Hindi film music chronicler @myswar. Writer/compiler of the BollySwar book series. I post about music, movies, TV, travel, food, Bengaluru, Mangaluru, Kerala.

Joined February 2010
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Replying to @taparam
A new volume of the BollySwar series is out - BollySwar: 1951 - 1960. This covers the Hindi film music of the 1950s, the most influential decade of Hindi cinema. The impact of the Hindi films and Hindi film music made in this period lasts to this day. amazon.in/dp/B0DSGXQDTB
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Diljit Dosanjh is reportedly an American citizen. It's possible he sees himself as a refugee.
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In #MainVaapasAaunga, Imtiaz Ali showed footage of the Palestinian Nakba, when around 800,000 Palestinians were forced to leave their homes during Israel’s creation. Diljit Dosanj liked this reel.
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Disappointing. I did not see this coming.
He quit BJP & adapted quickly to Dravidian, hinthi imbojition, North vs South politics. This is the kind of post periyarites used to post. Nonnamalai is no different than them. Thank god this grifter resigned from the party. A total fraud.
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Param Arunachalam retweeted
The #Kaladi Story: Kaladi Cheese, a GI tag product from #Udhampur in Jammu & Kashmir, is currently undergoing technological intervention at the world class “Central Food Technological Research Institute” #CFTRI Mysuru, Karnataka. The results achieved so far include extension of Kaladi’s refrigerated shelf life upto 21 days, without compromising quality, texture or nutritional value. The next step would be to convert this traditional food product into commercially scalable product, that can be served in different recipes by professional food chains. #CFTRI Mysuru is the same institute which had earlier technologically helped develop Millet recipes currently served, among others, by McDonalds. #CSIR #12YearsofSeva
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Someone I know went to Amritsar, ate oily food in dirty dhabas hyped up by North Indians, came back with a diarrhoea, and couldn't stop talking about how much better Bangalore's Punjabi food was. There is something for everyone in the city. People crying in the comments are being parochial.
🚨 Bengaluru was ranked 13th globally and was the only Indian city featured in Time Out magazine's World's Best Food Cities for 2026.
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Param Arunachalam retweeted
Sanitation worker behind the Dharmasthala mass burial hoax has now named Prakash Raj before Karnataka HC. He stated the actor told him to speak lies to authorities and follow conspirators’ instructions. opindia.com/news-updates/dha…
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I used the NE7 part of the way to Kanchipuram this weekend. It's gorgeous and when it's fully done it will be a far superior route to Chennai for people in North Bangalore.
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DINKs are more likely to be left-leaning because it's usually (anecdotally) the left who believe: - being childless is a virtue - progressive, modern, anti-tradition - India/the world is a bad place and not worth bringing children into - the individual's interest (or the couple's) is greater than society's - kids can be replaced by pets What they don't realise is that with no kids to pass on their beliefs/values to, they're helping shape a world that will increasingly become the opposite of they believe it should be. (Only half kidding. 😎) x.com/ThenNowForeve/status/2…

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Wrong demographic. CB is for young people who want to eat relatively healthy Mexican food for cheap. (Not me but I get the appeal. It’s probably only the food court outlet that serves tasty, moderately healthy food.)
Bengaluru people are the biggest liars on the face of this planet 😡 They hyped up California Burrito so much like it’s special I gave it a try Such an average taste Harvest salad co & salad days are far ahead in terms of flavour & value for money
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ARR says Muslims and Christians praised O Palanhare (implied - more than Hindus). This makes sense - Muslims and Christians didn't consider it to be a Hindu religious song, they saw it for what it was - a secular song of worship. Lyricist Javed Akhtar himself says it's not a Hindu religious song - "Palanhara koi bhi bol sakta hai... from any religion of the world". Like I said, people wrongly think O Palanhare is a bhajan because of the film's visuals and the musical format.
Selling O Paalanhaare as a bhajan was a sleight of hand. Ashutosh Gowariker did the heavy lifting in an otherwise sterile, bhajan-coded song which talks about bhagwan, prabhu, bhakti, swami but not once invokes the god being prayed - Shri Krishna.
