessing in the emerging markets everybody was expecting a correction. But I am sure no one could have imagine a correction of this magnitude and that Markets will slip into Bear territories altogether.
Clearly Indian stock market is over-sold right now and their will be some kind of relief rally that will happen. But one should not put big hopes on that because we are still in a Bear market and each rally will be followed by a bigger correction.
Having said that, I think most of the down side damage has already been done, particularly with crude prices retreating now and I don’t see Sensex going down below 12,200 now. But a move to upward levels is also not possible as long Inflation is in double digits. Don’t expect any major Bull market rally uptill the end of this year, what we are going to see till the year end is relief rallies and Corrections.

Tribute to Sam Manekshaw

Here is a Link to an interesting obituary published in New york Times for Sam Manekshaw India’s first field marshal.