A Dummies Guide to Hosting an International Sporting Event in your Third-World Banana Republic

Hello there! Are you an “emerging economy” supposedly poised on verge of world domination? Do your leaders promise you that global recognition of your superiority over other peoples is just around the corner? That pretty soon everyone else will notice that they had no past or any culture and drop their way of life which has been evolving in their countries for literally millions of years and subscribe to yours? Was your economy going great guns and suddenly petered out like it was Chinese knock-off of a popular phone? Is paying a bribe as regular an activity in your life as say, eating? Does a strangely popular political party in your country have a carefully worded and/or openly expressed animosity about an ethnic and/or sexual minority?  Are you currently in the process of electing and/or have elected someone whose leadership style can be politely interpreted as “strong?” Do you think the money your country will spend on hosting a useless international meet of healthy grown-ups competing with each other for a gold medal that you can’t even sell in the open market to prove some point is better spent on solving more pressing domestic problems? Are you afraid of answering any of the above questions honestly because doing that might invite persecution and/or physical intimidation tacitly sanctioned by the state?

If your answer to all the above questions is yes, then, read on!

(Note: If you’re an average citizen of such a state and you spend all your days just getting around the government apparatus, then please note that you are better off not reading any of this. Ignorance is bliss, remember! What we have to say is really of no use to you, anyway! This guide is basically for powerful political leaders, oligarchs, billionaires, and/or someone with an entrepreneurial spirit and a willingness to monetize their connections in the government. If you still want to read it, then don’t blame us for the large men knocking on your door right now. Go ahead, they just want to talk to you. Don’t be afraid. All this will still be here if you get to. . . I mean when you come back! Now go, don’t keep them waiting.Seriously.)

Hey, powerful people! Nice of you to join us! Now, ask yourself the question, do you like money? Do you want to increase your power and/or sphere of influence? Are you finally ready to become the sort of person your country’s government apparatus caters too? Does the oppressive regime in your country want to seek international legitimacy?

Then, boy, do we have a guide for you!

Now that we’ve got all the pleasantries out of the way, let’s get down to business.

Firstly, I hope you’re not one of the people who think of corruption as a bad thing. Don’t buy into leftist propaganda! Those people have no idea what they’re talking about. One man’s corruption is another man’s motivation! Look, everyone needs motivation, right? Some people need their palm greased. Some people need their peckers swollen. And some people need a boot on their back. Find out what’s the right fit for you!

Listen, if you thought the people in your country were corrupt, they got nothing on members of international sporting bodies. Corrupt officials are attracted to sporting bodies like pesky western journalists are attracted to sectarian conflicts. So we begin by determining which sporting event you want to host in your country. Be careful in making your choice. If you want to start small, you should look at associations like ITF or the IAF. They’re loyalty can be purchased for a small amount of money. However, they don’t have much potential for you to make something on the side. These events don’t hold much cache because even third grade tin-pot dictatorships with terrible human rights record are able to host them. And they don’t really attract much media attention. They’re okay for mid-level oppressive regimes who have managed to keep the public numbers of their murdered dissidents into the hundreds.

If you’re not that oppressive but just want your citizens to feel patriotic pride while you make lots of money, you can go for something like the CWG or the Asian Games. They’re not that difficult to get and by hosting them you can pretend that your banana republic has finally “arrived,” whatever that means.

However, if you’re a big oppressive regime with a history of tyranny, violence, oppression, genocide, no freedom of speech etc., you need to think big. You should set your sights on something like the FIFA world cup or one of the Olympics. Not only do they attract lots of attention, they’re big money-spinners. And there is almost no barrier of entry. Hey, they even allowed Hitler to host one of them, so you’re pretty much pre-approved.

After you’ve decided which sporting event you’d like to host, turn your attention to their local body. You can either become the head of that body yourself, or better yet, appoint a dispensable sycophant whom you can throw under the bus if someone “falsely” dares to accuse you of benefiting from hosting the said event.

After your sycophants “election,” put him in-charge of finding countries sympathetic to your bid. Sure, not all of them will be convinced. You might need to cajole some countries to support you. Find pliable member-countries and dangle some carrots in front of them. You might even need to give some of them money upfront. Don’t hesitate! Think of it as an investment in your future.

Once you have enough support behind you, send a couple of more “senior officials” in an non-official capacity for a “friendly chat” with members of the sport’s governing body. Nothing to see here, just a couple of average joes talking about how much hypothetical money would have to change hands for a hypothetical country to host a hypothetical international sporting event, hypothetically. Once you “attain” their loyalty, the heads of these organizations are more loyal than your own mother! You can make them do anything you want! Like pretending you don’t have a terrible human rights record or doing PR for your oppressive regime. You can even make them agree to using a city famous for it’s beach resorts that has never seen a speck of snow in thousands of years as the host of the winter olympics!

Once those people are taken care off, it’s time to buy some good PR in the international press. Get some international lifestyle magazine to cover your glamarous first lady (if you have one) or get one of those useless contrarian magazines to write a long piece about how the fact that the government in your country is oppressive and corrupt is a western myth and that limited freedom is actually good for your people. The next step is to put a friendly face on your regime! If you’re the sort of person whose image is used by superstitious people to ward of evil, use one of your trusted, harvard educated, ironic humour spewing lieutenants to do your dirty work for you. Get them to appear on some comedian hosted talk show on either side of the Atlantic so that he can charm all the “cool kids.” Nothing will get you more street cred ‘on the internet’ than getting Jon Stewart to say nice things about you.

Now that you’ve got good “buzz,” it’s time to go public with your bid. Sure, you’ll face some opposition. However, it’s not really hard to drown out the noise made by strongly worded op-eds and do-gooder protests if you have enough momentum. As long as you keep greasing the right palms, no will will really care about any of that.

The real fun comes in after you win the bid. Make sure every contract you hand out gives you a cut of the profits. From building stadiums to procuring toilet paper, there is nothing that won’t make you richer. All you have to do is pay a high markup price for everything. Make sure your own people put in the highest bids. You funnel the government's money into their bank accounts, they’ll funnel a percentage of that into yours. Hey, if taxpayers didn’t want you to siphon off their hard earned money, they wouldn’t have paid any taxes.

Now, some of the consequences of this will be that not everything will be of proper quality. No worries, you got to compromise somewhere! So bridges might collapse, the living quarters might remain unfinished, and some choosy people might complain about insects in their food, but hey, that’s a good thing! All this drama keeps the international press busy and they will focus on the crumbling infrastructure instead of your human rights abuses. It’s what asshole consultants call “a win-win.”

If you’re still reading this, then you’re all set to host your own international sporting event. However, please remember that this guide has been provided to you with the explicit understanding that a percentage of the profits will be given to the writer as a, you know, token of your “appreciation,” if you know what’s good for you. 

(The writer of this piece is a popular third world dictator whose hobbies include oppressing people, invading neighbouring countries and shirtless horseback riding.)

Wanted: A CEO for the Central Board of Film Certification

(After we discovered that the new CBFC CEO walked straight out of a teevee soap opera set in a tiny village in Northern India, we asked our sources to find out how this happened. After all, if there is anyone who stands up for liberal values and an artist’s right to express themselves, it’s the Central Board of Film Certification. Our source sent us the following job listing posted at ActualHumanMonster.com by the CBFC to fill the position.)

Situation Wanted

Seeking a self-motivated, highly capable candidate who loves to seek new challenges.

Candidate must have loads of free time on his or her hands. Former government bureaucrats will be given preference. If he or she hasn’t worked for the government, candidate must show job experience where they have been needlessly mean and condescending to people for no reason whatsoever.

Candidate should have no self-awareness. Should have no qualms in forcing his or her own worldview onto other people. Candidates who blame the state of the world today on young people without any irony whatsoever will be given preference. Under no circumstances should the candidate even try to think ‘outside the box.’

Having an artistic sensibility is a strict no-no. An exposure to real art will interfere with the candidate’s job of telling people who were born with a camera in one hand and a three film UTV pictures contract in the other how to make their movies.

Candidate should not have seen any human genitals willingly or unwillingly in the last fifty years. Must be such a prude that he or she even covers up firm tomatoes or really long cucumbers/bananas. Candidate must have a disdain for people who wear provocative things like jeans or fastrack watches.

Candidate must constantly live in fear that someone, somewhere might actually enjoy his or her movie watching experience. The Central Board of Film Certification frowns upon that and will not allow it to happen under any circumstance. Letting adults make their own decisions is against our culture.

After two rounds of interviews, candidates will be required to find things to censor in the following movies: Jai Santoshi Maa, Any random Rajshri movie, Mother India

Compensation: A huge salary and the satisfaction of preventing literally dozens of people from seeing a nipple because they haven’t yet heard about the internet.

