Palipappan Chidambram?? That's the best you could come up with?
Did you trip on some bhang and think that you were Prime Minister of Tahiti or Papua New Guinea??
We're in the midst of a war with an enemy who knows everything about us, and we have just a trickle of information about him.
They want us dead. They don't want to drive by and slash our credit rating.
You don't replace a soft-spoken effete Minister with another soft spoken effete minister. The guy who is famous for talking about a budget in 1997 which made the editor of the Economic Times ejaculate in his pants?
This is the ministry of home we are talking about here. The home minister needs to be a bad cop to your good cop. Although, in your case, good cop means the "huh?" cop.
You want to bring about real change instead of just talking about it?
Make Renuka Chowdhary our home minister. She's the only one in your cabinet who has some balls. Metaphorically, of course. You need someone in the home ministry who inspires fear in our enemies. This woman could pin down the great khali with one hand and show the finger to Zardari with the other.
She even scares me. And I don't scare easily. I once saw Jimmy Shergill trying to act. And there is nothing more scary than that.
Okay. Don't do it for us. Do it to save your seat. If you don't do something now, in six months, the country will vote that bald guy with a voice problem into office. And he's a real badass. If you don't beleive me, ask Jinnah.
So stop acting like a bumbling idiot and do something which is not mind bunglingly idiotic.
Or is that too much to ask?
Edit: What I meant by this post was that it doesn't matter who we have as a home minister. We can put a scarecrow on the seat and it wouldn't matter. What we need to do is strengthen our capabilities instead of mere posturing. We need political will do take some action.
Okay. Maybe I'm not a zombie. Or maybe I do have a brain. Or maybe I stopped reading "Stuff white people like" after the tenth post. But what the hell is wrong with BBC's foreign journalists?
I happen to channel surf and I happened to catch a lady who must have had those funny brownies talk about chatter in Washington about the "fragile thread of India's democracy?"
Okay. Missy. This must come as news to you, and I didn't want to bring this up, but India's democracy does not wear a thong. And we would have had democracy a few hundred years before 1947 but we were caught up in a little independence war with YOUR ANCESTORS.
And before that thing CNN calls it's South Asia correspondent jumps on the bandwagon too, let me tell her one thing. When we elect someone to public office, the guy who gets the most votes WINS. And our Supreme court would never hand an election to a fifth grader.
Our politicians don't even go to school. How dope is that?
So stop telling us about democracy. We don't have lobbyists running our government.
Just a few murderers and criminals.
Anyways, what I mean to say is that stop treating everyone like your stepchild. We're the largest democracy for a reason.
We may be imperfect but we do not elect dangerous religious freaks to public office.
Err... Alright. you got me on the last one. My bad. It's not like he aided anyone in killing thousands of people.
Note to self: For the love of alcohol, stop!!
Anyways, what you co-members of the KFC-club need to do is, , to stop acting like you know better. You don't.
When you were attacked , you wiretaped and tortured your own citizens.
You suspended democracy to fight terror.
People in our country were voting WHILE one of their cities was under a terrorist attack.
That's how "resiliant" our democracy is.
Our villages may not have indoor plumbing and our cities may have long powercuts, but one thing we have that no one can take away is our democracy.
Also, our version of Idol sucks too.
Well, nobody's perfect.
A terrorist attack in our country which many have called the worst in history. For more than 60 hours, the whole nation was said to be in a nightmare. But the nightmare has just begun.
Many are calling this a watershed moment in our history. But the reality is different. In a few days, all will be forgotten because we are supposed to "move on". We are supposed to have a spirit of resilience. We are supposed to forget the fact that those pieces of scum merely walked into our country and took our people hostage and killed a lot of them mercilessly.
Oh yeah, let's blame the usual suspect. Politicians, police, and Pakistan. Of course, the home minister should resign. Of course, the government is weak on terror. Of course it's the intelligence failure.
People will denounce each other. Politicians will create a divide, and the families of those brave men and woman who lost their lives will look on with horror. Disenchanted with their country, with their leaders and with the people who inhabit this once great nation.
But we will still look on. We will still go back to living our lives. We will still play the blame game. We will still shrug and ask "Who shall we vote for?" and "What can a single person do?"
However, these excuses don't hold water. Throughout history, a single person has started movements which have changed the world for the better.If we don't like the people we vote for, we can at least demand they do something. If you are not a vote bank, you will be ignored. In our country, the educated masses watch helplessly as the people we elect to govern us pilferage and rape our country while we write editorials and shout on news channels.
Become a vote bank. Demand that our politicians either shape up or ship out.
We can look towards smaller countries like Indonesia and Nepal, who bought change. Change in a mostly peaceful manner.
