All Hail the Supreme Court

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

On the second day of the seventh month of 2009, a few wise men of the Delhi High Court–who thought they knew better than everyone else–criminalised heterosexuality in India. Things were never the same again! The whole country became a haven for same gender attraction. Suddenly, men started wearing pink, shaved off all their chest hair, learned how to cook French cuisine, left their wives and moved in with their ‘business partner.’ Women started using motor oil as shampoo, wore only ill-fitting denims, stopped worrying about their weight and moved in with their ‘hostel roommate.’ The children who were left to fend for themselves were kidnapped and transported to gay and lesbian conversion camps. Here, they were taught gay and lesbian behaviour, like making extraordinarily beautiful paintings or fighting to preserve the environment.

In a few short days, yearning to mate with a member of the opposite sex became something taboo. It began to be discouraged! Heterosexual individuals brave enough to come out would find that people hitherto close to them suddenly treating them differently. Parents who found out that their children did not want to conform to the norm tried to talk some sense into them. A few of these children were even forced to go to reparative therapy to get rid of their natural desire for the opposite sex. No cure was ever found in spite of corporations and governments spending massive amounts of money on such research.

Coming out would cause heterosexual individuals to lose some of their friends too. Children who discovered that they only felt attracted to the opposite sex had to pretend to like someone of the same gender so as to not make anyone suspicious. If their peers found out, they would be mocked mercilessly. Even gay children who defied stereotypes and wanted to participate in typical heterosexual activities like having a messy room or wearing plaid shirts with corduroy pants were on the receiving end of ugly epithets usually reserved for those with opposite sex desires.

Heterosexual people were constantly reminded that they were different. Guys and girls could hold hands in public, but only as friends. If they looked like a couple, they could hear audible gasps and couldn't do anything but sigh at those head shakes of disapproval. Sometimes, private parties consisting only of heterosexuals were raided by the police and all the people attending were made to do the perp walk in front of a gleeful camera-wielding media to set an example and give a stern warning to other secret heterosexuals out there to keep to themselves. Work colleagues f heterosexual individuals would laugh behind their back and make terrible insinuations to their face. Heterosexual couples were routinely turned away from most hotels if the owner did not approve of their lifestyle choices. Straight characters in movies would be only used for comic relief. Most of their story arcs involved being the recipient of cruel jokes lobed to them by other characters. Those celebrities rumoured to be heterosexual were often the target of demeaning words from bigoted individuals. In fact, some heterosexual filmmakers had to make heterophobic movies because they were not brave enough to live the truth. Teevee programs routinely showed popular leading actors pretending to be attracted to the opposite sex for a few cheap laughs.

As the injustices piled up, some heterosexual people began to form organizations to fight for their so-called rights. They didn’t want to be a silent minority anymore! They decided that they did not want to be treated as second-class citizens in their own country. They even managed to hold rallies expressing their pride in who they were, shouting slogans, refusing to be in the shadows anymore. We’re here, we’re not queer, deal with it!

These organizations even filed various court cases to get back their rights. After a long battle, this case finally ended up in the Supreme Court. On the eleventh day of the twelfth month of this century’s thirteenth year, the prayers of millions of heterosexuals were finally answered. The Supreme Court quashed the senseless 2009 judgement and uncriminalised heterosexuality. Finally, all those oppressed heterosexuals could be free. It was like a huge boulder was lifted from their backs. No more could anyone tell them that they were deviant perverts who needed to be kept away from other members of society. No more could anyone blackmail them by threatening to reveal their sexual identify. No more could the law treat them any differently. No more would they be silenced. No more did they have to live a lie. This was India’s second tryst with destiny!

The Supreme Court upheld the highest principles of the constitution. If our founding fathers were alive today, they would be proud. This is the sort of court they envisioned. One which would not abandon a small minority of people to the tyranny of the majority. A court which would stand up to all those fake purveyors of morality.

Imagine a fourteen year old living in a small town, struggling with feelings he does not yet understand, but still aware enough that he is different. Thanks to society’s attitude towards his natural orientation, he constantly gets the message that his kind of people are not welcome in this world. People find out and mock him for being “a straight.” And then one day, after a very terrible bout of teasing, he contemplates suicide. But before he can do anything drastic, he hears about the Supreme Court judgement and stops himself. For a moment, he doesn’t feel alone. Someone understands him! It dawns on him that not everyone in the world will treat him like a pariah because of his natural human desire to love someone he is attracted to.

