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.

Bah! Humbug!

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

Santa looked out at the falling snow through his small window. The calm outside was quite in contrast to the turmoil he was going through. He tried to remember the last time he had been happy. He drew a blank. He was unhappy before all the troubles started. He never wanted to go into the family business. He wanted to be an accountant. It wasn’t a glamorous job, he agreed. But he didn’t want glamour. He had seen celebrity up close. Fame had left both his father, the previous St. Nicolas and his Uncle Roger, the Easter bunny, broken and shattered. To be the most important person in the world for one day and then ignored for the rest of the year took a real toll. His father turned to alcoholism and Uncle Roger became reckless and began to break into homes with little children and steal all their eggs. This continued until the High Council of Festival Mascots stripped him of his title and had him committed to a correctional facility in North Korea. Santa was able to save his father by promising to take over the whole enterprise immediately. He forgot about his dreams and saved his family. Then everything went well until he ran into Lindsey Lohan one day. She introduced him to the other white snow and he was lost to its charms. He stopped paying attention and his assistant, Tim Cook, took over the operation. Cook dismantled everything. First he sold all the reindeer to a Russian billionaire. (All of them except Rudolf. Rudolf escaped captivity and fled to America, where he became the most famous reindeer in the world when he gave an emotional interview to Barbra Walters. His memoir about his struggle became a bestseller and even spawned a Lifetime movie starring Susan Sarandon and Rafalca Romney.) Then, he fired all the elves and got them deported to Middle Earth. Finally, he outsourced the workshop to a Chinese Foxconn facility and Bangalore’ed the back office and logistics. Everything was being done at a quarter of the cost that it used to. Santa was rendered jobless. And once the money disappeared, so did all the starlets. He was left alone, to ponder his fate. And to look at the snow.

If the Mayans were right and the world ended two days ago and you’re reading this while scavenging for food in a nuclear wasteland, then think of this as one of the reasons why mother earth hates your guts and tried to drown your whole species. And if nothing happens – which is a remote possibility because how can a bunch of superstitious tribesmen who lived hundreds of years ago and couldn’t even predict the demise of their own empire be wrong about the future – then welcome to yet another week in which we celebrate the triumph of consumerism.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate material things. I love them! If living in India has taught me anything, it’s that there is no problem that can’t be made to go away as long as you’re prepared to throw enough money at it. I’m just tired of celebrating this love every month under the guise of a ‘festival.’ There is always some holiday lurking in the corner, requiring us to buy things for the people around us and forcefully spending time with them. That’s what all the advertisements tell us! There is no amount of heartbreak and pain that cannot be compensated for by a fancy gift. You can be a horrible boss around the year, but if on one day of the year you gift your secretary a box of crappy chocolates and ask her to go home early, you’re a shoo-in for ‘boss of the year.’ Treat your wife like your own personal slave for ten years and then buy her forgiveness by giving her a comically large diamond necklace. To make up for all those times you ignored your grandparents, you can buy them a ring-tone of their favourite classic song for their mobile phone. Most of the time we don’t even realize what we’re celebrating. In one of the biggest festivals in the country, we celebrate a guy who went to war to defend the honour of his wife but then dumped her because his laundry guy said something uncharitable about her while we burn the effigy of a guy who respected women enough to take no for an answer.

Twitter is the last refuge for all those who want the festive masses to get off their lawn. However, this year on twitter there was a backlash against the backlash. Mostly from nostalgic NRIs missing the deafening sound of firecrackers and the breathlessness brought on by the large amounts of smoke. They told us to stop whining and start appreciating our good fortune. This is what India is all about, they fumed. Which was true, because who else would know more about the ‘authentic Indian experience’ than a person who, before visiting, ingests enough pills to immunize an entire African country? Thanks for your advice, captain. I’ll keep it right next to those unopened boxes of Ferrero Rocher you love to bring over.

Even the Mayan apocalypse won’t be able to make me open them.

Don’t break my glass house, bro!

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

Everybody’s favourite failed state and South Asia’s #1 source of terrorism and the sort of music which makes you want to rip your heart out, throw it in the air and shoot it with an AK-47 just to make yourself feel better, was having a ‘crisis of democracy’ again. Pakistan has had more crises of democracy than the number of dossiers the Indian government has sent them.

The Pakistani Supreme Court thought that the best way to preserve democracy was to kick it in the nuts and bloody it’s face with a sledgehammer. Prime Ministerial careers were dying faster than a North Korean rocket. Just like a superhero franchise losing popularity, Pakistan rebooted its government and appointed a new – allegedly corrupt – Prime Minister. What are the odds! If a guy who looks like Ratan Tata mated with Killer Khalsa cannot restore the trust of the people in democracy, I don’t know who can.