Interested candidates may send their application to:

CBFC@nosexpleaseweareindian.com

Thank you for your interest!

A District Attorney in New York Arrested a Diplomat for Visa Fraud. You will Never Guess What Happened Next!

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

The past few weeks have been really distressing for those of us who like to think of themselves as ‘Americaphiles.’ We have been betrayed, left saddened and made to feel unwanted by someone we used to fondly refer to as Uncle Sam. By arresting Devyani Khobragade for the crime of simply being an Indian, they have unintentionally let us know what they really think of us. And from where we’re sitting, it doesn’t look pretty.

Various interests group have turned Devyani Khobragade into a symbol of their pre-formed beliefs. To some, the furore over Devyani’s arrest seems like a representation of everything that is wrong with India’s elites. They declare that the reason the establishment is acting out is because someone dared to treat them like “a normal,” and not like the precious gift that they are. They proclaim that since most members of the elite have been allowed to get away with breaking the law in their own country, they don’t understand why another country wouldn’t accord them the same privilege. Being given special consideration is their birthright and they shall have it!

Of course, the people accusing the country’s decision making apparatus of overreacting couldn’t be more wrong. Obviously, the real symbol in the whole hullaballoo is Sangeeta Richards. She is what is wrong with the country. She did not for once think about all the things Devyani had done for her! Would anyone else have taken her to New York? I bet that Sangeeta was probably the first member of her family to even see the inside of an International airport. And Devyani provided her with everything! She didn’t even charge Sangeeta market rates for all the calls made to India. She just automatically deducted a small amount of money from Sangeeta’s salary. Not because Devyani couldn’t afford to pay for Sangeeta’s calls. Not at all! She was teaching her the value of money. How else would have Sangeeta learned how important money is since she probably spent her whole life without having much of it? Devyani also gave Sangeeta all her clothes that she wasn’t using anymore. Some of them were almost brand new, or worn only a couple of times. Do you think Sangeeta could afford a Dior? Ha! Not with what Devyani paid her, for sure! It is clear that Sangeeta did this for a green card. She saw all those buildings visible from Devyani’s New York residence and got greedy. If only Devyani hadn’t relaxed the ‘no going outside at all’ rule she had for Sangeeta out of the goodness of her heart, none of this would have happened.

The Americans made a huge mistake by arresting Devyani. They can deny us access to the mastermind behind one of the major terrorist attacks in our country. They can even invade the privacy of millions of our citizens and access all their private information. But, arresting one of our own for violating the rule of law in their country? That is taking things too far! I blame Preet Bharara, the District Attorney handling her case, for detonating this diplomatic time bomb. What sort of name is “Preet Bharara” anyway? What is he, an appetizer in an Indian restaurant in New York’s Meatpacking District? Although, one day, I’d really like to meet his twin brother, Preet Changezi. Is this how he treats a citizen from the country of his birth? After all we’ve done for Bharara! Sure, if his parents had stayed in India, he’d not have gotten most (or any) of the opportunities that he has had, but that is not the point! We gave him a name that is not only familiar but also sounds exotic at the same time. That must be come in handy during election time. We gave him a lifelong love of the law by ensuring that his actual place of birth was a lawless wasteland. We even gave him a huge vote bank of Americans of Indian origin by making certain that the only way they could be successful was to go to foreign shores. And this is how he repays us?

Mr. Bharara put Devyani in jail. With common criminals! Is this how they treat important people in the so-called ‘oldest democracy in the world?’ Maybe Mr. Bharara and his cohorts should come to India to learn how to treat people of stature who might be suspected of committing or have been convicted of committing a crime. We give them the respect they deserve and the resources they are used to. Make them feel like they’re not in jail, but at home. And we don’t let them mix with the riffraff in any circumstances. Regular jail is for people without any connection to someone important. Only an unpatriotic person would disagree with this arrangement.

So we did what we had to do to put the Americans in their place. We hit them where it really hurts! First we unfriended them on Facebook. Then, we cancelled their licences for importing liquor and afterwards, we got rid of all the barricades outside their embassy. That’ll teach them! Now, they will think twice before messing with us. Although, if it were up to me, I would have taken more stringent measures. Like putting up a huge statue of Edward Snowden giving the finger right opposite the US Embassy in New Delhi. We could force them to use only the Vodafone 3G network to try to access the internet. Or give them free tickets to an exclusive screening of the new hobbit movie, block all the exits once all of them are inside the theatre, and then play Dhoom 3 instead.

However, the most important and inspiring lesson of the series of events was lost in all the noise. And it is that as long as you know someone who matters, you can do anything you want. The world is literally your oyster.

And don’t you ever forget that.

Now please excuse me as I explain to my indentured servants why rising prices mean that their salaries would have to be cut in half.

For Whom the Fans Troll

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

There was a feeling of sadness permeating through the air. The streets were empty. Families gathered together to lean on each other for support. Those without anyone reached out to others like them so that they wouldn’t be alone. A dark cloud had descended over the country. The sun had been eclipsed by an even bigger star. No one was ready to say goodbye yet. But they still had to. First there was the silence. Followed by the tears. And then, there was the chanting. A billion-plus people shouting his name. A nation whose citizens spend every day of the year fighting with each other was united for one short, solitary moment. In five, ten, fifty years, those who survive the nuclear winter will recall this day and let their radiated descendants know how time itself stopped to say goodbye to Sachin Tendulkar.

Okay, none of that actually happened. But if you were a fan of Sachin Tendulkar, then this is probably how you will remember the last day of the last match of his cricketing career. And if you were one of the unfortunate people who didn’t subscribe to the school of thought that proclaimed that he was the greatest thing to happen to this world since the oven that was used to bake the first batch of sliced bread, then you probably will remember that day for the elaborate system of passwords and secret handshakes you needed to use to find any remote safehouse that kept you away from the brainwashed masses.  

That must have been a difficult task because those people were everywhere. In your house, ruining what is supposed to be your haven away from the world. Or at your local cafe, disturbing your “me time” with their incessant need to discuss strange things like “batting average” while making snide insinuations about some chap called Bradman. They didn’t even spare your favourite bar, desecrating the holiest of holy places by boldly asking the shocked manager to switch off the ‘bacardi blast’ cd playing on repeat and putting on the match commentary instead. They took over all the newspapers too! Instead of reporting important salacious details about whom Ranbir Kapoor was dating, our broadsheets were printing interviews with all the important people in Tendulkar’s life, like that guy who once stood next to him at a school bus stop. All the news channels stopped focusing on silly political non-events for a while and instead held panel discussions involving various cricketing legends like Shobha De and Suhel Seth.

Members of the Sachin sect took over twitter too. Between tweeting links to youtube clips of Sachin’s best innings and blogposts that were supposed to make your eyes water while you swallowed that temporary lump in your throat, they spent the day of the final goodbye accusing those who did not agree with them of being dead on the inside. (When did being dead on the inside stop being a thing that should be encouraged? I, for one, highly recommend it!) They declared that anyone who didn’t feel an overwhelming sense of loss on Tendulkar’s retirement must be less emotionally equipped than the Frankenstein monster. They were shocked – shocked! – that not everyone talked about their lord and saviour with the same reverence that they did. They even wondered out loud why everyone else in world couldn’t see that he was the chosen one.

Recently, a court in UP banned the screening of a movie because some stupid people were faux-offended by the use of the words ‘Ram-leela’ in the title. A few months ago, a court in Malaysia banned non-Muslims from saying or writing ‘Allah’ in any form. Earlier this year, when the lead actor for the movie version of the Fifty Shades of Grey series was announced, he got death threats from some of the most obsessive readers of the ‘books’ because according to them, he didn’t resemble the version of the eponymous character that they had in their head.

We’ve let those who believe in the magical powers of ancient storybooks, fairytales, man-made symbols, octogenarian actors, politicians, sportsmen with a cinematic narrative for a life story and other fictional characters determine how we talk about their object of reverence. That is a slippery slope. One minute you’re agreeing to not make silly jokes about a way-past-his-prime cricket player to avoid a confrontation or to please his fans, the next minute you’re going to find yourself prostrating in front of his life-sized statue, as your life flashes in front of your eyes and you wonder how you got here.

I’m all for worshipping whomever you like!  We pretend it’s a free country, after all. We’re all entitled to our delusions. But the insistence that other people follow suit? We’re not entitled to that.

Now please excuse me as I make a change dot org petition asking Obama to sign an executive order banning Ben Affleck from ever wearing a Batman costume.

