Neo is already having second thoughts about calling his version of the Indibloggies the “Undibloggies”, because he’s tired of explaining that it has nothing to do with the winning bloggers being forced to pose in their underwear while receiving the award (but yes, there was no dearth of sponsors for such an event).

But folks, first a word about this year’s Indibloggies: they are totally different from last year’s Indibloggies, mostly because last year the Indibloggies did not happen, as the organizer puts it, “due to some failed happenings and pressures at work” [sic].

But now that’s behind us, and now, in November 2009, we’re finally off to the shiny, brand-new Indibloggies 2010 2009 2008!

(The astute reader will notice that Neo is not nominated for an award. But Neo didn’t notice that at all, or at least he stopped noticing it after the 6th shot of vodka, by which time he was already writing his acceptance speech for winning the Indibloggies 2009 in 2010 2011. He’s also drafted an apology letter addressed to Mrs. Neo for the post-award celebrations that are sure to get out of hand.)

Blogging is different, risqué, exciting and all very new media! So what better way to honor the creative minds behind the Indian blogosphere than to have award categories that seem mostly to be picked out of Neo’s high-school curriculum in 1984, e.g. “humanities”, “science” and “sports” ?

But this post is about those categories that were just not considered good enough to meet the Indibloggies’ exacting standards – the categories for the rest of us!

Well then, without any drumroll, but hopefully with lots of wardrobe malfunction, the Undibloggies features awards in these categories:

1. Most generically named blog of the year:

“Random thoughts about stocks, cooking, foreign relations, personal relationships with foreigners, philosophy and music from sudeep1984_4u !!! Also, remember to check my Twitter feed, which will really test your faith in freedom of expression! C’mon ya everyone put comments!!!”

2. Best use of other blogs to promote your own blog:

“That was an awesome post about your fight with cancer. You know, on the topic of cancer, I think the traffic in Bangalore is a cancer too, a subject that <a href=”http://myblog.com/randomhorriblyformattedpost.html”>I wrote about</a> recently. Check <a href=”myblog”>my blog</a> out!!

3. Best use of questions at the end of every post to elicit comments:

“.. and so that’s what I thought about Taare Zameen Par which I just happened to watch with my mother. What do you feel about your mother? Write about it in the comments!  xoxoxoxo”

4. Blog topic most distant from field of expertise:

“Which precise provisions should be removed from the US healthcare bill so as to contain the US fiscal deficit, rein in future inflation, temper the growth in China, and hence slow down global warming, as analyzed in 10 minutes by a fresher Oracle database administrator in Software4Less Web Designs Pvt. Ltd. in Kolkata, posted in a hurry because his boss just walked in”.

5. Least responsive blogger of the year:

“I get so many comments on my blog I can’t respond to them all, unless your name is vaguely feminine (wink). Now, I need to get back to browsing through this gallery of 2000 free Wordpress themes. Or maybe I’ll just copy inspire my theme from a lesser known blogger that no one reads.”

6. BILF – Blogger I’d like to f.. follow:

So this is one category that you should not worry about if its not instantly obvious. But if it is instantly obvious, then you already know it’s hard to pick just one. Who said being a voter was easy?

7. Most thinly disguised conflict-of-interest in a blog

“Unbiased reviews of social media marketing companies from the lady who just left a marketing job at BigAcme Ltd, and is now starting a social media marketing company. We report, you decide!”

8. Most apologetic blogger

“Sorry for not posting for almost a month, even though I had promised in my last apology to post every day. Also, sorry for the typos I made in the last post. Ok, now I have to run for class. I promise I’ll post more tomorrow. Sachin rocks ZOMG!”

9. Emperor’s clothes blog award

“The blog that everyone says they read but actually everyone just skims over because it stopped being relevant in 1998 and is now out of touch with everything except the writer’s ego.”

9b. Lifetime achievement award

See previous award.

10. Least pithy blogger of the year

(a.k.a. Pithiless blogger of the year)

“No really, there’s a recession on. There’s never been a more jobless bigger audience for your very detailed 2000+ word posts – because as we all know, until you decided to write about it, not enough had been written about how twitter will change the world Google Wave!”

—–

So those were the award categories! Do you have any nominees ? Suggestions for other categories ? Or really, anything else to say? Just please write something, anything in the comments below! (Not that Neo cares. It’s not like he’s needy or anything. And he never blogs in his underwear.)

Here’s your moment of zen:

Last week Neo finally reconciled with the friend who convinced him that it is considered romantic to propose to South Indian girls with a rava idli instead of a ring. The only reason why Mrs. Neo accepted the proposal was because she probably didn’t know any better (plus there was the slight matter of Neo being the perfect guy, and the even slighter matter of Mrs. Neo being drunk). Besides, Mrs. Neo gave Neo bonus points for even finding a rava idli in Vegas.

