Indian Democracy, Call Your Office

(Presented by LexCorp)

As we began the week, a staggering scene unfolded on our television screens. The whole world watched in shock and awe as a hero crumbled right in front of its eyes. A messiah of millions revealed his true self. All the people who had invested their hopes and dreams in his success were now heartbroken and inconsolable. Overwhelmed with despair, they had nowhere to turn to. They couldn’t even commiserate  with each other because they knew that anything they said would sound quite hollow. They promised themselves never to worship another human being again. But enough about Justin Beiber’s imminent fall into meth addiction!

Last weekend, when it was announced that India’s #1 man-child was going to be interviewed by India’s #1 blowhard, people were excited! (By people I mean political junkies on twitter and by excited I mean cringing in anticipation.) Everyone was looking forward to interpreting whatever Rahul Gandhi said using the lens of their pre-conceived notions.

The interview began by both the participants talking about the interview. You could tell this was Rahul Gandhi’s first interview for anything because a few minutes later he was asking Arnab a question and then chastising him for not answering it, perhaps because he wasn’t aware that a person being interviewed isn’t supposed to be the one asking questions. At some point he started referring himself in the third person, thus reminding viewers of every middle manager in corporate India. He sounded like the sort of employee that old family owned companies in India don’t fire because of some sense of misplaced loyalty. The kind who ‘trained’ the current CEO when he was young but is still in the same position because despite having been in the business for forty years, he still knows nothing about it. And when he retires, all he will have to show for his decades of ‘service’ would be a yellowing certificate signed by the current CEO’s grandfather and a Quartz watch he got at his depressing retirement party.

A long, long time ago, during the final semester of my college, I had to give a presentation. I was actually looking forward to this one because for the first time, I had made it myself and not gotten some lowly junior to make it for me. I had barely started to show the teacher the first slide that she started asking me questions I had not prepared for. When my flailing got really embarrassing, she curtly told me that I was done and dismissed me. But I wanted to salvage whatever remaining prestige that I had and insisted that she see the rest of my presentation. I couldn’t answer any of her questions again and my friend, seeing that I would go on signalled to me to end the torturous session and get off the damn stage or he would punch me in the face. I still cringe when I think about this incident! Unfortunately, Rahul’s interview for me was a vivid reminder of this very moment. He had prepared so hard! But no one askedhim the questions he wanted to answer. And he kept rambling on long after he needed to. Maybe surrounding yourself with yes-men who never let you face even a smidgen of contrary opinion let alone allowing a friend to threaten you with bodily harm for fucking up is not the best idea? It was like Gotham city sending Robin’s intern to fight their biggest villain while Batman stayed back in the batlair, watching the destruction of his beloved home on teevee.

After the interview was over, the Congress trolls on twitter were doing extreme verbal gymnastics and calling it an insightful interview showcasing the humility of their lord and master while the BJP trolls were doing twitter’s version of dancing in the streets. The only good thing most sane people could bring themselves to say about the interview was that at least Rahul Gandhi has given more interviews than Narendra Modi. Even though he answered questions that had a simple yes and no answer with an incoherent word salad of meaningless phrases, at least he sat through them. Maybe we should get our Prime Ministerial candidates to do the limbo because the bar seems to be set too low.

One would have thought that the interview would yield a discussion around the fact that one of our supposed Prime Ministerial candidates and the vice-president of one of the country’s largest political parties was giving his first major interview on the eve of his third parliamentary election. That he was only deeming it necessary to ‘speak out’ to the general public now that his party is facing an electoral rout and his minions thought that putting him ‘out there’ might rejuvenate their campaign. That he found it prudent to give his first interview to the person who just last week had an argument with one of his guests, a member of parliament no less, the highlight of which was both of them calling the other “a child,” should give the journalistic fraternity some sort of pause. That the other candidate hasn’t even deemed it necessary to give in to even the pretence of facing questions from someone who might be a little hostile to his agenda should be worrying to all of us. That these are the sort of people populating the pillars of our democracy should be making us uneasy with questions of our own.

Or maybe we could just follow Justin Beiber’s lead and descend into an alternate reality too.

Are You Ready for #VoterMania2014?