How to be the Best Goddamn Democracy in the Whole Wide World

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)  

As we head into dystopian times at warp speed, it seems refreshing to hear news about a country trying to make its government a little more democratic. Who wouldn’t like to see the human race take another small step in the right direction? But when we heard that our old friend Nepal was trying to elect a constituent assembly, we were very disappointed. If they needed something, they could’ve asked us. We’re always been eager to help our neighbours. In fact, we go out of our way and do things that inconvenience us just to take care of them. So if the good people of Nepal needed a constitution, they could’ve just borrowed ours. We aren’t using ours much these days anyway! And if some people have their way, we won’t need it at all after next year. But, okay. We get it. They needed to do this for themselves. Find out who they are. Even though they tried it on their own without our guidance a few years ago and it didn’t work. Maybe this time it will?

Although, in our humble opinion the smart thing to do would be to wait for a few months and vote in the upcoming elections in India, but, for some reason, the people of Nepal don’t want to subscribe to the Indian democracy project. Their snub is not going to ruin our buzz! We have nothing to say to them. They should know that we didn’t grow all this grey hair standing in the sun all day. It came from experience as well as a botched up dye job.

For your information, people of Nepal, our country has had at least the pretence of democracy for about sixty seven years now. We’re the leading democracy in South Asia! Sure, that’s like being the fourth musketeer or the vanilla extract in chocolate cake. Maybe some of us like vanilla! It might not have the flash of strawberry or posses the good fortune of tasting better than its individual ingredients like pistachio, but it does its job, even though it tastes like something an old, efficient Soviet-era bureaucrat might come up with. If you think so badly of our favourite flavour, then we probably did the right thing by not bringing over the generous helping we had earmarked for you. You can thank your harsh attitude for missing out on such a delicious treat. We’re going to mix your former share of our home made vanilla ice-cream with bourbon, sit by the fireplace and talk amongst ourselves about how you betrayed us. I hope you realize what you’ve lost! In fact, we had imagined that we’d even try to help you with tricks and life hacks on how to run things. Now, however, we’re just going to gloat about why we’re much better at democracy than you ever will be.

For starters, most of your political parties don’t even have a high command. You amateurs are hilarious! You see, it doesn’t matter who the people elect. The most important vote belongs to the undisputed leader of the party. We should have known how bad at this you were when you jettisoned the dynasty that has ruled you for so many decades. Who does that? Not someone who’s good at democracy! No siree, Bob!

The majority of the candidates standing in your elections don’t even have criminal cases against them. You didn’t even allow criminals to contest the elections. What sort of screwed up operation are you guys running? It’s important to elect murderers, rapists, psychopaths, conmen, busybodies, kidnappers, drug dealers, tax dodgers, smugglers of illicit materials and other valued members of society to various legislative bodies so that you know where they are all the time, in case you want to arrest and/or felicitate them.

Which is why it is also important to have a criminal investigative agency whose primary purpose is to be used as political leverage. Do any of you even know what clean chits are? This is why none of your coalition governments are stable. As you must have gathered by now, voting in an election is choosing the option that would do the least harm to the country. You should have a whole smorgasbord of bad choices! As a matter of fact, in most cases, if you’re stuck, you’re supposed to just vote for the person who belongs to the community you most identify with. So what if they’re an incompetent thief? They’re your thief! Even if they don’t do anything for you, at least they’re keeping those people away from the spoils of power.

How dare you involve your maoists in the constitution writing process? That’s not the right way to solve your insurgency problems. Let them stay in the forest so that you can keep bombing them. And what sort of maoists willingly participate in the electoral process? Have they no shame? I thought their lot in life was to overthrow the state, not play a role in strengthening fledging democratic institutions. Has palling around with China taught them nothing? Though them being bitter about losing the elections and threatening to take their ball and go home might just save your infant democracy.

The people in your country also need to get a hobby because approximately seventy percent of them showed up to vote in the elections. Just because you care enough about the future of your country to engage in one of your most important civic duties doesn’t mean you’re so special. No matter what your politicians promise you, nothing is ever going to change. Things are only going to get worse. Therefore, why even bother voting? Plus, voting day is a great time to catch up on other things. It is basically an extra day off! You can use it to finish all your pending errands, catch up with people you haven’t met in ten years, go for a picnic with your family, get your accident prone child a tetanus shot, update your status on Facebook to show your disillusionment with the electoral process, file your taxes. There is so much to do!

Look, I know all this talk about how awesome our democracy is must make all of you very jealous, so I’ll put you out of your misery and stop talking about it now.

But if you ever need any pointers, you know where to find us.

Stuff the Congress Wants the UPA Government to Ban

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

(We were going to write another long screed about how everything is just the absolute worst, but minutes before we were about to begin, an anonymous party insider sent us the following Congress Working Committee Memo which enumerates all the things the party wants the government to ban. So we immediately decided to send this in instead because this scoop is so exclusive that even most of the people it was intended for haven’t seen it yet.)

Dear cherished members of the Gandhi family, honourable prime minister, honourable prime ministerial aspirants, respected elders, treasured friends, esteemed colleagues, and Digvijay Singh,

I write this letter to you in anguish. There has been an onslaught of negativity towards the UPA government. We have been treated very unfairly. Everybody talks about all of the bad things we have done, and not the good thing everyone thought we did but found out later that it was a bad thing too. Since the assembly elections are sort of a semi-final for next year’s general election, we have to take some preventive steps to stop the misinformation campaign against us. Due to this bombardment of dubious information, people are getting the impression that we are corrupt, old, out of our depth and not prepared for the challenges of the 21st century. These untruths about us are probably being spread at the behest of a foreign hand by mischievous elements for the benefit of our political opponents. Clearly, getting bad information is the only reason the people of this country have expressed their desire to vote against us. There is no other possible explanation of why anyone would not think that we’re the greatest thing to happen to the human race since the invention of the ‘Reply All’ button.

So, in the spirit of upholding democracy and freedom, we ask that the central government ban the following:

Opinion polls: Clearly, these unscientific measures of groupthink are biased. And damaging! Look, one of the most important things in this country is other people’s opinion. A large percentage of our population base their lives on projecting the sort of image that everyone around them approves of. People are ready to spend their whole lives living in an unhappy squalor as long as they don’t become the topic of gossip among their friends, relatives and neighbours. People are even peer-pressured into killing their loved ones. Don’t you think they can easily be persuaded to vote for someone on the basis of bogus polls?

Election Symbols of other political parties: I, for one, see no need for any political party that is not led by a member of the Gandhi family. However, thanks to a glaring oversight by our founding fathers, the constitution allows for as many political parties as the people want. The only thing we can do to make people forget that other options exist is to remove or hide anything that reminds them of political parties opposed to us. As they say, absence makes the heart grow amnesic! So, for the next six months, say goodbye to aeroplanes, arrows, bells, bicycles, books, bows, brooms, bulbs, bungalows, corn, chairs, clocks, combs, drums, elephants, flowers, grass, hammers, hand pumps, ink pots, ladders, lady farmers, leaves, lions, lotuses, mangoes, pens, sickles, spades, spectacles, stars, the sun, tractors, and umbrellas.

The News: This is the ground zero of the misinformation campaign. Some so called reporters keep damaging our chances in the election by trying to inform the public. The ‘Modi media’ is quite disrespectful to some of our esteemed leaders. These propagandists show our leaders in a bad light by reporting what they said, verbatim. We will not let them get away with that anymore! So we should get rid of all political news, at least for the next six months. Also, why does the public need to hear about politics anyway? It’s such a complicated business! It probably depresses them, anyway. In my opinion, we should ‘humbly suggest’ to all the news channels they’d be better off by reporting on bollywood shenanigans than making a mountain out of a political molehill.

The Internet: We live in the information age. There is so much information for everyone to process! Something is always blaring at us, demanding our attention. A smorgasbord of things that we absolutely cannot miss! So much to must watch! and do read! that being on the internet can feel like a full time job. Therefore, it is only fair that we limit the number of websites that internet users in India can access. It is just like banning the consumption of illicit drugs or local hooch. It’s doing the people a favour they didn’t ask for! Tough love, etc. As someone suggested in our meeting the other day, printing out the whole internet so we can determine what is or isn’t allowed seems like a good idea. In the interim, we can limit people’s access just to websites that display cricket match scorecards and Sanjay Jha’s Rahul Gandhi slash fiction livejournal.

Remember, we need to convince the people of this country that all these steps have been taken because of legitimate concerns and are not the last gasp of air before the final demise of a craven government.

Jai Hind!