After all, what sort of fucked up society would allow such a thing? 

Keep Calm and Wank On

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

Time stood still as the process to anoint its new lord began. Gunfire informed all the commoners that they now had a new master. Celebrations broke out all over the kingdom and the various realms of the commonwealth. The peasants broke into spontaneous cheer while the royals allowed a hint of a smile to appear on their face. The animal kingdom too was awash with the news of their new protector. The fauna all over the land turned green with delight. The sun, the moon and every other celestial body bowed to their future ruler. A new heir, succeeding a long line of outstanding luminaries, would take his rightful place as the chosen one, leading his people to new heights.  But enough about the appointment of the new Doctor Who!

Speaking of appointment by royal decree, whenever a vacant position in Britain is not filled by shadow chancellor Ed Balls, her majesty the queen personally chokes the life out of a corgi. If there really was a god, Ed would be elected the next Prime Minister of Britain. I’m no economist – even though I once ruined a party by constantly talking about the law of diminishing averages – but even I’m pretty sure that the only thing that will save Britain’s economy is making Ed Balls the Prime Minister. Just think of the tourism revenues! Also, he’d be able to get favourable agreements from leaders of foreign countries because they’d want something to quench their guilt after they impolitely laughed while addressing him. (Hey, you try saying “Welcome Mr. Balls” or “Presenting His Excellency, Prime Minister Balls” with a straight face.) Plus, he’s a bloke’s bloke! You can’t get more bloke-y than having “Balls” as your last name. That’s like a magician called “Cast A Spell” or a terrible cricket player called “Albert Hit Wicket.”  

Speaking of Prime Ministers, what’s up with Britain’s ‘Tony Blair 2.0,’ David Cameron? He continues to burnish his reputation as a wanker without a stiffy by threatening to pass a law banning all pornography on the internet. Just like national security is used as a backdoor to spying on all citizens, Cameron is using his crusade against child pornography to ban all sorts of pornography. That should end well! I didn’t even know Cameron was a graduate of ‘The Kapil Sibal International Institute of Thought Control.’ Apparently, he passed out with five eyebrows, their highest honour. Good luck in keeping horny teenagers (and hornier adults) away from pornography, Speaking from experience, if vigilant parents who know how to use a computer, slow dial-up connections which took an hour to download a single jpeg and password protected pornography sites couldn’t keep them away, then your silly law isn’t going to be able to do that either. Also, if you ban pornography then how will all of her majesty’s subjects look at pictures of Prince Harry? It seems like the only reason David Cameron is so intent on banning pornography is because he doesn’t want people to look at pictures of his face and figure out that he’s a huge asshole. 

Speaking of not letting people in through the backdoor, Cameron’s government also introduced a law – that goes into effect in November – which allows British Embassies in developing countries to ask people planning to enter Britain to deposit a small fortune with them as ‘security.’ Because if there is one thing Britain is good at, it’s returning things to their rightful owner. Hey David, if all those laws that penalise people for ‘flying while brown’ couldn’t keep us out, if being treated like sub-human entities by our own national airlines couldn’t keep us out, if being duped by hundreds of people pretending to get us a legitimate visa couldn’t keep us out, then your silly little law wouldn’t be able to do that either. Also, you started it. If your ancestors hadn’t come to our shores and seduced us with their gunpowder and fancy words for going to the loo, we wouldn’t have to come to your shores and participate in the secret operation to turn Trafalgar Square into an extension of Karol Bagh. The only thing that can keep us out is if your economy turns into shite. Which, to be fair, is something you personally seem determined to achieve.

Speaking of racist people with repressed sexual urges, the good folks at the economist – Britain’s #1 source of empire nostalgia – recently discovered another problem with immigrants. Apparently, Indian billionaires are participating in ‘reverse colonialism’ by buying up all the expensive real estate in Mayfair while spending all their dirty money at Harrods. Yes, because that is what colonialism was all about! Shopping! Not decimating the local population’s indigenous industry and stealing all their natural resources while selling them your overpriced junk. Nope! Neither was destroying their identity and making them feel like second class citizens in their own home. That was just some wild rumour spread by some ungrateful natives! Aren’t you glad we got all that cleared up now?

