You’re So Vain, You Probably Think This Article Is About You

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

As he switched off the teevee, he could see the sun rising from his window. However, today this view wouldn’t cheer him up. He had just watched the foreign policy debate between Obama and Romney and he was disappointed that India wasn’t even mentioned once. How many more times will he have to face such humiliation? He feels his country is just a dirty little secret for the President. He took billions of dollars of our hard-earned money and then totally forgot about us. Each time he ignores us, it’s a slap in the face of the awesome future we had planned together. How can you do that to us, Barry? How can you slap?

As a country full of people who need constant validation, it was no surprise that the main point of discussion after the Presidential debate broadcast was that no one mentioned India during the debate. We’re like that character in sitcom who only pays attention to what other people are saying only when they’re talking about him. Even though the debate revolved around which candidate would be more awesome at bombing more brown people, people were upset that no one gave us a shout-out. After all, we invented the zero, bhangra music and Anil Kapoor. Isn’t that reason enough for everyone to keep talking about us, all the time?

Our politicians, diplomats and journalists have a schizophrenic love/hate relationship with America and its President.

Our politicians love to blame the ‘ubiquitous’ foreign hand for everything they are unable to explain. A foreign hand is behind the grassroots protest against nuclear power. The foreign hand teaches people that Internet censorship is bad. The foreign hand is in your telephone, tapping all your calls. And yet, the very same people trample over each other to shake the foreign hand when he comes over for a visit.

Our diplomats carry around a secret boner for the Republicans. Especially for their knight in faux cowboy boots, George W.  Bush. Because he does things they have always wanted to do. He didn't worry about "global warming" or the "Geneva convention" or "International treaties"  and would bomb, whoever he wanted, whenever he wanted. So what if a lot of civilians died as collateral damage? Who has time to find out if they’re bombing the right target or invading the right country when they’re busy choking on a pretzel? Christopher Columbus took a wrong turn - because he was using Apple Maps for navigation - and look how well it turned out for him. Republicans are always good for India! Who even remembers the time a Republican Administration sent a battleship to the Bay of Bengal to try to intimidate India during the ‘71 war or the time when another Republican administration funded the start of Osama Bin Laden and his ‘Jihad Jamboree.’ And don’t forget that while the last Republican administration might have given billions of dollars to the architect of the Kargil invasion to go shopping for weapons, they probably never intended to start another arms-race.  

Our news anchors act like entitled fangirls. They’re quite brave when they’re shouting at the teevee screen but turn to an embarrassing pile of mush once they’re actually faced with a member of the American government. One news anchor even asked Hillary Clinton on her first visit to India as Secretary of State to affirm America’s ‘love’ for India? What are we, a geopolitical entity or a girl in a rom-com who is about to lose her virginity to the wrong guy? Our journalists’ creepy obsession with America isn’t just limited to having a love-hate relationship with their political system. Our domestic news is also framed in American terms. Every terrorist attack in the country is India’s ‘9/11.’ Every government scandal is India’s ‘watergate.’ Every award ceremony in the country is India’s version of the Oscars. Aamir Khan’s teevee show talks about social issues, so naturally, he is India’s Oprah. And India has had more versions of Obama than the population of Kenya.

Our politicians, South Block mandarins and news anchors forget that only British Prime Ministers are constitutionally obligated to have unrequited feelings for the American President.

And that they’re supposed to get over him once he leaves office.

He knows that one day, Barry will be his friend. Until then he will sing Barry Can You Hear Me/Barry Can You See Me to the moon every night. He can take solace in the fact that some time in the near future, we will take our rightful place, right next to America, and both of us together will heal the world and make it a better place for you and for me and the entire human race. One day Barry will come home. Until then he will do what he does best. After all, the nation deserves to know.

Constructing the Self — Social Media Style

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

Ever since ‘deposed American President’ Al Gore “invented” it in the early 90s, the Internet and its early adopters have had an almost spousal relationship. From spending only an hour or two with each other every day in the beginning, to sleeping in separate rooms so as to give each other some ‘space.’ And thanks to the advent of social media, this married couple has been able to spice up its relationship through the magic of role-playing.

You can be a loser in real life, but you don’t have to play one on Facebook. It lets you showcase your life like you’ve always wanted other people to see it. Like a dystopian regime, you can simply edit out any unfortunate events that don’t fit the narrative that you have established for yourself and pretend that they never happened. Your life is simply one ginormous vacation spent making silly poses (ironically, of course!) in picturesque locations. You’re not currently stalking the object of your unrequited feelings; your relationship with them is ‘complicated.’ No, you never went to your friend’s bachelor party when you called in sick to work as you made sure your friends never ‘tagged’ you in any photograph. If you didn’t mention it on Facebook, then it probably never happened. Just because you use your real name, it doesn’t mean that anything about you has to be real.

And twitter is for exploring different parts of your personality. You’re not a jack of all trades; you’re an “exbert.”  As long as you don’t say what you really think. Because do you really want people to know that you really care about normal human things? Haha, you’re so naive! Human emotions are for people on Orkut!

When the car bomb outside the Israeli embassy went off, the detectives on twitter had already solved the case even before the Delhi Police could begin ignoring all the clues and the central government could briefly wake up from its slumber to ‘strongly condemn’ the perpetrators. The exberts on twitter KNEW who exploded the bomb! It was Iran! No, it was Israel! Who are you kidding, it was probably America! Nay, it was our arch-enemy and future ‘foreign hand hall of fame’ inductee, Pakistan. Or maybe it was Xenu, the overlord of scientology who finally came back to collect all our souls and bury them in another earth like planet so we could repeat the same mistakes on another celestial body trillions of years from now.

Later in the week, the twittersphere went from playing the protagonist of a Tom Clancy novel to pretending to be a cynical bastard. Everyone seemed to have finally discovered that Valentine’s day is a ploy by stuffed white teddy bears to infiltrate every house in the world so that they can learn our secrets and then threaten us into submission and slavery. People were more than eager to display their non-affiliation to a hallmark holiday. Unfortunately, it was all for nought as the only people talking about valentine’s day were the ones who had vowed, a day before, to stay away from all social media because they did not want to be overwhelmed by the sappy sentimentalism of the pro-valentines day movement  Twitter seemed to have been turned into a pageant with everyone vying for the title of ‘most ruthless takedown of love & relationships.’ The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Twitter is also for pretending to be someone ‘in the know.’ Take a widely circulated rumour, refer to it in ambiguous terms, mention a person or entity in power and viola, you are a bona fide insider! That is because people will believe anything about the object of their abject hatred.

When someone follows you or becomes your friend on a social networking website, they’re not really actually following you. They’re following the idea of you. The persona you have created online. The one which masks your sanctimony in mildly amusing jokes and links to a wide variety of interesting things. The persona which supports equality and outrages when someone somewhere says something inappropriate. The persona which says and does all the right things.

When you tweet with this false sense of security, your mask begins to slip and your tweets starts to reflect the real you. And you're oblivious to it, like the emperor is oblivious to his new clothes. People play along with your created image, praising your threads, when in fact, all they're doing is sniggering at the size of your dong.