Exactly a year later, the Neos were married in Chennai by a priest who had the sort of authoritative voice that could successfully hail a Chennai auto driver from 100 feet away. Neo’s aunt helped translate the priestly instructions from Tamil to English, with helpful value-added interjections like “You didn’t have to scratch your belly, Neo. When the priest said “repeat after me”, he didn’t mean it that literally” and “Stay away from that fire, or you’re going to set your dhoti on fire again.”

There is immense business potential in Indian weddings – Neo pitched his startup idea to Mrs. Neo’s rich uncle (before the stock market crashed) during one of Mrs. Neo’s 193 saree changes.

Neo calls it the “WTFGO LCD overhead display system”:

Problem statement: At any given time, about 80% of the wedding guests and approximately 100% of those getting married don’t know “WTF is going on”.

Solution: The WTFGO system is a wall-mounted LCD display that helps people understand “WTF is going on”. Example messages on this display would be:

1. “This part of the ceremony has no cosmic significance – we’re just standing around waiting because the priest had to take yet another bathroom break.”
2. “The rumors of bacterial infection in the Kheer rice pudding are entirely unfounded. Though it could use more sugar.”
3. “We have missed this mahurat because of the physical altercation between the bride’s niece and the bride’s BFF over which mascara color the bride should wear, but DO NOT PANIC – there will be another auspicious moment in just five more hours.”
4. “As a safety measure, please continue to let your kids run unsupervised while you eat and lament the death of Indian culture.”
5. “The awesome honey-sweet milk that is being used for this wedding is graciously provided by Aarey Milk – Got (Vedic) Milk?”
6. “If you haven’t eaten in the past 2 minutes and are feeling weak, please notify some sufficiently subservient-looking family member from the bride’s family and they will get you a plate full of carbs food from the buffet line.”
7. (White folks in the audience can pay to subscribe to the official Twitter feed, which features retweet-friendly, grammar-free Deepak-Chopra-esque lines like: “Seventh Step is for Sakha – friendship – to be dependable and faithful to each other and life long companionship.”.)

The best part of the Neo wedding ceremony was the wedding night – sweet, blissful sleep for 9 hours. Yes, all the Neos did on their wedding night was sleep – judge all you like, but lets just say it was not easy for Neo to stay “up” after being holed up for 20 hours in a claustrophobic room filled mostly with 80 year-old kids.

But the elders would be proud, because the Neos consummated their wedding on a highly auspicious day – it’s just that the auspicious day turned out to be an exact year before their wedding date. That was fate. After all, who are we mortals to judge the intentions of God ?

As Deepak Chopra says, “The atoms of the universe are the thoughts of the mind, the food we eat are made of the stars of Gods creation, and the love we make is the Universe smiling at itself.”

(Actually Neo just made that line up, but he feels one with Deepak Chopra so it’s all good).

The rava idlis for breakfast the next morning were delicious.

PS: A shout out for gay marriage rights. After all, why should only straight people suffer ? Here’s your moment of zen:

PS2: In case you haven’t guessed by now, Neo is no expert on Indian philosophy, but from what he’s gathered from his family, the Indian position on sex is (no, not missionary, get your mind out of the gutter, and your sex life out of the rut) – “Sex is a dirty thing, so you should only do it to the people you love the most.”

PS3: Actually, Neo prefers the Wii.

Neo arrived in India during mosquito-gras – the yearly event in Bangalore when millions of scantily-clad mosquitoes get high and swarm around searching for the Jonas Brothers mosquitoes. The good news is they are so crazed that they forget their mosquito-duty to bite you, and sort of leave you alone – just remember to keep your eyes closed while walking around. (If you couldn’t tell that Neo was exaggerating, you’re not ready to move to India. Actually he wasn’t exaggerating. He was just kidding. Not.)

So it turns out that the first few weeks after your move to India are actually a great time to panic – for one, it’s not like you’re going to get much done anyway, thanks to a combination of jet lag and complete exhaustion from the 218 trips to Ikea made in the last 3 days before you left for India (“what if they don’t have Ikea candles in India?”)

Another great reason to panic early is that your friends/relatives might sympathize, because in the early honeymoon days of your return they actually give a damn about what you are going through. Neo panicked after almost a month (midway through an otherwise excellent dosa). He pinged his cousin on Gtalk with, “On days like this I wish I was on a flight back to the US”: her reply was a not very encouraging: “brb”.