Speaking of being a presumptuous douchebag, one shouldn’t generalize a whole country based on the crimes of a few. Unless of course, one is talking about immigrants from Bangladesh. Those people come here, take our low-paying jobs, vote in our elections and overcrowd our fledging social services.

If only there was some way we could penalize them for overstaying their welcome.

Against All Odds: The Unmukt Chand Story

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

As someone douchey enough to think that he doesn’t need any personal heroes, I thought I had found one this week when I heard that some guy called Unmukt Chand was battling his college administration to let him sit for his exams even though his attendance record was not as good as they’d like it to be. He even had a minister intervene on his behalf! Finally, the world was coming around to enacting policies I had been advocating for so many years. Maybe the dream I had of the government pumping whiskey instead of water into our taps was not that far away!

Alas, this was not to be. My bubble burst when I heard that Unmukt Chand was not some teenage rebel who believed that he could change the world but the captain of the under nineteen cricket team which had recently won the world cup. He’s probably a nark who has never woken up with a hangover because he goes to sleep at 9pm everyday as he has to get up early in the morning and head to the stadium for ‘net practice.’ Ugh.

The silver lining is that his college finally relented and taught everybody else in his batch an important lesson about life in this country: you can do anything you want as long as other people deem you as someone ‘important.’ We don’t believe in any of that crap about equality or all people being the same. Who do you think we are, some socialist European country which doesn’t even have a cricket team?

I am old enough to remember when some guy called Jaspal Rana was everybody's favourite sports prodigy, having been awarded the Arjuna award when he was eighteen. Even he couldn’t get his college to extend to him the same privilege vis-a-vis his attendance and he had to join some other institution. But that was Rana’s own fault. We just don’t care about shooting as a sport. Not all of us are regional recruitment officers for dacoits in UP.

This is my problem with sportspeople who aren’t on the men’s cricket team (haha, it’s hilarious that a women’s cricket team even exists. If they’re watching cricket too then who will make the snacks when we invite all our office buddies to watch the match at our house?). They expect people to give a crap. Look, if you want us to pay attention, make your sport more interesting. Add a wicket or two. Or a pitch. And enough scandals so that even if the team we cheer for loses the match we can console our bruised egos by trying to convince ourselves that the match was fixed.

We can overlook how boring your sport is if we can be assured that you will win something. We even cheered for the '”great” Khali when he won his first WWE championship. So what if the WWE does not pretend to be anything other than a soap opera with pre-determined results? At least that tall, garbled bose speaker won some gold. That’s more than I can say for our Olympic contingent.

We were so embarrassed at the Olympics last month. We had to hang all our heads in shame because we did not do well at that global ‘P.T. class.’ Now, we can’t show our face at any international meet without being pointed and laughed at by countries with more medals than us, thanks to the incompetent sportspeople who don’t play cricket. Not having stadiums & infrastructure to practice in or any token financial assistance so that you have access to basic nutrition or not having anybody besides your family & stadium staff cheering for you is no excuse for such a lacklustre performance. How can a country of billion people not produce even a single gold medal winner? Okay, even if a substantial amount of people among the billion are busy playing ‘hunger games,’ what are the rest of us doing? Look at China. They won so many medals. Granted their government took care of the members of their Olympic squad and provided them with all the things they needed to propel them to victory but . . but. . . we have freedom?! I bet if cricket was an Olympic sport we’d have won more medals than Michael Phelps.

This is why I still think Unkumt Chand’s story is very inspiring. It should make for a great movie: Boy sees some guy playing cricket on teevee. Boy decides to be like that guy. Boy starts to learn how to play cricket. Boy gets access to coaches, training facilities and support from family to continue to have a single minded focus on achieving his dream. Boy battles all the odds and despite facing stiff opposition from unrelenting opponents like puberty and attendance registers, boy leads his team to world cup victory.

I’d watch that.

If you don’t read this article, I’m going to punch you in the face

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

As students submit applications to institutions in which they will spend the next few years learning about things which will leave them woefully unprepared for adult life (or as it is otherwise known as, ‘college’), our whole offense economy is gathering itself to spend most of next month frothing in the mouth about ragging. Yes, ragging. The cutesy term we give to the event in which college seniors compensate for their imagined masculinity by trying to humiliate their newly-arrived juniors.