“Finally,” bellowed the announcer, “Arvind Kejriwal has come back to . . . Ramlila Maidan.” The crowd erupted with a huge cheer. They told him that this day wouldn’t come. They said that he would be a flash in the pan. They said that he was too insignificant to even be remembered as a historical footnote. Yet, here he was. Listening to the millions and millions of his supporters chanting his name. Arvind closed his eyes to soak in the moment. As he stepped up to the podium to take the oath of office, the noise was deafening. They could probably hear the happy roar of the crowd in the secure confines of a fancy bungalow in Janpath as well as the state capital of Gujarat. He smiled. From now on, he would be known as the most electrifying man in Indian politics. After everything was going to be said and done. After all the smoke will be cleared. There would only be one man left standing. And he will be none other than the trail blazing, Shiela Dikshit defeating, morning ablutions tweeting, muffler wearing, people’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal.

* * *

Previously, when we checked in with the people of New Delhi, they were busy haggling over who would get to play their chief minister and pretend to solve their problems. Since Shiela Dikshit had retired to spend more time with all the flyover models in her house and no one else had come forward to take her place, the city was being run by an empty bottle of imported whiskey. The Lt. Governor was so desperate to find a human administrator for the city that he even contemplated going old-school and settling the dispute as they used to do in ancient times: hosting a butter chicken eating contest and awarding the chief ministership to the winner of the contest. 

This situation came about because none of the parties in the legislature were in a position to form the government. In fact, in a first for electoral democracy, all the three parties wanted to sit in the opposition. The BJP fulfilled its election promise of providing strong leadership by refusing to even attempt to form the government, even though it was the party with the most legislators. The AAP didn’t want to form the government because (a) it wasn’t in the mood, (b) it had a headache and (c) it probably had too much wine at dinner, was very tired and all it wanted to do was go to sleep so would you please switch off the light, honey? The tiny group of legislators that belonged to the Congress were busy wondering what they were doing in the assembly anyway.

That question was answered a fortnight later when after days of goading by its political opponents, the news media, and its supporters, the AAP finally agreed to form the government with outside support from the Congress. Our national nightmare was finally over! The city with the highest number of government officials in the country was going to get another half dozen of them!

So history was made and thousands of people watched Arvind Kejriwal take the oath of office and become the first resident of Ghaziabad to become the Chief Minister of New Delhi. Never before had so many people gathered together in a single venue without any food stalls in the vicinity. The stage Kejriwal took the oath on was made of wood, concrete, Anna Hazara’s crumbled hopes, Harsh Vardhan’s tears and faux piousness.

In a month’s time, Arvind Kejriwal had gone from flash-in-the-pan-do-gooder, to being labelled as the most omnipotent force in Indian politics. He became India’s newest boyfriend and/or saviour. His narrative was less expert politician and more vanquishing hero. It’s like something out of a wrestling storyline. An unknown man comes out of nowhere and issues a challenge to the more established candidates. They mock him and act like he is no threat to them even though they’re really worried of losing their position. They try to stop him by any means necessary. They throw every roadblock his way and make him go through every obstacle they can think of. Yet, he overcomes all of their challenges and despite the overwhelming odds, emerges victorious and wins the championship. Even Vince McMahon couldn’t come up with something better.

So, now, everyone wants to be his friend. Social activists, people pretending to be social activists, actors, billionaires, politicians not affiliated to any other political party right now, busybodies, journalists, children and grandchildren of freedom fighters, senior citizens who are also members of their local laughter club, adults who once wrote an essay in school about things that they would do if they were made the prime minister, and folks who love that Anil Kapoor movie in which he gets to be chief minister for one day. All of them are all lining up to join the AAP.

Since he’s the most popular kid in school now, the other political parties don’t know what to do with him. The BJP keeps trying to prove that whatever actions Kejriwal takes has been done by them before. We hated the Congress before it was cool. The BJP zombies on twitter who-till last month-were so goddamn sure of Narendra Modi becoming Prime Minister for life and their party winning all the parliamentary seats in general election are now spending the better part of their day fruitlessly trying to prove that Kejriwal is the worst thing to happen to the country since bollywood producers discovered Telugu movies. The Congress has a love-hate relationship with the AAP. They love them for taking away the ‘change’ mantle from the BJP. But they hate them for taking away the we’re-the-only-thing-standing-between-you-and-desi Putin mantle away from the Congress. However, they still have to pretend to like the AAP because Rahul Gandhi is fascinated by them. So they support the AAP with the same enthusiasm shown by children who are forced by their parents to accompany them on visits to older relatives who insist on discussing the strange rash on their pelvis during dinner.