We have seen that a large group of people can make a difference. Look at what happened in the Jessica Lal case. People stood together and each candle lit for Jessica was a candle lit for change and democracy.
Great nations are not built on blog posts, editorials or by waxing eloquence on news channels.
But, perhaps, the truth is that we aren't a great nation. Perhaps we are just a group of people, who reproduce like rabbits, and who are forced to live next to each other.
But when I look at those visuals of those brave policemen who went into a 21st century battle with 19th century weapons, not even blinking, I don't imagine they were of any religion or any caste. They were Indians. Those brave NSG soldiers didn't ask people for their caste before they rescued them. The brave hotel staff who gave up their lives, young and old, opening doors and taking bullets for their guests, did not think about getting TV time or about getting votes. Hidden amongst us, are people who unknowingly do heroic things. Without any hoopla. Without any expectations. Maybe that makes us great. Maybe that makes us a nation of people.
A bullet does not have any nationalty. A bomb does not kill members of a particular community. A terrorist does not discriminate between rich and poor.
No matter how much we deny or the excuses we make, we have a choice. A choice to make our government work for everybody. A choice to give value to each and every human life in a country of more than a billion.
We need to wake up and act now, otherwise, the terrorists will leave us incapable to do so.
Dear ol' bean,
You better keep your cup o' tea down before you read this. We promise to be as gentle as possible.
Although what we are about to say really saddens us, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
Listen. Since there is no easy way to say this so we're just going to say this out loud.
We need to see other countries.
If it makes you feel any better, it's not us , it's you.
In a perfect world, we'd love to keep investing all our money in you. But since your economy turned into, as they say, shite, we'd like to move on. Before you think "Oi!! What's all this then?" and throw a wobbly, hear us out. We tried to buy all your stuff to keep you afloat (Tetley Tea, Corrus Steel, Elton John), but your economy is all sixes and sevens. Sweet fanny adams even the Somalian pirates are doing better than you are. Also, we don't trust that prat of a prime minister you have. He's like a wanker without a stiffy.
We'd love to stay and help, but we're afraid that you're going to be standing all starkers very soon. And we'd rather chew on some codswallop than see that.
Now don't be sad. Chin up, ol' sausage. You can always go scrumping to France.
And if you ever fancy a game of cricket, do give us a ring-a-ding. We're still mates, innit? And just for old times sake, we promise not to make a dog's dinner out of your team. Well, er, maybe.
Keep your pecker up.
Pip, pip cheerio and all that rot.
This is just not fair, Mr President-Elect. You just sucked the fun out of Presidential press conferences. You did not fumble when you spoke, you did not invent any new words, your short speech did not sound like something an awkward fourth-grader would say. The words you used had the G's at the end intact. You pronounced nuclear as, nuclear. Hell, you even completed your sentences.
In fact, you appeared to know your shit. You have nuanced positions on certain issues, for crying out loud.
This is completely unacceptable and has to change. Look, we cheered for you. Kenya had an orgasm when you won. The British dropped their plate of spotted dick (it's a food item, you pervert) as soon as they heard. The Chinese opened up some lead-infested dog food to feed some of it's rural workers, in your honor. A few Russians stopped hitting their wives for a while to see CNN declare you the winner over that 200 year old man and that professional infomercial saleswoman.
So, you need to give us our comic relief.
Look, for the past eight years, it has been easy for the rest of the world to see your current President and feel good about ourselves. No matter how fucked up our own leaders were, just having them stand next to that dumb fuck from Texas made them appear statesmen-like. Americans felt inadequate and apologetic whenever they were overseas. We had a good laugh at them, even though orphans in our countries were dying. I mean, who cares about the poor when you have the so called leader of the free world cannot say anything coherent?
You had to win and ruin it all. Thanks to you, being intelligent is cool again. When you held that press conference, it was like listening to adults have a serious and constructive conversation. Where is the fun in that?
Damn you, Mr President-Elect.
I don't speak for everybody, but some of us are going to miss President Numb Nuts.
Although, my third eye tell me that there is someone on the horizon who is going to make things right again. You betcha!!
Hey, American Media, listen up,
I thought this election would never end.
I mean who fucking takes two years to elect a President for to serve a term of four years? Why can't you guys do anything like normal people? It takes the rest of the world about three or four months to prepare for and conduct an election. Really, sometimes I wonder if you were dropped on your head when you were born.
Can you guys talk about something else now? I wouldn't have normally insisted but you know that when you talk about something, other countries have to talk about it too?
See, you're like the cool kids in high school who all sit together during lunch and talk about all the cool stuff and the rest of the world is the geeks, nerds and dorks who wouldn't know cool if it bit them on their retainers. So they overhear the fringes of your conversation and whisper it to each other. Or they continuously check your facebook profile to find out what's happening.