When it started, many decades ago, it was probably really about breaking the ice and getting to know each other. A privilege the seniors assumed they had over their juniors, who in turn could assume the same privilege when they became seniors. It degenerated to such an extent that some juniors started killing themselves because of the humiliation they suffered. That is because we’re Indian, when we get a privilege, we have to overuse it. Look, free drinks, let’s drink so much that we lose all our senses and hit on the hosts’ wife. So, the sign outside the restaurant said ‘All you can eat.’  Those idiots may think of it as a marketing slogan, we think of it as a challenge.

The mêlée of people at the receiving end of the objections may also be confused because we are a culture which seems to be at home with bullying. People have objections to what other people are doing all the time and make it their life’s work to make them comply. Anybody who gets an opportunity to bully other people in this country is going to take it. We consider being able to forcibly exert control over people a virtue. We’re okay with someone being a bully as long as they can explain it with warped logic. I just spotted a woman in a pub. Why is she here and not at home learning 18 different ways to make brinjals from her mother? I don’t see her father or brother around her! Let us sexually harass her and put some shame into her. Along with our penises, of course!

We always ‘feel free’ to tell other people how to live their life. Fat people should be thin! Divorced people should be married! Poor people should be rich! Children should never be tired! Gay people should just be straight! Brown people should be white! And white people, ZOMG! CAN I KISS THE GROUND YOU”RE CURRENTLY WALKING ON? And we accept this like its holy gospel! We even teach our children from the day that they are born. Being yourself is never good enough. You need to be better. Even if you are terribly unhappy, you are not supposed to do anything. Just stay there and pray! Show the other cheek! When that turns red from pain too, take off your pants and show your other two cheeks. No, don’t try to fight back. Gandhi would not have approved.

Old people can impose their own agenda on the young because it is our culture. Listen to your elders, even if they are assholes! Police officers who want to be the big-man-on-campus will raid a party full of teenagers and call it a rave. Look how successfully I am protecting your city by arresting a bunch of harmless kids drinking beer! Members of one community will bully members of another community just because they can. Making other people bend to your wishes is a value we hold very dear in this country. It doesn’t matter whether the person is different from us because of his religion, caste or the pastry shop he frequents. As long as he is not ‘one of our own,’ he or she is fair game. In fact, instead of the ‘Ashok Chakra,’ our national emblem should be a portrait of a guy going into a restaurant while the text in the thought bubble above him says “I’ll have what he is having. No, really. Take it away from him and give it to me. Thanks in advance.”

We don’t mind cutting off other people while on the road. Or skipping queues. The right to skip huge queues is probably enshrined in the constitution, though only for those who can afford it. Doctors can bully patients because, they studied for ten years to get here, and they don’t have time to be nice to you. Companies can bully their customers, because what are you going to do? Fire us? Ha! They are so many of you it doesn’t matter if we lose a few. Event organizers make things as difficult as they can for all the fans who managed to buy those overpriced tickets. Just because we promise something, doesn’t mean we have to fulfil it. If you want a good concert experience, go to a different country where even though they will look at you like you’re going to blow them up, they will still treat you better than your own countrymen. And we assuage ourselves, that it is okay to do this! If we don’t be ruthless with other people, they will be ruthless with us.

Even a lot of our sources of entertainment subliminally enforce this message. Most of our popular television reality shows are about people submitting themselves to being harassed and mentally tortured just for a chance at their fifteen minutes of fame. Even though fame is not kind to the people who are unfortunate enough to marinate in it, but everybody wants to be famous. So that they can too be celebrated for being mean to other people.

Now please excuse me while I go and fire the household help for daring to establish eye contact.

Shobha Narayan wants you to give bigotry a chance

Devil incarnate and minister in the UPA government Kapil SIbal owes Mint columnist and the-good-life connoisseur Shobha Narayan an apology. He has made her lose a lot of sleep over the worst law in the history of the world, the Right to Education bill.

Before you begin your judging and call her names and everything, you need to realize that Ms. Narayan is a big supporter of education.

Educators may pore over curriculum; combat staff attrition; mull over real estate and infrastructure; but they dream of catalysing change, inspiring young minds and changing the future. For people deep in the trenches of teaching and learning, this fundamental right of every child to a decent education ought to seem self-evident. Knowledge—to paraphrase Rabindranath Tagore—should be free. Yet, most educators I know are against the Right to Education (RTE) Act—for reasons philosophical and practical.

I am not an educator. I have taught classes, but I approach this debate from the point of view of a parent and citizen.