So, ladies and gentlemen, that’s going to be your next few months. One man’s election campaign is going to be another man’s gladiatorial soap opera.

* * *

He stood on the stage and saw all his Modimaniacs looking at him with their expectant eyes, chanting his name, treating every word out of his mouth as a pronouncement from god. He smirked. Did anyone really think that they could stop his momentum? Or steal his thunder? There is no one out there that can even come close to inspiring the sort of devotion that he does. After all, he is the excellence of execution. The best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be. He is so close to taking what is rightly his that he can almost taste it.  All he needs to do is to keep reminding people to say their prayers and take their vitamins. His critics can do and say whatever they want. Haters gonna hate, right? The real question dear critics, he thought to himself, is that whatcha gonna do, brothers, when the Modimaniacs run wild on you?

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.

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]

Welcome to Incredible India!

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

I tried looking out the dusty window to get a look at–what I assumed–was a beautiful scenery, and not just a row of terribly made houses of various proportions. I shifted the weight of the bag to my other leg. There wasn’t any available space for me to put my luggage in the overhead compartment because by the time I reached the train all the empty slots had been occupied by bags belonging to my fellow passengers. Not one to cause any trouble or let such small incidents ruin my adventurous mood, I busied myself with trying to breathe in the atmosphere. It smelt like a communal toilet at an all-male college hostel, but, that is part of the charm of travelling by a train in India.

My mouth watered as I saw the steward distributing trays with packed goodies. The food was here! Finally, some relief for my famished stomach. As he threw the tray at my wobbly, make-shift table with the grace of an orphanage warden from a Charles Dickens novel distributing grub to his most hated wards, I shook my head at this endearing show of familiarity. I took one bite of the unrivalled delicacies placed in front of me and let out a contented sigh. It tasted like it came from home. Specifically, an old people’s home. Because it didn’t have any salt, grain, texture, flavour, or any other qualities that would let us classify it as an item fit for consumption by a living being of any species. As they say, that’s how the cookie crumbles. Or at least I thought that was a cookie?

* * *

Once upon a time, around the early aughts of the current century, the ancients used to share their thoughts with the rest of the world by what a majority of people referred to as ‘a blog.’ Short for weblog, this was quite a popular enterprise for a lot of people: parents wanting to share their experience with other parents, those with a lot of proverbial skeletons in their cupboard looking for an outlet, writers wanting to practice their craft, bar drunks looking for an audience to rant to, people willing to rally against conventional wisdom and those who felt that a certain point of view was being ignored by the mainstream media. The best way to identify a blog run by a person of Indian origin was to look at its title. If it contained either “random” or “confessions” or a Vedic reference, then there was a very high probability of that blog having at least some connection to the subcontinent. 

One of the most frequent occurrences on these blogs (and a meme that is still strangely popular on twitter) was nostalgic posts romanticizing the travel industry in the country. The beautiful sights! The amazing journey! The awkward moment when you realize that you’ve been had!

Travelling to our country is not for those who give up easily. We like to make everything much more difficult to accomplish! Trying to book a train ticket using the Indian Railways website is harder than trying to master bullfighting. The government sites that are supposed to provide information look like their developer hired a time travelling teenager visiting us from the 90’s who is colour blind and has only read the first chapter of ‘The World Wide Web for Dummies’ instruction manual to make them.

Not that privatising everything solves any problem. Most popular destinations now have more food courts than actual visitors. Private resorts think that adding a fancy Urdu word to the end of each menu item raises its value by at least a thousand percent. Try our Singaporean Fried Rice Zafarani, a bowel moment stopping exotic blend of two unique food cultures. Our Chicken Khwabgah has been marinated with flavoured yogurt and slowly roasted over a pit heated by the burning embers of the hopes and dreams that you had for your first born which disappeared the minute you realized that you spent all the money that you had been saving for their college education to pay your bill at our hotel. The mineral water being served with your meal was extracted from the bladder of a unicorn then injected with the weird liquid that turns even those sugar pills homeopathic quacks hand out bitter and then sprinkled with the bacteria living in the hands of your designated server.

Safety isn’t really an issue in our country in that most people don’t have any. Flying with our ‘national airline’ is like playing Russian roulette with five bullets instead of one. Our highways are like storage units for potholes. Most of our public facilities are so unclean that some of them probably still have strains of the smallpox virus embedded in them.