Regards,

[REDACTED]

A Great Day for Indian Shamocracy

A billion people shall wait night and day,
for this child of man to have his say;
for he will be the one to whom they pray,
this child of man who just wants to play.
- A modern day ‘re-boot’ of one of Nostradamus’ predictions 

Many many moons ago, when the sky was dark and the air was suffocating, a man sat looking at the future of the human race in the majestic portal that lived in the small lake near his house. Now, some people say that that old man was just trippin’ and most of his predictions are vague enough that they can be made to fit any event in human history. However, we true believers know in our heart of hearts that he always knew what we did last summer.  

As the great seer predicted, the people of this country spend their days and nights waiting for their favourite man-child to emerge from his man-cave to vocalize his most recent epiphany. India is a computer! Poor people are like spaceships! We’re all living in virtual world while our real bodies are used by our robotic overlords for their own sustenance!

Recently, while part-time Prime Minister and full time employee of Gandhi Inc., Manmohan Singh, was in Washington to meet the self-proclaimed leader of the free world so that they could have an awkward conversation of epic proportions, our childus emeritus decided to steal away the meagre spotlight from his company’s most loyal employee. 

Some members of Team Rahul (Yup, that’s a thing now. Apparently, every moniker these days must be dumbed down to buzzwords so stupid that even teenagers whose only point of reference is a book about vampires can understand them.) had a bright idea! They thought that it would cause no harm if they let their ward appear briefly on teevee to pronounce his opposition to a recent step taken by the government that would benefit members of the political establishment who, let’s just say, were a little creative in their interpretation of what is considered ‘lawful activity.’ Why not let the second most powerful person in the party directly contradict the Prime Minister while he is on an important international tour? That wouldn’t diminish the Prime Minister’s standing in the international community or anything. 

So a choreographed hijack of a press conference was arranged for maximum dramatic effect! It was a perfect setup. From the sycophantic welcome he received from the press club representative, to his pause for gasps and pearl clutching while declaring his opinion, to the metaphorical mic drop and stage exit. Another episode of ‘Two Minute Political Wisdom,’ brought to you by the information age. As easy to make as a packet of noodles!

Now usually the Prime Minister can win a couple of newscycles whenever he returns from a meeting with President Barry America. Just last week, if he’d let one of the bureaucratic adoptees working for him mention, in confidence of course, to an agency reporter that Barry himself walked Singh towards his car, it would have gotten him about three days worth of positive press. Even Arnab Goswami would have been impressed enough to call a large panel of Pakistani generals to his show so he could spend a couple of hours gloating to their face. (Although to be fair it doesn’t take much to impress Arnab Goswami. Just yesterday, Arnab spent five hours watching a goldfish swimming in a glass container full of water. In the end, it turned out to be a piece of toast that Arnab had dropped into the water when he bent down to look inside.) However, thanks to his younger boss, the only time the PM’s name was mentioned at all last week was in conjunction with the words “resignation” and “what a miserable state of existence to be in.” 

In fact, the clamour for Manmohan Singh to resign reached ridiculous levels. Someone who is considered a very serious person with intelligent opinions by most of our news organizations said that the Prime Minister should resign while he is on a bilateral visit! Because that is how you run a country. Just take your toys and go home because the mean kid from down the street questions your ability to authentically replicate the sound a train makes while in motion. In the whole sordid episode, the only person who actually seemed most like an adult human was Manmohan Singh. The man who wouldn’t be able to sell space on a lifeboat to passengers of a sinking ship! He was the designate driver in a car full of irresponsible idiots who couldn’t hold their alcohol! People planning on having kids, do you really want to bring them up in a world in which Manmohan Singh is deemed the sanest person around?

The only silver lining in the whole ordeal was watching the sycophants who had spent the past few days trying to sell the ordinance to the public, turning around and calling it the worst thing to happen to mankind since the bubonic plague. As a connoisseur of hilarity, it was rather entertaining. As a citizen though, it was disconcerting to watch the speed at which the members of our political cults inhabited the opinion of their dear leader and made it their own. As ‘India’s nightingale’ Jayanti Natrajan put it, if the scion takes a view everyone else will obviously fall in line. Obviously! Because in a shamocracy, holding an opinion contrary to the stated position of the object of your worship even though it might be official party policy is like trying to hold two radioactive nuclei in a box made of uranium-238.

If only someone had predicted that this would happen.

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

A Tale of Two Indian-Americans

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times! In the two thousandth and thirteenth year of our lord Oprah, a man with a small jaw and a plain face took to the virtual pages of the journalistic version of a flaming-bag-of-dog-poo called Politico, to declare that since he had dominion over the state of Louisiana and a ‘dark skinned man’ called Barack Hussein Obama was the ruler of all of the United States, her colonies, her allies and the heart of the current British Prime Minister, racism was finally over. This man was none other than undiagnosed village simpleton, Bobby Jindal.

It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity! That he wrote his screed in the same week when a jury in Florida declared that the murderer of an innocent black teenager – whose only fault was taking a shortcut while heading home – was not guilty of any crime, did not give him any pause. That he wrote his screed in the same month that a federal judge declared that the New York Police Department’s policy of ‘Stop & Frisk’ unfairly targeted the city’s minority residents and mentioned in her judgement that most targets of this policy were “blacks and hispanics who would not have been stopped were they white,” did not make him reconsider. That he wrote his screed in the same year that the conservative majority of the US Supreme court struck down one of the major provisions of the historic voting rights act, allowing the states with Republican-majority legislatures to start the process of purging of minority citizens from the voter rolls under silly pretexts, did not help him reconcile his cognitive dissonance.

It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness! In his piece, he also asked all minorities to stop being so different and try to be more,  you know, white. Yes, why can’t all of you forget something that is such an integral part of who you are! We should all be same, like a mass-market trouser, where even one out-of-place thread will make sure you’re kept away from the others. We should all be like Bobby Jindal, the poster boy of trying too hard. Bobby lives his life like he orders food in a restaurant - he walks in, sees what the white couple at the next table are ordering, and tells the waiter that he’ll have what they’re having. Bobby has spent a lifetime keeping up appearances. All he has ever wanted to do was fit in. Just be like everyone else! And he wants all you idiots who insist on being different to do the same.

It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair! Earlier this month, millions of Americans watched as history was made when Nina Davuluri was crowned Miss America, becoming the first American of Indian origin to win the pageant. She didn’t actually run away from being part Indian! This angered a lot of racists who took to twitter to lament for the good old days, when all these outsiders knew their place. They can take our spelling bee contests, our petrol pump mini-supermarkets, become handsome surgeons on CNN, but letting an immigrant participate in the Miss America pageant is going too far! As the inscription on the Statue of Liberty says, keep your filthy masses and don’t you dare send us your beauty queens. 

It was the season of light, it was the season of darkness! Since the internet abuse against Nina became the racial slur heard around the world, this also angered a lot of people living in India. How dare does any American say racist things about a person of Indian origin. Who do they think they are, Indian? Which is why Bobby Jindal’s assertion about the end of racism is even more ironical. There is nothing more Indian than denying the existence of an actual problem that affects millions of people. Bobby loves to tell people that they shouldn’t bother with being who they are, they should think about what they can be. There is nothing more Indian than hating who you are!

We had everything before us, we had nothing before us! Bobby extrapolated his own experience to portray it as a general norm. He made assumptions about the experiences of others. He passive aggressively ‘explained’ to other people what they should be doing with their life. He gave a clean chit to people who were guilty of a crime.  Bobby Jindal is as Indian as a song sequence in a Sooraj Bharjatiya movie. Bobby Jindal is as Indian as the ‘VIP’ section in a place of worship. Bobby Jindal is as Indian as a historical monument defaced by declarations of puppy love.

Your identity is like a quicksand. The more you try to escape it, the more you sink in. 

If only there were a country famous for helping people find themselves that Bobby Jindal could visit.

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall, Who Is The Wisest Of Them All?

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

As they keep telling us, India is the land of diversity. We’re united in our differences! In fact, the only thing keeping us together is cricket, our inexplicable hatred for people who are even slightly different from us, and the inherent wisdom that’s embedded into each child that is born on this blessed land. Not that we’ve ever lacked wisdom. We’ve always been the land where lost souls arrive from other countries to find their enlightened selves. Foreign tourists have been treating our country like a global yoga retreat for centuries. But some of these ungrateful people also stole our secrets and used them for their own personal benefit. As any real patriot will tell you, the secret to everything was written in the puranas. Yet, we’ve never taken advantage of our own ancient wisdom, because we’ve been too busy following the self-destructive path Macaulay laid out for us.