Speaking of failed states, Greece, the birthplace of democracy and toga parties, also got over it’s weird Nazi phase and elected a semi-coherent government. Since the new government is made of coalition partners diametrically opposed to each other, this bodes well for the Euro. Because if there is one thing coalition governments are good at, it’s taking tough, unpopular decisions.

Which brings us to Egypt. For the first time in modern history, Egypt has an almost-popularly elected President who is not beholden to the army. Since he belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, right wing nutjobs all over the world are wetting their pants in both fear and gleeful anticipation depending on their chosen theocracy of allegiance. Are you saying that a ruthless dictator supported by the United States who was lording over a middle eastern country with an iron hand and who – among other things suppressed religion, and was overthrown by a revolution led by young people – has been replaced by religious parties? If only history had given us some indication that this would happen!

People presume that just because they ‘liked’ that photo of all the people gathered in Tahir Square and re-tweeted actual revolutionaries, that they have a say in who Egypt elects as President. They don’t! It’s like we’re telling them, Hey Egypt, you can have a democratically elected President as long as we get to approve who it is! Even if the new government goes south very soon, having had even a small say in the policies of the government which lords over them is a big step. The old system is not going to give way so easily. And democracy is not something you get right from the get-go. You’re always striving to be better at it. Democracy is the ability to choose which road you want to pave with your good intentions while you lazily saunter towards hell.

Back home in India, we still continue to try different combinations even after sixty four years. Our current head of government is a man who started playing ‘statue’ when he was five years old and till this day ignores everyone who asks him to ‘stop.’ The last President of America did not know his way around a pretzel. Democracy in Pakistan has had more false starts than a Scooter manufactured in the 80’s. Even people in Greece behave like amateurs when you send them to the voting booth. 

Dictatorships are like the iPhone. They may look good and have a controlled environment nearing perfection, but the slave labour required to achieve such a state remains invisible. Democracy is like Android. It’s messy, it’s chaotic, and nobody who makes it agrees with each other and it’s always in need of improvement.

Electing religious parties to government is not all that bad. Many countries have had governments led by parties which have religion deeply embedded into their DNA. It’s not like these governments started killing members of other . . .  

Uh-oh.

Be afraid, Egypt.

Be very afraid.

Smite the Heathens, Charlie Brown

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

One of the most vulnerable minorities in this country are people with what you heathens call ‘religious sentiments.’ This small group consisting of millions of saintly souls is being oppressed by the thousands of tyrannical unbelievers. People experiencing these sentiments are so delicate, so fragile, and so defenseless, that they need to be protected at all costs. You need to realize that their feelings are natural. They cannot help it, they were born this way. To a neutral observer it must look like that these people were indoctrinated by their parents and others around them, but they were just being slightly nudged to express a devotion which was already existed. Pity that your bigoted eyes cannot see that. So what if their intolerance is slowly eroding the small set of freedoms that you enjoy? Just because they use loudspeakers at odd hours, block traffic as they please, use their position to diddle little children  bless little children with their holy seed, immerse environmentally unsafe products into the sea, you think you have a right to judge them and or call them names? If you feel so left out and helpless, why don’t you pray to your god? Oops! Sorry! Didn’t remember that you didn’t have any. Don’t worry; you’re probably going to hell anyway so why bother at all?

As the world grows more open, religions have turned more dogmatic and stringent. Instead of letting them evolve and adapt with modern life, the human race has turned religion into something complex and grotesque. These days religion is less about finding the meaning of life and more about competing with each other.

Religious people take real pride in being more pious than the other guy. Look at me; I’m so pious I only eat living things sprouting out of the soil. Screw you, you amateur! I’m so pious I don’t eat anything unless it has been regurgitated in the bowels of an animal. You call that being closer to god? I sneer in your general direction. I’m so pious I survive on rainwater and the raw bark of a dead tree.

Even religious festivals have turned into a competition to determine who can be the biggest asshole. Holi used to be about decorating your house with temporary graffiti, putting some non-cancerous chemical colour on each other and spending the rest of the day eating and drinking until that old uncle who cannot really hold down his alcohol starts to create a ruckus. Now it’s about starting to throw balloons at unsuspecting strangers a fortnight before the darn festival and then turning to eggs or paint or whatever you can get your hands on to use on the day itself. Diwali used to be about playing light Indian Poker, praying for more money and drinking and eating until that old uncle who was jealous of everybody’s success started to create a ruckus. Now it’s about gunfights over lost houses, destroyed families, gold idols and the race to produce the largest amount of noise and the most expensive toxic fumes. Christmas used to be about giving birth in unusual places without any medical assistance whatsoever. Now it’s about buying useless expensive gifts for people you don’t even like. 