I don’t know Ms. Narayan, but I have read one of her articles. So I feel I am qualified enough to comment on the mental process that led her to the conclusions outlined in her article. Now, how many of you can dare to paraphrase Rabindranath Tagore in support of your argument, without using your fancy internet search engine? I thought so. For your kind information, Ms. Narayan has committed Rabindra Dada’s whole oeuvre to her memory. She can quote Tagore like you can quote your favorite teevee character.

Now that we have established that Ms. Narayan is a great supporter of education of all peoples, let her educate us about the realities of real life:

The human face of the RTE Act and one that stares parents in the face is the 25% quota. Affluent urban Indians—and certainly the readership of this newspaper—send their children to elite private schools. The new reality is that these schools will have to mandatorily admit a 25% quota of underprivileged children—whether it is a Sanskriti, Bombay Scottish or Vidyashilp. This mingling of social classes is certain to cause discomfort even if few parents will vocalize it. “In principle, I have no problem with this,” we will say, and may even believe it. We will call forth our childhood hardships and tell each other, “I believe that my children ought to socialize with, and learn from, all types of children.” We will feel the halo shining around our heads.

Yes! We have all been well trained by the liberal media to be politically correct and try to say the terrible thoughts that come into our head using non-terrible words. But, right now, at this moment, this great visionary is going to break out of these shackles and hit us with a truth bomb.

Of course, class has nothing to do with character. Intelligence is marginally correlated with wealth, if that. In many cases, the plumbers, drivers and dairy farmers who work for the urban elite are just as honest, if not more, than their employers. Children do learn from their less-privileged peers. But usually, such learning happens in an organic, semi-structured way—over summer holidays at grandparents’ homes when the driver’s son teaches your son how to play pithoo.

Of course. All non-elite people are honest. They never lie, cheat or steal. They are so honest that if you leave a billion rupees on the street near a whole swath of them and come back in ten years, not only will you find the billion rupees where you left them but you will also get the interest amount that you would have gotten if you would have invested the money in a high-yielding bond. Such is the magic of poverty! No, we’re not overcompensating at all. What makes you say that?

Now, don’t get Ms. Narayan wrong. She is not a racist. Some of her best employees are government school teachers!

The lady who helps clean my home, Rosie, is an erstwhile government schoolteacher, who discovered that she makes more money cleaning homes than teaching. She lives in Yelahanka, in the vicinity of a number of Bangalore’s top private schools. In theory, Rosie’s daughter, Jenny, could and should be my daughter’s classmate. Jenny is a tall, bright girl with limpid eyes and a quick wit. She smiles often and asks questions. She is polite and curious. She is of the same age as my younger daughter; and they could learn from each other. In theory.

Yes, in theory, if this were a perfect world, or if we had realized Karl Marx’s Utopia, or if all of us always did the right thing, or if wishes were horses, we wouldn’t even be having this debate! But real life does not work that way. Theory is good, but you have to be practical after all. Look, Jenny, don’t take this personally, but you’d know all this if you’d had the opportunity to have a decent education. But we can’t have everything, now, can we? Love the things your mama gave you, like your limpid eyes, your smile and a society which won’t ever let you forget where you really belong.

However, if you think you’re going to blame Ms. Narayan for enumerating all these practical problems, then think again. She is not to blame. In her hearts of hearts, she has the best intentions. She wants people like Jenny to have a good education. But the real culprit is someone else. A person so ruthless that her mere presence sends shivers down the spines of anyone unfortunate enough to cross her path. Who is this person? I’m afraid I dare not even speak her name. The only person who can even talk about her is someone who is immune to all her devilry:

Children are cliquish. I don’t like this fact, but cannot escape it. I can invite any number of outsiders—from hovels or gated communities—to my daughter’s birthday party, command her to “be nice”, and after the initial “hello”, she will return to giggling with her school friends. Lectures about egalitarianism carry as much weight as all those lectures about “starving children while you waste food” and “I studied under the street lights while you forget to switch off the lights”.

Yes. Ms. Narayan’s daughter is the real culprit. Behind that (probably!) cute face, lies the mind of a sheepish villain. This child prodigy, a ruthless doyen of child society does not play fair. She will chew and spit out children like Jenny the minute they step into her circle of influence. This is why you can’t have nice things, Jenny. Ms. Narayan’s daughter might say mean things about you.