However, all this is set to change. Recently, self-proclaimed avatar of Vallabhai Patel and the wisest man in the world, Narendra Modi, gathered some future disciples and explained some facts of life to them. He said that in 1947, when India awoke to freedom and being condescended to by our own elected leaders, the dollar and the rupee were at par. And now, thanks to the retirement community running our central government, the Rupee has fallen on hard times. In fact, the rupee is so destitute, it’s like an unemployed college graduate in a Raj Kapoor movie. The only way it can buy itself a few measly meals is to turn to a life of crime. We can’t let that happen!

Now, even though the assertion is completely false, it feels like the truth. So what if the Rupee was pegged against the pound until 1966? It doesn’t matter that in terms of real value, a dollar in 1947 was equivalent to four rupees. Let us ignore the fact that if the dollar and the rupee would be at par right now then we’d actually be in the middle of an economic disaster. We wouldn’t be able to continue to be the ‘outsourcing haven’ that we are. Neither would we be able to become the ‘economic powerhouse’ that is our god-given destiny.  The point is that if one rupee is not equal to one dollar, then a great insult has been perpetuated on our people. It’s not economics deciding the value of the rupee, it’s racism! And this government won’t do anything about it because it’s so effete. Real men avenge imaginary insults. So we’re going to have our revenge by seducing more British directors into making movies about poverty so that another rejected AR Rahman song takes over the Oscars.

Not to be outdone, Modi’s opponent, Congress Vice President and ‘Boy Wonder’ without a Batman, Rahul Gandhi, enthusiastically declared that if India was a computer then the Congress party was its default operating system. Which explains why every file in the computer’s memory is corrupted, no programs work as intended and the computer only works for five minutes every morning. So this is why all of the computer’s software applications ignore the user and only take instructions from the motherboard.  Maybe the makers of India’s operating system should look into why there is no sound emanating from the speaker? I’m no expert, but I think the problem lies in the sound card. It was a popular brand in its heyday, but now it is just a shell of its former self, doing nothing but waiting for the time when a younger, much more subservient sound card puts it out of its misery. 

Following in the footsteps of his dear leader, real life Shakespearian tragedy and Minister in-charge of the government’s propaganda department, Manish Tewari, gave a speech too. Among other equally brilliant ideas, he proposed that journalists should be issued a license before being allowed to practice journalism (or its local equivalent). This is a great idea because that worked out so well for other similar democracies like China and North Korea. Not many people know this, but we already have a pilot program in place. If any expat journalist reports on things that the government doesn’t really like talking about, they don’t renew their visa under some flimsy pretext or the other. This project has been a huge success! There are no negative stories about India in the foreign press. What works in our favour is that there is no other way people in the world can know what is going on in our country besides reading reports by foreign journalists. After his speech, Manish Tewari got into his time-travelling Premier Padmini, stopped at Connaught Place in 1989 for a Wimpy’s burger and a Campa Cola. Then he headed back to whence he came.

However, the award for the most intelligent activity of the week goes to all those people who were protesting the movie Madras Cafe because it portrayed the LTTE in a negative light. Heaven forbid someone think unfavourably about the LTTE! They assassinated a former Prime Minister and committed various atrocities on the very people they pretended to protect; yet, appearing in a John Abraham movie is going to give them a bad reputation! All I’m saying is that if you want to protest a movie exploiting Tamil stereotypes to make a huge amount of money, then you’re probably confusing Madras Cafe with the other recent movie which uses the capital of Tamil Nadu in its title.

If only there were some place where we could go and seek the truth.

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.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

If you haven’t been paying attention to whatever sad excuse for news that we have in this country, then let me enlighten you with what is going on. Not only has Warren Buffet refused to endorse us on LinkedIn, steel industry giants POSCO & ArcelorMittal have stopped believing our oft-broken promise to change our ways if they gave us one last chance and are now looking for an easier, much better looking country to invest all that money in. In fact, financial analysts say that these developments will have harsh consequences for our economy.

How did this happen? Till about a few years ago, we were like the shiny new shopping mall that opens up with huge fanfare. The sort of place everyone wants to go to all the time. The type of capitalist heaven where even small investments yield huge results. We were the centre of attention for a while! The consumers were glad to have so many options at their disposal and the businesses were glad to be able to tap a huge, underserviced market. And all the jobs were taken up by educated, pleasant sounding youngsters fresh out of college who were able to put their various talents to good use.

Nowadays, we’re like a sad, almost abandoned mall. The whole structure looks like it has lost its sheen. The paint is peeling off. The elevator has stopped working. All the investors with deep pockets have cut their losses and gone back to wherever they came from. Most shops are closing and the ones that are open are stocked with sub-standard products while most of the staff is surly and inefficient. Each set of empty lots is punctuated with an espresso bar selling cheap, undrinkable coffee. The only visitors are those who either have nowhere else to go or have no idea what they’re doing.

I, for one, am glad that all those people who get so spooked easily have decided to leave. We’re not the sort of country that does easy. No siree, Bob. Like that irritating commercial for that dry fruit infested chocolate says, you have to earn the ability to do business in this country. Who needs multi-national companies investing millions of dollars to create thousands of jobs anyway? Our political parties are already working overtime to increase the availability of jobs in this country by hiring hundreds of illiterate people to tweet on their behalf. That is all the stimulus that we need!

There was a song that Asha Bhosle sang with 90’s boyband Code Red. (This was a thing that happened. Asha Bhosle sang a song with a mildly popular, flash-in-the-pan British boyband and all of us collectively yawned and acted like it was the most normal thing to do. By giving her a pass on what should have been a serious blotch on a storied career, we made her believe that the song was something that she shouldn’t have been embarrassed about. Yes, kids, everyone was smoking some good shit in the 90’s. Even Asha Bhosle.) The song’s lyrics went something like We can make it if we try/We can make it you and I. The UPA seems to have adopted this as their theme song. They probably play it all day long at the Prime Minister’s office. Similarly, whenever we get bad news that could potentially harm the economy, they put their playlist of excuses on repeat, hoping that people will swallow their bullshit one more time.

Not that we could have a public discussion about this! Our current most popular topic of debate is a feud between two ‘leading’ economists. We’re not debating any of their theories, mind you. That would be the smart thing to do. But we didn’t drive out the British so that we could do sensible things! We drove them out so that we could f*ck up everything in our own way, because freedom. 

So, naturally, we’re discussing which of the above economists carries around a ModiBoner™ in their pants and which of them is a pinko commie socialist who wants to empty all the money in our treasury and give it to the poors. Overnight, people who wouldn’t know a demand curve if it punched them in the face were suddenly able to encapsulate a person’s body of work into a sixty word sentence. I can parse complex economic theory because I gave a stats exam that one time. The discussion is so stupid that every minute you spend thinking about it, you lose a couple of I.Q. points.

If our public discussion were a character in a movie, we would be at the scene where the actor portraying us looks in the mirror and sees the mess that he has turned himself into. Then he tries to turn his life around, seek forgiveness from all those he has inadvertently wronged, gaining the approval of the audience by the time the movie is over.

However, unlike the life of a movie protagonist, there doesn’t seem to be any hope for redemption in our collective future.

Some Things Never Change

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

A long, long time ago, back in 2007, things were very different. The BJP was promising to provide strong, decisive leadership as the alternate to a UPA government riddled with coalition blues and governance problems. The American President was being criticized for illegally wiretapping American citizens while Hillary Clinton was expected to win the next Presidential election. Kevin Rudd wrested the office of the Prime Minister from an unpopular incumbent. Britain was being led by a slimy, unpopular Murdoch crony. And the world of cricket was hit with a betting scandal and administrators swore that something like that would never happen again.

Let’s not forget that it was also the year when wall street brought the global financial system to the brink of collapse. The resulting economic backlash was so bad that most countries are still feeling the after-effects of that tsunami. One would imagine that people who screwed up so royally that we were on the verge of re-establishing the barter system as the standard for exchange of goods and services would have stopped to consider the suffering their actions wrought upon the world and would try not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Seems like the perfect opportunity for people’s elected representatives and enforcement officials to make themselves useful and constitute and enforce laws that would make it impossible for the viability of every currency note in the world to depend upon the ability of recovering addict and extraordinary air guitarist Jimmy Ray Jones from Bumf**k, Idaho to fulfil his financial obligations.

“LOL.” If you believe that there is even a remote possibility of something like that happening, then you must still believe in the existence of Santa Claus, millionaire sons of deposed Nigerian princes and Clint Eastwood. Not only have the people responsible for the worst stock market crash since the great depression escaped punishment with a strongly worded gesture, but they continue to do business the same way as before.

In this fortnight’s Rolling Stone, journalist Matt Taibbi revealed how the ratings agencies who played a major part in ushering the crash by providing whatever ratings the offending banks wanted for their financial instruments – most of which they filled with junk investments - in lieu of money. Proving, yet again, that the global finance industry is one huge circle-jerk between the bankers, the people who’re supposed to regulate them, the ‘industry experts’ and the rating agencies.