People defend their religion from critics with the same fervour they defend Manchester United or Steve Jobs’ luxuriously autocratic mobile operating system. Nirvana is for people who have access to the most well stocked app store. Also, pretending to defend god is also pure human hubris. What the self-appointed defenders of faith are essentially saying is that not only is their god the most omnipotent, the most powerful, the king of every other god, but this very same powerful entity needs them, the average Joe-the guy who gets confined to the bed for five days because he was dumb enough to leave home without an umbrella even though it was drizzling outside-to defend them. Talk about your delusions of grandeur.

Not that I am a person who wants religion banished from the earth. We need religious people for the same reason we need the Kardashians; to make us feel better about ourselves. Everyone is entitled to their own delusion. I, for one, believe in the divine powers of a bottle of Jack Daniels and no amount of rehab can erode that belief. But I don’t go around legislating my beliefs or forcing them upon other people. In fact, I’d like as few people as possible to share my religion so that there is more ‘holy water’ left for me.

However, if you imagine someone is watching you every second of the day and keeping track of all your activities, then you’re right.

Although, I think you might have God confused with Kapil Sibal.

Eyebrow Olympians & Clerics: The Net is No Country for Old Men

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

Last month, when the news broke that telecom minister and eyebrow Olympics gold medallist Kapil Sibal was trying to censor the internet, the twittersphere rose up in unison and protested. It was as if a million Manmohan Singhs were trying to move a rock by sending it multiple strongly worded letters. After all, twitter is for tilting at windmills.

These wounds were re-opened this week when the Delhi High Court warned search and social networking companies that if they don’t comply with its diktats, the court would block them like they do in China. The Indian twittersphere was exasperated! Trying to make us more like China! Who do these old fogies think they are, N Ram? They don’t realize that if we wanted some unelected, arbitrary authority to determine the boundaries of acceptability, we would have supported Anna Hazare’s fledgling political outfit. Somebody switch on the rusty Dell 486 sitting politely at their desks and show them that the internet is like a Cormac McCarthy novel: it’s no country for old men.

While the Delhi High court wanted to turn us into China, vapid television anchors turned to twitter to lament our growing similarity to Pakistan. Finding such tenuous similarity between two countries is as easy as finding a son of a deposed Nigerian prince who just needs your bank account number to turn you into a bona fide millionaire. Allow me to demonstrate: We’re similar to Italy because both our countries have renowned economists who, as head of state, preside over an establishment prone to corruption. We’re like Britain because a large amount of both our populations yearn for the glory of the past. We’re like Australia because bigots in both countries are prone to using ethnic slurs to taunt tourists from less developed parts of the world. We’re like America because both of our countries are home to a large amount of illegal immigrants who have come from a smaller, poorer neighbouring country. We’re like Japan because both of our countries treat washed-out hollywood hangers-on as entertainment gods. We’re like Afghanistan because both our cricket teams are currently struggling to win a match overseas.

Speaking of being lazy, we discovered this week that boycotting harmless human garden gnome Salman Rushdie is still a thing! Hadn’t everyone secretly decided to move on from that battle? In fact, our last international nightmare involving Rushdie was when he took to twitter to complain about being blocked from making a Facebook page. Sure, Facebook is evil too, but it’s still slim pickings for the man who fought and won a war of attrition against Ayatollah Khomeini.

Rushdie was scheduled to speak at a couple of sessions during the Jaipur Literature Festival being held this week. So when the high-priests of the Darul Uloom heard about his visit, they called for the central government to cancel Rushdie’s visa, even though he doesn’t actually need one to visit India. But when have facts deterred a fundamentalist bent upon proving that his religion has the biggest penis? Also, why are these high priests channelling American movie studios and rehashing stuff from the 80’s?  

Of course, now that UP is having an election to determine its next top statue model, and the Congress is practically grovelling for votes in that state–like a starlet in Mumbai who promises a horny producer that she’ll do anything to get her big chance–it needed to do something to appease the crazy people. Thus, the Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Ashok Gehlot, made some noises about the people of Rajasthan not wanting Rushdie to visit the state and then claiming that his government would not be able to provide adequate security to Rushdie. Firstly, we didn’t realize that Gehlot is just like the character Jim Carrey portrayed in Bruce Almighty, and can hear the thoughts of every person living in his state. Secondly, if his government cannot provide security to one single person, then what is the point of his government?

Not that any central or state government is interested in defending free speech even during non-election time. Most of them start shitting bricks at the mere thought of someone taking offence to something.

If we can't offend people who think a book of short stories written thousands of years ago contains instructions on how to live life in the 21^st century, then the terrorists have won.