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It’s brave - and stupid - of Imtiaz Ali to rehash the India-Pakistan pappi-jhappi theme in 2026. Nearly 80 years have passed since the Partition. Most Indians have expended all the tears they had for it. They have moved on and have no patience for those trying to hold them back. They believe that the Partition was a net positive - we paid a heavy price for it but excised the poisonous ideology of Pakistan from Indian politics. The few who view the Pakistan part of pre-partition India nostalgically do so only to make a political point - that India-Pakistan are like a romantic couple and that Indian nationalism is the villain who broke them up and won’t let them reunite. This story has had a good run but it won’t sell anymore. Indians are fed up of hearing that loving Pakistan, an enemy nation, is somehow more virtuous than loving their own country. But Indians are also simple, emotional beings. It is easy to manipulate them with some rona dhona. Main Vaapas Aaunga may resonate with some despite their better judgment.
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TIL Karnataka Chief Minister’s official residence—Kumara Krupa—gets its name from a village in Palakkad, Kerala. Kumarapuram, the ancestral village of Sir Sheshadri Iyer.
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Param Arunachalam retweeted
"No European country has been attacked with Indian Weapons... So Keep that in Mind"...!!! I think Europe was not expecting that answer from Minister @DrSJaishankar 👏
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Param Arunachalam retweeted
'Lets not pretend some great principle involved here", says EAM Dr S Jaishankar, as he points how US asked India to buy Russian energy, then imposed tariffs, & then revoked them. Terms Russia as a "steady" supplier of energy
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Param Arunachalam retweeted
I have watched this clip multiple times, and it's worth revisiting. A masterclass in thinking about India versus the rest of the emerging market universe. Pure gold from Sachee Trivedi. 🔥 (Credit - Moneycontrol)
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The "idli came from Indonesia" story always smelled like bs.
It is incredibly frustrating to watch celebrity chefs & pop-history influencers look directly into a camera & confidently state, "Did you know our favorite South Indian staple, the Idli, actually came from Indonesia?" This entire narrative is a colossal house of cards. It is a classic case of academic confirmation bias that transformed into viral disinformation. When an entire nation is taught to believe that they could not even figure out how to steam w/o foreign intervention, we have to look at the raw data to puncture the bubble. Almost every single article/tweet/celebrity chef video claiming that the idli is Indonesian can be traced back to exactly 1 source: a single speculative paragraph written by the late food historian K.T. Achaya in his 1994 book, Indian Food: A Historical Companion. Achaya theorized that between 800-1200 CE, Indonesian kings traveling to India brought royal chefs who introduced a fermented, steamed dish called "Kedli." Yrs after this book was published, investigative food journalists (such as Janaki Lenin) & linguistic researchers actually went to Indonesia to look for this legendary precursor. The word "Kedli" does not exist in any Indonesian language/dialect/historical dictionary. There is no historical record/recipe/anthropological trace of an ancient Indonesian dish called "Kedli." Achaya completely misread/manufactured the term based on a loose phonetic guess, yet it became an accepted "fact" because no 1 bothered to check the data. The claim that India did not have idlis until the 12th century is thoroughly obliterated by our own ancient libraries. The evolution of the idli is meticulously recorded in indigenous Indian encyclopedias & literature centuries before Achaya’s timeline: - 920 CE (Vaddaradhane): A classical Kannada text by the Jain monk Shivakotiacharya explicitly details a dish called Iddalige. It was a staple food item offered to Jain ascetics. - 1025 CE (Lokopakara): The earliest available Kannada encyclopedia, written by Chavundaraya II, gives a literal recipe for it: soaking split black gram (Urad Dal) in buttermilk, grinding it into a fine paste, mixing it with spices & the clear water of curd. - 1130 CE (Manasollasa): The Western Chalukya King Someshvara III wrote a monumental Sanskrit encyclopedia detailing royal cuisine. He explicitly gives the recipe for Iddarikā describing how the urad dal cakes are prepared & cooked. When skeptics are confronted with these