In the report, many current and former employees of the rating agencies have gone on record - in depositions and/or emails obtained by the magazine - to admit that they were basically making up the numbers so as to be able to provide their clients with whatever rating they preferred for their financial instruments. That’s because they make most of their money from the companies who sell these instruments. That’s like asking students to mark their own exam sheet. Yet, these very agencies like to dictate the economic policies of governments around the world. Comply with what we say or your sovereign rating gets it. Talk about the emperor having no clothes!

These are the charlatans that the people elected to make economic decisions on our behalf seek validation from. I’m just spit-balling here, but maybe it isn’t a good idea to subjugate your country’s economic policies to the whims and fancies of an agency which gave its highest honour (an AAA rating) to a bank whose collapse one month later wiped out about five trillion dollars from the global economy?

In fact, the people running our economy keep harping about achieving eight percent growth, a claim that is as fraudulent as a report by an analyst working for a ratings agency. But they keep pretending that it’s the only solution to all our problems. A little blue pill that will stir our impotent economy back into action. Although, to be fair, if your economic growth lasts for more than four hours, you don’t need to call a doctor.

Economic theory suggests that the ‘invisible hand of the market’ always brings about a happy ending by balancing things out. That hand is now a hundred percent subsidiary of wall street.

And if you look carefully, it’s giving you the finger.

No Country for Bold Men

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

If you’re a man of the world, you probably would have noticed that we’ve become a country that is losing its morals. Our children have been corrupted by the liberal media which in turn is being aided and abetted by dangerous foreign intelligence agencies whose sole aim of existence is to destroy our superior way of life. Also, don’t call me sexist, but the fact of the matter is that women don’t notice these things because they have all that make-up in their eyes. Therefore, it’s up to the all good, moral, upstanding male citizens of the country to uphold our traditions and stop the country from turning into the worst nightmare of our idol and mascot, Alok Nath.

We must remember that the enemy is smart and will try to seduce us into joining its ranks with things like ‘facts’ and ‘logic.’ However, we must pay no heed to such temptations and persist in our battle to bring back our country’s glorious days, so as to be able to finally make this India’s century. The problem is, nowadays, anyone who even tries to speak the truth gets shouted down by the droids of the liberal media, without even being given a chance to explain themselves. Recently, when - India’s premier ‘Shock Jock’ and man who was never hugged as a child because his parents thought withholding such useless niceties helps build character - Subramanian Swamy talked about the country’s gay citizens in a hateful manner, there was a lot of scorn heaped upon him. This is what our country has become! You can’t even dehumanize millions of people without being referred to as a ‘hater.’

What people don’t understand is that unlike homosexuality, being a hater is a choice. It’s an addiction. It’s like eating the whole cake that you  baked for the big party tomorrow even though you promised yourself that you would just have one piece. For a hater, every piece of cake represents a percentage of the population. You start with hating one group until you end up hating everybody. You keep telling yourself that you can stop anytime you want to, but finding a new group of people to detest for no discernible reason is the dragon you keep trying to chase.

* * *

Now, even though I personally find any human interaction outside of the bare minimum required to survive on this planet quite repellent, I do realize that not everyone is lucky enough to find companionship and fulfilment with a bottle of Jack Daniels. I get that there are some among us who possess an inexplicable need for human interaction. Some people even decide to voluntarily cohabitate with other like-minded individual(s). Whatever helps you sleep at night, buddy. I don’t judge! 

Nevertheless, I do judge those miserable individuals who make it their life’s work to spread some misery around by making life difficult for those who they consider to be different. Especially in our country where ‘tradition’ has become code for discrimination and ‘being orthodox’ is code for ‘people who are angry with the modern world and yearn for a time when their fear of the other was the law of the land.’

Most of the time, the reluctance of some people to accept same-sex relationships stems from them being afraid that it will encourage their own children to “choose that lifestyle.”  Their ignorance and bigotry is couched as concern for their children. All I want is for my children to be happy! No you don’t! All you want to do is make yourself happy. If you really cared for your child, you wouldn’t be forcing them to pretend to be someone they’re not. You’re okay with your offspring living with the same denial as you do because you feel embarrassed admitting to some stranger that your child does not resemble other people’s cookie-cutter children in any way.

The worst offenders, of course, are those who purport to be down with equal rights but make it all about themselves. They see other people as a one-dimensional construct and their support is tenuous and patronizing. What sort of gay man are you that you can’t even differentiate between ghost white and ivory? Did they make you leave your hometown in the North-East because you don’t play guitar? What self-respecting Punjabi doesn’t do the bhangra at a wedding?

This week, as we celebrate the fourth anniversary of the landmark judgement of the Delhi High Court that decriminalized human behaviour, we should remind ourselves that we still have a long way to go before we are able to achieve equality for all our citizens. This has been a banner year for gay rights throughout the world. Anytime a marginalized group of citizens are able to carve a space for themselves and make their life a little better, it is a victory for all of us. It means that we’re actually evolving into a better society, despite our best efforts to achieve the contrary.

Until, of course, the combination of quakes, tornadoes, floods and other natural disasters wipe out the human race from the face of the earth. .

Then we start again from scratch. 

United Nation of Ban-a-ton

Dear faceless bureaucrats, elected and/or appointed government officials, and other sundry idiots,

Firstly, I hope you’re getting an adult to read this to you, so they can explain what I’m trying to say in whatever ancient language you speak. And by adult, I don’t mean any random person over the age of eighteen, but an actual human person who (a) does not giggle/get angry when they see human reproductive parts and (b) does not-when faced with an opinion contrary to their own-throw a tantrum like a child of a double income household who just discovered that parents on a guilt trip will literally buy you anything. However, as past experience shows, there is unlikely to be any such individual present in any one of your ‘august organizations,’ so we’ll make do with whatever we have.

Now, you must be wondering, because I presume you have the worldview of a new born gnat, why anyone would write you a letter, much less an open letter? I get that the word ‘open’ scares you because you’ve neither opened your mind nor the files on your desk. So don’t worry. Open letters are not really for the person they’re addressed to. They’re for the author of the letter and other like-minded individuals. Writing an open letter is like farting into the wind: it might add to all the noise, but at least it makes you feel a whole lot better.

When I first heard that someone in the I&B ministry banned Comedy Central’s humour intolerant Indian channel for ten days, I was relieved. Finally someone who shares our comic sensibilities, I said to myself. How long could all the channels broadcasting English language teevee shows in India pretend that it was still the 90’s and no one had access to things like the internet or ‘Indian Netflix.’  Personally, I thought it the punishment was a bit harsh for the petty (but blasphemous) crime of claiming that Dharma & Greg was comedy. But, you have to start somewhere and I figured that people of your age really believe in tough love. However, I was in for a rude shock. Turns out, the reason you banned the channel was because they violated some arbitrary standard of morality.  

This is not the first time you’ve banned a channel for offending you. Every few months we hear someone in your ministry banning FTV because of some perceived slight or the other. Like when some pretty ladyee shows her woomabachumbas, or a fine looking gentleman shows his ‘Manmohan Singh.’ (What? It was small, docile and had an uncircumcised head.)

We get it. You're Indian. Someone gave you power to lord over somebody else and you’ll be damned if you don’t use that. Show ‘em who’s the boss. We all know that if you really started to ban content to protect ‘public morality and decency,’ they’d be nothing to watch on teevee. And now that you’ve banned a low rated channel-whose primary purpose is to run in the background in the sort of espresso bar where the barista thinks that ‘macchiato’ is an abusive word-public decency has been restored. And if there were any remaining thoughts of indecency festering inside anybody’s mind, they were erased by the proposed ban on lingerie store mannequins introduced by members of Mumbai’s municipal corporation.

You must have loved common sense a lot because it seems like you set it free a long time ago and it never came back. You guys still don’t get it, do you? You think doing these things is going to have any effect on society at large, whatsoever? Did you ever stop to think that maybe you’re the problem? That you’re so obsessed with what other people get aroused by that you’re the weirdo you want to protect people from?

Banning something to positively change society is perhaps even worse than writing an open letter and expecting things to change.

At least I have the decency to couch my stupidity in self-awareness.

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

Mind Your Elections: Clichémageddon

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

While the rest of the country was busy shouting expletives at their favourite IPL teams on teevee and hoping that Sachin Tendulkar wouldn’t injure his ‘brand’ by pulling a ‘Ganguly’ and overstaying his welcome, the people of Karnataka were busy electing a new set of porn addicts to darken the legislative halls of ‘India’s weather capital,’ Bangalore.