There, there, Jenny. Don’t cry. You probably cannot afford to lose all that salt from your body anyway. Listen, don’t worry. Ms. Narayan has got you covered. Due to the fact that she is a great egalitarian, she is going to solve your problem like America solves global terrorism: by throwing money at it:

I would be willing to pay an RTE fee in addition to what my children’s schools charge me, particularly if I know that it will help a child get an education. Educating underprivileged children is a pet cause among affluent parents—and I say this without rancour.

Yes. She wants all the poor, underprivileged children to be educated. It is her favorite cause, after all. Just not with her child. She is even ready to pay up so that you can open equal but separate schools for underprivileged children. This way everyone is happy!

The RTE Act, as it stands now, seems to me to be a massive government cop-out. [. . . ] As a parent, I laud the intent. I am willing to help make it work. But as a student of psychology, I don’t think plonking underprivileged children in elite schools is the solution.

Ms. Shobha Narayan’s solution, as it stands now, is a massive cop-out. As a connoisseur of unintentional hilarity, I applaud her effort. But as someone who learned everything he needs to know about psychology from Fraiser re-runs, I think she might be suffering from a case of wanting all the poors to get off her lawn.

That is all.

[Mint Lounge]

Chinese Democracy in New Delhi

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

As the summer sun in New Delhi charred everything it could get its rays on, world leaders descended on India’s capital for the BRICS summit. The summit got off to an awkward start. Apparently, the Russian delegates got drunk on their flight here and were hitting on the wives of other delegates. While the Indians were busy making sure their guests had more food on their plate than any normal human being could possibly eat in one sitting, the Chinese delegates were going around giving everyone wedgies and forcefully taking their money. The South African delegates were just happy to be get out of the house for once because no one ever invites them to any summit and they wanted to use this opportunity to show off their sparkling personality.

The dysfunction was not limited to the lower-rung delegates. There were more cat fights among the heads of state than there are during a Spice Girls world tour. They couldn’t even decide what to order for lunch! Hu ‘What you looking at MotherF***er Spice’ Jintao wanted to have authentic Indian cuisine because the Indian food available in China is too Chinese for his taste. Dmitry ‘Assassin Spice’  Medvedev wanted to try this new bistro in Hauz Khas that he had read about in ‘Ballistic Missiles Weekly,’ Manmohan ‘Baby Spice’ Singh wanted to skip lunch entirely because his stomach was still working on a piece of chicken he had eaten for dinner yesterday while Dilma ‘Here to make it a non-sausage fest Spice’ Rouseff would go for whatever the group decided because she was tired of circling the mall and all she wanted was to sit down somewhere and have a refreshing glass of ice tea. The leaders finally decided to order from McDonalds so that no one got what they wanted and everybody could claim to have compromised. This also helped in breaking the ice as all the leaders agreed that while they may have problems with each other, nothing is worse than western capitalism wrapped in a bun.

This thawing of the ice also allowed the Indian Prime Minister to release his inner ‘Funmohan.’ All these non-Indians get him, man! They know that beneath the tough exterior lies the real Manmohan. This super-Manmohan-who is funny, sensitive and caring-is nestled between the buzzer connected to an office in 10 Janpath and a hologram of the 1873 edition of the Oxford English dictionary. Manmohan Singh at an international summit is like that episode of a sitcom in which the character with the least amount of camera time suddenly finds himself at the centre of attention. It is a bizzaro world in which he is treated with kindness & respect. People actually listen to what Manmohan has to say and don’t collapse into a coma as soon as he opens his mouth. He schmoozes at these shindigs. And sometimes, even lets a journalist ask him a real question! Though not an Indian journalist. Those wankers have got it out for him. He talks to real journalists from real newspapers. Indians and hacks not allowed.

This year the jovial atmosphere of the summit was ruined by a few so called non-violent Tibetans. Not only did they harm themselves, they almost caused an international incident. How dare they think that they can avail the freedoms guaranteed to them under the Indian constitution? They didn’t even bother going through the proper channels! And by proper channels I mean the dear leader of Indian news. Did they even give him a single interview? No! Did they have the decency to rent a fake mob? No! Did they hire former journalists as their PR agents who would advice them on what time to protest so as to draw the maximum amount of coverage or how to make a crowd of a few hundred people seem like thousands? No! Such amateurs. They didn't even try to come up with catchy slogans. There were no pictures of Gandhi. And no obeisance was being paid to the glory of Bharat Mata. YAWN! Get your oppressed soul off my lawn.