We’re also quite friendly to folks who are not like us. The majority of the people of this country are very accepting of those who are different. That is why they don’t stare and make the visitors feel uncomfortable at all. They don’t even treat them like exotic objects flown in for us to admire or treat with disdain depending on the pigmentation of their skin.

The whole tourism industry seems to be built on fleecing people. From the service providers responsible for transportation, to the officials who deliberately misguide those whom they are supposed to be providing help to, everyone is in on the take. Hey, this person is naive enough to trust us. Let’s stiff them for all they’ve got! In fact, getting fleeced is one of the most essential parts of your experience. Your vacation in India isn’t a success unless you’ve been overcharged, cheated, duped, misled, or taken for a ride at least once.

Now, please excuse me as I try to convince this American billionaire I ran into that he can legally lease the Taj Mahal.

How to be a Real Tourist

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

Do you like to travel? If you do, then have you ever made a whole bunch of your fellow travellers uncomfortable with your cringe inducing presence? Have you ever improved the quality of a tourist spot just by leaving it? Do you have that application on Facebook which shows the various cities and countries that you have travelled to? If your answer to any or all of the above questions is a loud no, then ladies and gentlemen, consider this an intervention. Clearly, you’ve been missing out. And as a concerned citizen, I consider it my patriotic duty to help you correct that.

First things first. If you’re using public transportation to get to your destination, remember that you paid good money for your ticket. So you better avail every service that they provide. For starters, you should charge all your electronic items on the train. That’s what they’re there for! You should monopolize all the electronic sockets near your seat for as long as your journey lasts. Other people should’ve planned ahead. Why didn’t those moochers charge their cheap tablet at home anyway? Also, grab every food or beverage they serve you. Even if you’re not either hungry or thirsty. Even if it looks like it carries a thousand diseases. Don’t be one of those hippies who don’t take things that they’re legally entitled to because they don’t feel like it. The service providers probably expect you to take those sachets of sugar or those cheap headphones with you anyway. Why add extra work for the staff by leaving things behind?

Then, as soon as you are a few minutes away from the end of your journey, stand in the aisle with all your luggage so that you're ready to get down the second the blurry visuals passing by vaguely resemble your destination. Remember, it’s a race! Whoever leaves first wins! Even if it’s only the satisfaction of leaving a claustrophobic confines of a public transportation vessel a few minutes before the rest of your fellow passengers. Don’t wait for your mode of transport to slow down before you start taking down your luggage from the overhead compartment. It’s always safer to do it while trying to stand still in an object moving at a high speed! You’re not liable to fall down or cause injury to other people at all. The laws of motion, like other laws you don’t care about, were meant to be broken.

Further, always haggle with the porter for cheaper rates. They expect you do it. Even if it is in a foreign country where they don’t include the possibility of bargaining in their pricing strategies. Hey, if those who survive on minimum wage want to scam you for your money, why don’t they open a fancy resort like normal people? This is why you also never tip at restaurants. You’re not going to show up at this place again anyway, so why reward good service?

Don’t forget to take pictures of everything, so that many years later you can remember the time when you were present to see this awesome sight befolding in front of you and you were taking a picture so that you could enjoy the experience later. Even if you’re never going to look at any of these photos again! A grainy cellphone picture is always better than actually being there. You should even take pictures of museum items like old paintings. Sure, the light from the flash in your camera might damage them, and you can buy a replica at the souvenir store, but why should you be forced to buy something which the shitty camera in your phone can record for free?

Your experience is not going to be complete without sharing your pictures with a few thousand of your closest friends on social media. It’s the modern version of the classic ‘wish you were here!’ postcard. Except more passive-aggressive and self-aggrandising. You could be a little subtle and let the location tags in your pictures and tweets reveal where you really are. Or you could go all guns blazing like a real townie and let everybody know where you really are by talking about your existential experience at a famous landmark.

When you’re looking for food to eat, always look for something familiar. You didn’t come all this way to try something new! Who does that? Look for a restaurant serving your native cuisine or a local franchise of a fast food chain. Most of the time time the food will taste very different from what you’re used to. This will give you a great opportunity to feel superior and talk about your travels when you’re back home. Oh, I couldn’t find a decent portion of butter chicken anywhere in Florence! Even a rodent could whip up a more edible casserole of Ratatouille than what they serve in Kanpur!