Elections in India bring out all the clichés to the yard.

The clichémageddon begins before even a single vote is cast. Most days leading up to the election are spent talking about the gaffe of the day. Some unpolished leader will say what is really on their mind and people will be shocked and outraged that an Indian politician is a horrible person on the inside. If the person is a senior leader of their party or are instrumental to the election campaign, they will begrudgingly release a terse statement saying that they didn’t mean to cause any offence; a sort of non-apology in which you can sense the gritted teeth and the unstated contempt. If the leader is a disposable sycophant, their party will leave them to fend for themselves and they will disappear from the election campaign for a few days.

There will also be a lot of puffy teevee and print profiles in which a reporter spends a day or two with one of the star campaigners for a party in which they show how hard the leader is campaigning for the elections by addressing multiple meetings in one day, clocking thousands of miles in a helicopter and/or chartered jet. You can tell which leader is being setup for the electoral success-failed government-eventual comeback narrative by the amount of news coverage they receive.

The most common refrain that we hear from every second person covering the elections is that in India people vote their caste and do not cast their vote. Which is a horrible thing to say because not only is it a bad pun, it reveals a casual acceptance of racism. Nope, nothing to see here. Everything’s a-okay! Just a large percentage of people being bigots. It’s a feature of Indian democracy, not a bug! We are like this only, etc.

On the day of the elections, we get to see exciting pictures of party leaders casting their votes for the “political leaders: they’re just like us except they get to cast their vote accompanied by security personnel and hundreds of flashing cameras!” segments. After the polls close, they release the voter percentage. Without any exception, the most prominent urban city in the state is revealed to have the most appalling percentage of voter turnout. That city becomes the object of everyone’s disappointment. Celebrity panellists chide the eligible voters who didn’t bother to show up at a polling station and question their commitment to civic engagement because, apparently, casting a vote once every few years is the answer to all your problems. Low voter turnout also helps people on the internet play a round of their favourite game: my third world, dystopian shithole of a city is better than your third world, dystopian shithole of a city because more of us show up to stand in a line to select our next ‘most corrupt government yet.’

Then there are the exit polls. From the moment the last vote is cast to counting day, we are on the receiving end of analysis, debates, arguments, plausible scenarios, hypothetical coalitions, and bad metaphors based on these famed ‘polls,’ even though they are seldom accurate. But no one ever takes any responsibility for being wrong! Instead, we end up hearing paeans to the Indian voter who suddenly turns out to be ‘smart’ and ‘wise.’ Hey, the gypsy lady with a crystal ball who writes our poll predictions was having an off day. What can we do about it?

However, the major impact of clichémageddon is felt on counting day. If you turn on NDTV, you get to see a panel of experts who were popular and respected in the 1990’s but have spent the last decade being exposed for the hacks they are. Times Now will have more old people on its panel than a ‘yoga shivir’ in Haridwar so they spend all their time shouting at each other. IBN makes it clear that no matter what the results show, the real winner of the election is always their coverage, which has won every award they have printed out on Rajdeep’s personal ‘dot-matrix’ printer. Headlines Today is the popular destination for all the analysts no other channel invited - like the world’s premier writer of erotic Rahul Gandhi fan fiction, Sanjay Jha. Headlines Today is the “linked-in” of Indian news channels; people join it just to get a better job somewhere else.

The reaction of the political parties was also quite predictable. The BJP was pretending to be shocked that changing names of cities, banning beef every few months and beating up people trying to get a drink after a bad day at work didn’t make them popular. Deve Gowda’s party wrapped up all its dry cleaned jackets in plastic, put on its pyjamas, and got ready to go back into hibernation for the next five years. And the Congress ‘outsourced’ the election of its chief minister to the party’s ‘high command.’

If only there was some way to determine what the people really wanted.

It’s Hard Out There For A Bigot

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

On twitter, a person’s one line ‘bio’ is a great way to gauge how people look at themselves. If the first thing they mention is what they do for work, then they usually turn out to be the sort of people who like to be defined by things they do in a professional capacity.  Anyone calling themselves a ‘foodie’ is the kind of person who goes to a restaurant and orders the most exotic sounding thing on the menu. A person who refers to themselves in third person is the type of person you need to stay away from. Someone with a mildly amusing, self-deprecating one-liner in their bio wants you to think that they’re funny. And when someone’s twitter bio says that “they’re politically incorrect,” what they’re trying to tell you is that they like to say racist things out loud. I’m a bigot and I know it!

Recently, while giving a speech at a fundraiser in California, American President and the guy who plays god to thousands of people through his killer flying robots, Barack Obama, called the state’s Attorney General, Kamala Harris, “the best looking attorney general in the country.” It became the sexist compliment heard around the world and Obama apologized to Harris a couple of days later. The apology angered a lot of people (mostly men. Shocking!) who hate ‘feminazis,’ the ‘p.c. police’ and the ‘liberal media’ for brainwashing everyone into believing newfangled ideas like treating other people with respect and dignity. Ugh. What has the world come to? Why can’t we benevolently compliment a woman about her looks in a professional setting? What’s next, not being able to constantly stare at women we’re not related to, lecherously? Tyranny!

If you’re not part of a marginalized group then you might have a blind spot towards subtle forms of discrimination they face. Even today, a lot of women are told that their only job is to look pretty and sit on the side with the other women while the men discuss important business, sweetie. It is a symptom of the problem that even an accomplished professional like Kamala Harris-a rising star who is talked about as a future Gubernatorial candidate or a nominee for the US Supreme Court-cannot escape the epithet.

If you’re someone who grew up in the 90’s then you probably know someone who visited a foreign country and was asked where they park their elephants. (There was like one guy who was asked this question for real and then everybody else stole the anecdote and made it their own. That question was the “have you seen slumdog millionaire?”  of that era.) or if you’re the vice-president in multi-national company but a lot of people still come to you with their computer problems because you’re Indian and they assume that you’d be able to help them even though the only thing you know about technology is how to browse matrimonial websites. If these things piss you off, then so should the fact that one of the most powerful people in the world thought it was okay to add “. . . but but she’s so purty” to a colleague’s resume. When we do things like that, we’re reducing the vastness of the human experience to a single attribute.

Although, in India, we’ve got the act of reducing people to a single attribute down to a T. We’ve had lots of practice, over the years. We can glorify/demonize large groups of people just based on one common attribute they inadvertently share. We like to put people in a box and get confused when they don’t fit.

If you like to kvetch about being mistreated, then, you probably shouldn’t be doing that to other people either. For example: If the best joke you can make about someone is based on a regressive stereotype, then maybe “jokes” are really not your forte. Try to be a little creative, maybe? Or not. As the first of April proves every year, a large majority of us are just not funny. Ask your doctor if shutting the f**k up is right for you!

You don’t have to be respectful towards other people. You can be as obnoxious as you want! No one’s stopping you. But if you want to be taken seriously, then maybe you should try to treat people like, you know, people.

Except, of course, anyone from Chennai.

Because nothing good ever comes out of that shithole.

The Art of Magical Thinking

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

One of the things that makes this country great is the propensity of its citizens towards magical thinking. As long as something sounds implausible and illogical, we’ll believe it! Whether it’s the belief that banning smoking in movies will decrease consumption of cigarettes in real life or that wearing a ring with a ‘customized emerald’ will make you richer than a cabinet minister in the central government. Hey, if it’s second-hand information, it must be true!

This week, the competition to be India’s thought leader in magical thinking has been heating up!

Our first contender is noted self-help guru and living proof that if you say anything in a slow & deliberate voice, people will believe that you’re revealing the secret of the cosmos, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. In a recent public address, when asked about his opinion on the portrayal of outfits like his in hindi movies, he went off on a rant about how people who make movies are depraved, soulless drug addicts whose only purpose in life is to spend the public’s money and turn the country into a naxalite dystopia. Then a ‘holy man’ hailing from the shores of Benares gave the rebuttal.

It seems a little strange for self-help salesmen to rant against addicts. Being a member of a cult is just like being addicted to a harmful substance. You turn to both of them because you need a little pick-me-up. You think that you’re not an addict/one of those people who will believe this shit! Your need to run away from your problems keeps getting bigger and you promise yourself that one more session won’t do any harm. The people around you start avoiding you because of your one track focus. Then, when the crash comes, and you realize that your problems are still there and you can’t snort or meditate or wish them away, you try to climb back from the hole you’ve dug yourself into. At least drug addicts have the decency to not sell you overpriced spa sessions in the guise of spirituality. (Public Service Announcement: Don’t do drugs! Unless of course, you’re an investment banker, an actor or a musician. Then it’s mandatory! Hope this helps.)