I, for one, am tired of such ad-hominem attacks on the government. You use British Raj-era tactics on your own people a couple of times and suddenly they start questioning your democratic credentials. What you don’t understand is that this was for the Tibetans’ own protection. These people are so flammable that they needed to be kept indoors, away from Delhi’s extreme weather. So what if they can’t visit Tibet? They can ‘street view’ it on Google Maps and see what China has done to their erstwhile home. And if there is one thing we can be assured off, it is that China is very kind to territories it occupies. Just ask the people in Aksai Chin. They probably don’t even remember that they were once part of India! And as for the people from Manipur who got arrested because of racial profiling, well, s**t happens, get over it. They were simply collateral damage in the arduous task of maintaining law & order. If they don’t want this to happen again, they should try not to look so Chinese all the time.

Frankly, there is enough freedom in this country. You can say and do whatever you want as long as you don’t hurt the made up sentiments of everyone else or cause the government any perceived embarrassment or don’t point out things which might inconvenience people with a lot riding on some really big projects. All they’re asking for is a little mutual respect. You respect their right to do whatever they want and they will respect your right to not be transported-under ‘mysterious circumstances,’ of course-to the big twitterverse in the sky. Capiche? 

In an unrelated story, does any freshly democratic country want an old, well-written but barely used constitution? Asking for a friend whose country doesn’t seem to have much use for one anymore.

India’s own private Idaho

(A version of this appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

One of the most difficult tasks in today’s world is to get politicians to take a stand on something, especially politicians running the UPA government. Getting the UPA government to take a stand on something is like trying to impregnate the statue of David. They are so neutral on every issue they make the Swiss look like Fox News. Even on the most obvious of issues, all you can get from them is the perennial why-cant-we-all-get-along plea of a wounded kangaroo trying to save her child from being killed by a larger animal.

So when it finally happened this week, hell froze over, there were more pigs in the sky than planes belonging to Kingfisher airlines, Imams were issuing fatwas calling for treating women as equals, Pundits were eating beef on a Tuesday and the only thing Priests in the catholic church were allowing choir boys to suck on was an ice cream stick. The UPA government had finally taken a stand on something! Even though the Supreme Court had to put a gun to their head to make them do it, but it’s the thought that counts, doesn’t it? They could have pivoted to the ignorant amongst us and taken a wrong stand, but they ignored Ghulam Nabi Azad and finally spelt out their support for the Delhi High Court judgement decriminalising homosexuality.

The fact that in 2012 human rights in this country are still up for debate is appalling. We treat our LGBT population like they are another species. Until July 2009, when good sense prevailed and the Delhi High Court read down section 377, the LGBT community in this country was technically still under colonial rule. Because unlike what the bigots proclaim, the only western influence present in this debate is institutionalized homophobia. Homosexuality has existed on this planet as long as life has existed on it.

One of the most popular hobbies of Indians everywhere is discriminating against people who they perceive to be different, but nothing unites all communities like their hatred of homosexuality. Gay people in this country have achieved something that even the ‘great’ MK Gandhi couldn't achieve; get all the crazy, bigoted people on the same side of an argument. These bigots predict that since the Delhi High Court has opened the floodgates, no one will want to love anyone of the opposite sex anymore. This will result in decreased male descendants ultimately causing the untimely demise of this young, vibrant nation whose people will then disappear from the face of the earth and take with them their ancient culture, their movies, the secret recipe of Chicken Manchurian and the ability to convince users of Dell computers to buy more RAM modules every time they call in to report a faulty keyboard. And then China will take over the vast empty wasteland and turn it into a nation of four year old child factory workers making smartphones whilst facing a working environment which probably violates a few provisions of the Geneva convention.

One doesn’t flick a switch and magically turn gay. Just like you don’t change the colour of your skin no matter how many tubes of fair & lovely you use, you can’t change the sexuality you were born with, no matter how much anybody else thinks that you will find the ‘right girl.’

Some countries punish all their gay citizens with death. In some countries bigots brutally murder gay citizens while the authorities look the other way or even encourage such vigilantism. In some countries you get sent to jail on the mere suspicion of being gay. In some countries legal sanctions can be brought against you for simply talking about homosexuality. In some countries, members of the gay community are raped by society's ‘moral guardians’ under the pretext of wanting to ‘fix’ them. In some countries you can be a self-hating homophobe tricking young gay men into feeling ashamed of who they are and still be married to a candidate running for President.