Talking about what you talk about prevents us from actually thinking about issues in our own countries. Also, it helps our politicians when they can blame every other fuck-up on your country.
This has got to stop.
See, we're getting desperate for new things to talk about.
We'll take anything. You can even talk about Lindsay Lohan's gay lover. Or maybe that's not such a good idea because that makes Russia all horny and it really freaks the crap out of Iran.
We can talk about sports. No, wait, you guys play baseball the rest of the world plays football (or soccer, as you call it). Except Japan. They can't play much of anything because any open space in Japan is either converted into a skyscraper or a Sony play station factory.
Let's try something else. We can talk about books. Yes. Books. Oh, but wait. We really didn't read books written by Pamela Anderson. And some people in Europe go batshit crazy when you keep talking about The Da Vinci Code.
Don't worry. We can talk about business and the financial markets. Or not. Uh-oh, that is a little touchy because you screwed that up for the rest of the world. And to prove that we aren't angry with you, we will tell you the same thing women say when they want to get all passive aggressive on your ass because you can't guess what stupid thing you did this time for which you'll have to make up for by buying some flowers or candy. Or both. Everything's fine and there is nothing to talk about. Look, everybody is not like Canada. We can't let you walk over us like that you do to that poor slut.
Err....Ummm.... Have you seen the new Shilpa Shetty DVD? .. Dammit!! Wrong country.
Right. Okay. Fuck it. I give up.
So tell me, do you think Hillary Clinton will run again in eight years?
My Dad assigned me the unenviable task of deciding on Diwali gifts to be give to all our family & business associates. So after a through market research, (which was basically me sitting with a bottle of my favorite beverage and coming up with random crap) I thought it should be shared with the world, since I worked so hard for it. Needless to say, I could not come up with anything and waited till the last minute to tell my Dad to give all that money away to the poor. And by poor, I mean my resource hungry vodka fund. Same thing, right? So anyways, here is my first annual diwali market research:
(1) A box of dry fruits - If you get this gift from someone, then consider yourself at the bottom of their food chain because this is the most common diwali gift. Not only does this box signify that the giver does not like you. it means that if there is ever an alien invasion in your city and your acquaintance has to choose between your life and the life of his pet cat who might die in the next few months anyway, he would choose the cat. Life sucks. Move on.
(2) A box of "imported" chocolates - This signifies that the sender wants to prove to you that even though a recession is just around the corner, he is really doing good at his job., he really does not give a crap. By giving you a box of chocolates , the giver says to you "I hope you choke on these chocolates which the people of Dubai refused to eat and die. But before you breathe your last, please remember that I make more money than you. Cheers. And happy Diwali."
(3) Crockery - This is usually given to people who give you the box of imported chocolates. This might include things like gold plated spoons or pudding sets or both. Giving gifts at diwali is like a game of poker anyway. This gift sends the message "I see your imported choclates and raise you a fourteen piece gold plated pudding set. Suck on that, Chewbecca."
(4) Gold / Silver glasses - Nothing says I heart you during diwali then gold or silver glasses. This is given to all the important business associates and people you actually would choose over your dying cat. However, most people don't have any use for such gifts because not everybody wants to live on the sets of Umraoo Jaan. In fact, the only use of such gifts is to pass it on to other suckers like yourself.
(5) Alcohol - Usually given to people you know in the government who help you with all your illegal stuff. It consists of some foreign made whiskey because people who have answered the call to serve the country do not have a taste for Indian made liquor no matter how many hot models Vijay Mallaya hires to pose for his calendar.
(6) A large box of Juice - This is now a very popular gift item. That is because people really want to eat "healthy" nowadays. And by eating healthy I mean they want to ape the cast of The Bold and the Beautiful. This gift comes with a message which says "I really think you need to lose some weight you fat piece of turd. So here, have some liquid which looks like pee and tastes like crap flavored with sugar and will end up increasing your heart rate. Happy Diwali you Obese Son of a Bitch."
(7) A box of Indian Chocolates - Usually given to employees by companies doing well. This signifies tells the employee that "the company respects you and your hard work by spending the bulk of the diwali gift money budget to buy expensive champagne for upper management. So please take this box of Perk chocolates and go home to the family you rarely get to see because of us. Oh, and we might fire you soon. Happy Diwali, biatch." Of course, since most employees are Indian, they'll bitch about anything you give them so why try, really.
(8) A box of Biscuits - This gift is given to people whose house you frequent because of some social obligation or the other. This gives a message "Stop serving that home-made crap everytime I am forced to drink that vomit your wife makes and serves in a cup. At least have something decent around so that I can not sit there with that expression of disgust on my face. Happy Diwali, you crazy piece of sh*t."