Then we have the #1 chief minister in the history of the world and the man who will deliver us from evil by being more evil, Narendra Modi. As any hack on teevee will tell you, any issue surrounding Modi tends to turn “controversial” because he is a “polarising” figure. So, that is what happened when a delegation consisting of small time businessmen and three members of the US House of Representatives, who on a ten day tour of India, made a stopover in Gujarat and met the state’s chief minister. Modi’s supporters would like you to believe that this was the beginning of the ‘wooing’ that the international community will undertake because they have ‘accepted’ a truth that his detractors cannot. It’s a great narrative! Even the British ambassador also dropped in to meet him that one time. So now they can pretend that the west is trying to ‘engage’ Modi. Because if there is one thing Washington is good at, it’s picking heads of government for other countries.

Even though no one in the delegation was representing the Obama administration; even though Ahmadabad was just a stop in a ten day trip which was organized by an Indian-American organization and also included something called ‘a bollywood extravaganza,’ it didn’t stop Modi and his supporters from taking a victory lap. They were as giddy as a Times Now reporter talking about a tertiary Indian connection to a movie nominated for the Oscars. They used the sort of strenuous logic that can prove anything: Modi is popular, causes an extreme reaction in people and his fans on twitter keep trying to get his name into the top ten trending topics. ZOMG! He’s Justin Beiber!

Our final spot belongs to Sanjay Dutt and his supporters. Led by future psychiatric case study, Justice Katju and India’s creepy uncle whom no person under eighteen can meet without a court appointed adult supervisor, Amar Singh, his supporters have been arguing that Dutt must not be forced to serve any time in jail because he is the nicest person to ever be convicted of aiding terrorists. He lends people his land rover! He makes cameo appearances for free! He made Gandhi cool again! What sort of monster sends such a saint to jail?

In their legal argument, they’re citing the oft-ignored fine print in the footnotes of the constitution which says “you don’t need to follow any law as long as you’re a nice guy.”

Or at least that’s what I heard from a friend of a friend.

How Should a Woman Be?

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

Over the past few months, many people in this country have been attempting to have a conversation about equal rights. Each time we start talking about how citizens belonging to a particular gender have been relegated to second-class status, the conversation gets hijacked by something trifle. However, on international women’s day, a few high-minded activists took to social media website twitter dot com to bring everybody’s focus back on perhaps the most important issue of our time: men’s rights.

For far too long women in this country have been manipulating the men into thinking that they are lesser beings. Men have been oppressed in this land of ours for centuries. Whether it was watching from the heavens as their wives voluntarily gave up their lives by forcing members of her family to throw her into her husband’s funeral pyre, or conning kings into marrying so many of them that the poor fellow had to suffer every man’s worst nightmare – having more than one mother-in-law. Over the last few decades, women have been trying to have it all by taking it away from the men. Not satisfied with letting their family elders choose which man they have to spend the rest of their life being subservient too, they now want to be the one taking all the decisions concerning their life. If women are allowed to decide what they want to wear or who they can be friends with or what time they want to return home, that would render religious leaders and judgemental senior citizens without anything to do.

That is why they all breathed a sigh of relief when during the discussion on the anti-sexual violence bill, the brave men in Parliament took a stand against criminalising every so called ‘harmful male behaviour.’ Just because some women let themselves be caught in compromising situations every now and then doesn’t mean that we have to penalize every man in this country. To paraphrase India’s premier icon of sexual desperation, Mahatma Bhagat: First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they realize that you won’t take no for an answer so they start running away from you. Then you chase after them because if women didn’t want men to sexually assault them, they wouldn’t have been doing provocative things like, you know, existing.

* * *

Recently, due to some unforeseen circumstances, I found myself at a fast-food “joint,” at 11p.m., ordering what I hoped was an edible pile of fried cholesterol. I noticed that a large crowd was present at the same venue. However, in one of the safest neighbourhoods in the city, at a time that wasn’t ‘too late in the night,’ there were no female patrons. And that’s one of the consequences of our delusional that victims of sexual crimes are ‘asking for it.’ Every time we hear about a horrific incident of sexual violence, some asshole will try to mansplain how the victim has to share some of the blame because she put herself in that situation. If only we’d have restricted more of the victim’s freedom, nothing like this would have ever happened!

This train of thought was the subtext of the discussion about the anti-sexual assault bill under consideration in our most important legislative body and winner of the Palme d'Or for the ‘Worst Advertisement about Democracy’, the Lok Sabha. Besides the victims themselves, the second biggest villain was the ever dependable ‘western culture.’ When in doubt, blame the west.

Damn you and your wretched hold over our minds, western culture! Pretty sure it’s western culture that makes people believe that women in this country don’t have a right over their own bodies. It’s probably western culture that makes people ruthlessly kill a new born when they don’t approve of its gender. It’s the cowardice evangelized by western culture that makes people in this country look the other way when they see sexual harassment taking place. If it wasn’t for the corrupt influence of western culture, no MP would have dared to rise up in parliament and give a rousing defence of criminal stalking.

None of our problems would have existed if we’d just followed Indian culture.

Now please excuse me as I’ve got to explain to a class full of teenage girls how our ancient traditions expect them to treat their future husbands like a God.

These Are the Days of Our Lives

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

Somedays, it feels like we’re all living in a soap opera. No, not because we have a non-identical evil twin bent upon spending its whole life trying to destroy us –Hi Pakistan!–but because whoever is writing the story of our lives keeps using the same tropes and storylines. I’m guessing that the ‘god’ in charge of determining the direction of all our lives wrote one good thing – which he stole from a more deserving candidate anyway – and got promoted to Head of Operations (Asia Pacific) and now keeps making the same things happen again and again because that’s all he knows. Which suits us fine because we hate change anyway. We avoid it like we avoid the bubonic plague. We like to see movies with the same script. We prefer to elect politicians who make the same promises. We give our money to people who have cheated us before. We even cheer for the same team repeatedly hoping that this time they won’t disappoint us and will finally win the match, giving us the validation that comes from cheering for a bunch of people we have no personal connection to achieving an arbitrary goal. As they say: the millionth time is the charm!

A familiar trope that has been recycled more times than a gay joke at a bollywood awards show is the suppression of free speech. This is one storyline which brings with it a lot of ‘buzz.’ All you have to do is get one viewer to post a tweet and voila, you’re all over the newscycle.  No publicity is bad publicity, right? Currently, this storyline is being used for the ponytail loving cult leader called Arindham Chaudhari. This character suffers from what people in the medical profession call a classic case of ‘being an Indian whose orders must be compulsorily followed by a few minions due to unavoidable circumstances.’  He’s paranoid (the IIM mafia is out to get me), narcissistic (refers to himself in third person), misstates facts (free laptop!) and suffers from delusions of grandeur (gives himself grandiose titles which don’t mean anything outside the confines of his diploma shop). Like so many other characters on the show, Chaudhari misused the law put in by the government to make it easier for people who have something to hide to censor all criticism. What else can you expect from a character whose megalomania even outdoes last year’s breakout star, Mamta Banerjee. Not to be outdone, Ms. Banerjee has begun to bring back the focus on herself by ramping up the craziness quotient of her antics from ‘this is terrible but hilarious’ to ‘can we airlift everyone but her from West Bengal?’ In fiction, usually, things don’t end well for such characters who are on a trajectory of a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom. But in our world, the only people who suffer from consequences are those who are trying to do the right thing.

This week’s ‘bharat bandh ’ special episode would have been a  flop if at the last minute goons from various political parties hadn’t bullied people into enacting a ‘spontaneous protest.’ It’s the thought that counts, even if the thought appeared in your brain once you saw someone else not thinking the same thing getting punched in the face.

For the next fortnight, we will have to also sit through the reruns of ‘Parliament Adjourned.’ These are broadcast so frequently because they are the easiest to produce. All they have to do is record a bunch of people rushing to the ‘well of the house’ while shouting indiscriminate slogans for ten minutes while the speaker tries to silence them with her vulcan death stare failing which she rolls her eyes and ends the session. They get this footage on the first day of every term and put it on loop for the next five years.

But the storyline I can’t bear to follow anymore is the one in which they declare a curfew in Kashmir and cut off their access to the rest of the world. I am so bored of that! Just because we keep treating them like they’re our colony doesn’t mean we have to keep hearing about how we’re denying them their fundamental rights. Why can’t they stop crowding the streets and turn their angst at being treated like prisoners in their own home into art? Hell, I know I’d be more sympathetic to their cause if one of them made a nifty graphic novel which showed the day to day indignities they have to suffer through. They need to realize that if it wasn’t for our stabilising influence, they’d descend into chaos.

Now, where have I heard that one before?