Neo always thought he was invincible, but no plan survives the first contact with the enemy: Within the first 2 minutes of their introduction, Neo’s neighbor asked him (in Hindi) “paanch crore to kamaya hoga na US mein?”, i.e. “I’m sure you must have saved up at least a million dollars in the US, right” ?

All things being equal, Neo could have easily handled the nosy neighbor. But Neo didn’t anticipate having to do that in pitch darkness while being eaten alive by a group of mosquitoes (apparently back from the Jonas Brothers concert, where no refreshments were served), and while being slowly deafened by what can only be described as “death metal played with extreme religious fervor on a south Indian drum (Thavil)”.

Neo finally lost it when Mrs. Neo asked him, “I don’t mean to pry honey, but why have you been carrying around a fire extinguisher for the past half hour?” Neo had no answer. It was all over. He smiled at his neighbor (in the darkness), put the extinguisher down, rolled up his sleeves and let the mosquitoes have their way – because, yes, they do leave you alone when they are all done.

So let it out. Get it over with. Welcome to India. Don’t forget to panic.

(Coming soon: The next phase: Euphoria)

In 2004, most of Mrs. Neo’s friends were surprised when she announced that she had broken up with a rather handsome Ganesh and was engaged to marry the very skinny-looking Neo. Yes, they said, Neo was sort of smart, charming and funny, but – he’s so skinny!

It was a brilliant decision by Mrs. Neo – Neo started working out soon after he got married, and the rest is history.

(Single folks are now probably thinking that Mrs. Neo must be thrilled about how things worked out. Married folks of course, know better: There is not one visitor to Neoville that has not heard Mrs. Neo’s 45-minute sob story of how terrible the Neos’ wedding pictures look. Although, encouragingly, yesterday Mrs. Neo did spare the neighbors cousin who just happened to stop by for some sugar. Neo’s frantic silent-begging motions from the other room might have also helped.)

Tongues will always wag, but the truth is that Neo had nothing to do with Mrs. Neo’s decision to dump “part ways amicably with” Ganesh. That was all Ganesh’s doing. As the average reader* will probably agree, haranguing Mrs. Neo constantly about how she was damaging the environment every time she dried her hair wasn’t exactly the best way to soften her up for a marriage proposal.

(* Not that Neo has any average readers – all of Neo’s readers are above average, especially when it comes to patiently waiting for Neo’s next post.)

The breaking point for Mrs. Neo was probably when she came home one day and discovered that Ganesh had entered her apartment using his copy of her apartment keys (oh yes, they had exchanged keys, and almost rings), and thrown out her brand-new Calphalon cooking set – because he felt strongly that “steel is healthier than Teflon!”. Perhaps Ganesh should have done what all sensible men do – wait until after he got married to let out his inner control-freak.

But this post is not about gloating or about pointing out that Ganesh is still single. Nor is this post about the priceless look on Mrs. Neo’s friends’ faces when they see the “neo-Neo physique” – it is about India, specifically India vs China:

Don’t let the make-love-not-pollution liberals fool you – there is an epic competition brewing between India and China. Economic growth is not a zero-sum game, but there is a limited supply of oil, food, water. skilled labor and demand for shoddily cheaply manufactured goods in the world.

At its heart, any bet on India (such as investing in India, or moving to India for career reasons) is a bet that (much like Neo’s shoulder measurements) India’s problems, while serious, can be fixed in the not-so-distant future.

There is little doubt that China is ahead today, and much “hotter” than India right now – but India’s problems are fundamentally different from China’s:

Neo can argue (and is arguing) that it is easier to increase growth and fix infrastructure/governance issues when you have a fundamentally free and a highly educated population (i.e. India) than it is to try and control a repressed and un-free people forever by bribing them with fake economic growth (i.e. China).

Neo’s day job allows him some access to Indian government officials, and one of them remarked to him last week – “the problem with China is that its GDP growth numbers are decided three years in advance, while the problem in India is that we can’t agree on what the GDP growth numbers were three years ago.”

Yes, this is the age of Twitter, and so like most other things in life, the India vs China problem can be reduced to a 140-character bumper sticker:  “I may be fat, but you’re ugly and I can diet!.”

Epilogue: Yes, Neo does sound like an Indian fanboy at times. Well, at least he didn’t have to hack through a poor-Cisco-imitation firewall (yes I’m looking at you, Huawei) and risk death-by-being-eaten-alive-by-worms or worse, death-by-being-forced-to-eat-worms just by posting this.

(Disclaimer: No skinny people were insulted in this post. Also, Mrs. Neo now says it is untrue that skinny men are unattractive. It would be nice if Mrs. Neo had realized this 78,344 hours in sweaty gyms and $19351.23 ago).