In India, you will get harassed by the police, bullied by the people around you and shunned by your family. Being gay is probably the number one item in the totem pole of things that upset Indian parents. It is even above marrying a person of a different religion or having a child without getting married first. Even our pop-culture is littered with rancid homophobia. Whether it is news channels who give credence to quacks like Ramdev who claim to heal homosexuality (If he was such a miracle worker, why can’t he stop his eye from constantly winking? What, is there no yoga app for that?) or celebrities who pretend to be gay for cheap laughs on award shows or even a lot of twitter users-who escape to the moral high ground when someone famous says something homophobic-have no qualms in mining bad stereotypes for re-tweets. The so called ‘macho’ leading men in popular movies prove how tough they are by mocking exaggerated stereotypes of gay men. Dude, you just bullied someone who has probably been facing discrimination every day of his life! Congratulations, here is your bravery award! This is not just limited to ill-informed and the uneducated, though. Even erudite ‘intellectuals’ will talk about promoting gay rights and then betray their ignorance by using ‘gay’ as a pejorative.

You know who else thought it was okay to discriminate against people for who they are?

This is how we treat 'em

This is simply stomach-churning, mind boggling atrocious:

. . . at 2 am on April 7, hours before Chidambaram’s farewell to the dead and barely 18 hours after the CRPF combatants were gunned down, it is only the angry lowly officer, a sub-inspector, representing the State at this government hospital at Jagdalpur town, 150 km north of the site of the deadly Maoist attack. It must be said that he is here on his own and not detailed for the job.

No chief minister, no state home minister, no other minister, no member of Parliament, no MLA, no director-general of police (Vishwa Ranjan, a man popular with journalists in all seasons), no chief secretary, no home secretary, no inspector-general (TJ Longkumer, who Chidambaram later told journalists had planned the dead men’s fatal foray into the forests), no district magistrate (frenzied a few hours later as reporters surged at Chidambaram’s press conference because he didn’t want anyone to throw a shoe at the Union home minister), no superintendent of police, not one high-ranking officer of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), to which 75 of the dead belonged, were here; just the very angry CRPF sub-inspector. “They were like my children,” he says.

Typically, the survivors mattered less than the dead. Head Constable Raj Bahadur and Constables Pramod Kumar Singh and Baljeet Singh are lucky to survive the carnage, having taken bullets everywhere but in the guts. A hundred paces from the mortuary, they lie writhing in pain on dirty hospital linen stained from previous occupants’ dried blood. Only one has a mosquito net. There are no doctors or nurses. Two constables who’ve come on their own watch over their wounded mates. The ward is a hovel; the toilet is a stinking blocked drain. “Our officers are home sleeping,” an attendant says.

Five hours later, just minutes before Chidambaram and Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh visit the heroes, bureaucrats and the hospital’s administrators fuss in panic over the non-functioning air-conditioning. “Can’t it run for just 15 minutes?” asks one. Bottles of intravenous fluids now hang from their stands, their needles pushed into the arms of the wounded. These weren’t here six hours earlier. The linen has changed. The hovel is now spic and span. A couple hours later, Chidambaram chokes at a press conference, grieving the dead and expressing his resolve to wipe out the Maoists.

I know this is not a new thing for our country, but this is just sick. This is supposedly under our "best home minister" ever. And while those brave CPRF soldiers sacrifice away their lives, Mr Palipapan Chidambram gets to be the hero because he supposedly "resigned" from his ministry. You know what, "PC", if you really feel that you can't continue doing your job anymore, stay at home and let someone else do it. Otherwise, stfu and do what you were appointed to do and stop acting like a prissy teenage drama queen.

I always wonder what makes all those poor people join our armed forces. The pay is crap, they are most likely to die in combat because of some stupid bureaucrat or politician and if they happen to survive, no one is there to take care of their injuries. Most of them probably do it out of pure-patriotism, for a state which gives nary a thought about them.

Even reality show contestants have better working conditions.

Also, the phrase "Can't it run for 15 minutes?" encapsulates the philosophy of "governance" that is prevalent in India.

Yes, we're Incredible!

Incredibly insensitive, incredibly ignorant and incredibly idiotic.