ancient texts, they quickly shift the goalposts. They argue: Okay, fine, India had Iddalige, but it was just made of Urad Dal. It did not use rice/long fermentation/steaming... those techniques came from Indonesia! This is textually & technologically false. Critics often cite the 7th-century Chinese traveler Xuanzang, who claimed India did not use steaming vessels. But we do not need a specialized metallic Chinese steam-cooker to steam food. For millennia, Indians practiced Kopotapaka & basket-steaming, tying a thin muslin cloth over a standard clay pot (Kunda) filled with boiling water, placing the batter on top & covering it with a lid. In fact, the Kanchipuram Idli is still steamed in traditional bamboo baskets lined with Mandhara leaves. To say India did not understand fermentation until the 12th century is a historical joke. India is the cradle of complex biomaterial fermentation. The Rigveda & Ayurvedic Samhitas from 1000s of yrs ago are packed with advanced formulas for fermenting grains, herbs & dairy to create Asavas, Arishtas, Kanji & Dahi (Curd). The natural wild bacteria (Leuconostoc mesenteroides) required to leaven idli batter live natively on the husks of black gram found right here in the subcontinent. Why do celebrity chefs keep repeating this lie? Because of a deeply ingrained post-colonial inferiority complex that dominates modern food media. There is a structural bias that assumes any advanced, scientific culinary technique, like molecular leavening/pasteurization/specialized steaming must have been imported to India from somewhere else. It sounds edgy, counter-intuitive & intellectual for a chef to tell an Indian audience that their national breakfast is not actually theirs. The idli is a native, organic, ground-up evolutionary masterpiece of South Indian kitchen science. It evolved naturally from the lentil-based Iddalige of the 9th century into the perfectly balanced rice & lentil fluffy wonder we eat today. The next time a chef tries to tell you the idli is from Indonesia, ask them to show you the recipe for "Kedli." Watch how fast they fold.
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Param Arunachalam retweeted
INDIA'S DEMARCHE FALLS ON DEAF EARS. U.S. CENTCOM JUSTIFIES ALL 3 STRIKES. D.C. IGNORES DELHI CENTCOM: U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) acted against Guinea-Bissau flagged M/T Jalveer as it attempted to transport oil from Iran through the Gulf of Oman. A U.S. aircraft fired two Hellfire missiles into the ship’s engine room after the crew repeatedly failed to comply with directions from U.S. forces. Earlier this week, U.S. aircraft disabled Palau-flagged vessels M/T Marivex and M/T Settebello on Monday and Tuesday, respectively. Marivex violated the blockade by attempting to sail to an Iranian port and Settebello attempted to transport Iranian oil. Q. DOES CENTCOM STATEMENT SUGGEST U.S. IS DOUBLING DOWN ON ACTION?
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Param Arunachalam retweeted
They will consider you a hero only if you convert to their religion and actively shit on Hinduism Soldiers, scientists are not their heroes
The new Indian Icon. A fearless hero !
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Param Arunachalam retweeted
Abuse, yell, film an incident midway, then stand in the way of a moving car and say "Gaadi Chada diya, BenCh*d Bhikari Samaja Hai kya" and finally play the outsider card online.
On Roadz Car Rental, Bangalore. Their driver ran a car over me when I asked for my ₹2,000 refund back. Customer care straight up threatened me. This is what local goons in this city do to outsiders. They think people from other states are easy targets. @BlrCityPolice @ONROADZ1
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Param Arunachalam retweeted
Siddaramiah, a day before relinquishing his office, sanctioned ₹71 crore towards backward class community halls constructed by private organisations. Out of 155 organisations, 85 belong to his community. He has even sanctioned ₹50 crore towards the Rakesh Siddaramiah Trust Gadag for the construction of a student hostel. The state government should explain on what basis these organisations were selected for cores of rupees from government grants? Have the organisations submitted building plans and estimates to seek government grants? Why were grants not used to construct hostels by the state government itself? Why were private players sanctioned crores of rupees? Why did Siddaramiah sanction on the day he was stepping down? Will the now-CM dare to probe the background of the organisations and their antecedents? @Narendramurthy @Nimmabhaskar22 @Vishwasshettre
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