Now that you’re armed with these tips, go forth and see the world. Don’t let silly things like “common courtesy” or “the opinion of other people” bother you. 

After all, they still don’t allow Yelp reviews of individual tourists.

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)

UPA Ministers Say The Darnest Things (Part 3)

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

(Click Here for Part 1 & Click Here for Part 2)

We have sadly come to the end of our trilogy about the esteemed leaders running our country. Granted, they might be running it into the ground, but at least we can laugh at them while we drown our sorrows in alcohol and gallows humour. In this edition we also give an honorary shoutout to two former members of the cabinet who we will always remember with a smile on our faces, disgust in our hearts and a solitary tear in our eye.

Our seventh contestant is defence minister and the inspiration behind the Mr. Magoo cartoon character, AK Antony. Possessing the personality of a tetanus injection, Antony is proof that being clueless is considered a virtue in this country. His main qualification for one of the top four jobs in the union cabinet was that he is too stupid to be corrupt. He is so out of his depth in the defence ministry, even Manmohan Singh is able to bully him. Antony also has to visit the hospital very often because he keeps getting his foot embedded in his mouth and has to get it surgically removed. He once floated a 26/11 conspiracy theory that even an anonymous internet commentator would be ashamed to propagate. He continues to deny that any incursions take place on the India-China border even though Chinese soldiers regularly cross over into our side to satisfy their insatiable thirst for Chicken Manchurian while taking pictures of each other using the smartphones assembled in a factory by their own children. Yet, Antony’s employers keep him where he is, because honesty!

Our final contestant is Minister of State for Human Resource Development and human plate of scones, Shashi Tharoor. For the first few years after his election, he appeared to be out of place among his contemporaries in Parliament. He seemed like he would have been more comfortable arguing with Bertie Wooster about the ownership status of a cow creamer rather than explain the vagaries of international law to Sharad Yadav. Back when he was Minister for External Affairs, he was often found bringing a chippy attitude to his job. I say old chap, what’s all this rummy business with that old codger they call the Dalai Lama? He spent most of his first year clarifying and apologizing for some gaffe or the other. Being made a constant target fortified his credentials as a bonafide middle class icon. He became a real life hero. One of us, as they like to say. He could speak English with an indeterminate accent! He went to all the right schools! He was the type of politician who wouldn’t get his hands dirty by committing petty crimes! He was being bullied into silence by his own jealous colleagues and their  surrogates in the media because he dared to speak the truth on twitter! He liked to pose for photographs which showed him thoughtfully staring into the future, the true mark of an intellectual.

So when it was revealed that the only thing Shashi Tharoor cared about was Shashi Tharoor and he had to resign, people were shocked. How could he betray us? If you can’t trust people who have spent their whole life believing that the world revolves around them, then whom can you trust? However, a few months later a newer, shinier, hungrier, middle class hope came along and everybody forgot about the former UN under-secretary general. So, last year, Tharoor was rehabilitated into the council of ministers, without any fanfare. He’s now become a fierce partisan warrior, even using his impressive articulation skills to tweet political arguments using a silly hashtag invented by a person with a negative IQ.

Our first honorary shoutout goes to former Home Minister and safari suit aficionado, Shivraj Patil. His greatest (and probably only) achievement was turning incompetence into high art. In fact, Shivraj Patil’s stint in government was such a catastrophe, Shivraj Patil promised that the perpetrators of this horrible incident will be caught and brought to justice. And then he wet his pants. These days, Patil is cooling his heels at the expensive senior citizen home known as the Punjab Governor’s mansion and is currently working on his memoirs, tentatively titled, 27 Dresses: The Shivraj Patil Story.

Let’s not forget about former Minister of Petroleum and Burra Sahib extraordinaire, Mani Shankar Aiyer. He left the union cabinet to spend more time being mean and distant to every guest on every NDTV show. But nothing encapsulates his personality like an article he wrote last year for Outlook magazine. In it, he whined about not being served champagne in first class while he was travelling in an American airline. He was also angry at being addressed by his name by people he thought were beneath him. His exact words were “Democracy in America apparently means the right of the lower orders to be rude to their social superiors.”

HOW DARE THEY ADDRESS HIM BY HIS FIRST NAME? HE HAS MORE MONEY THAN THEM FOR PETE’S SAKE! He gets invited to the best parties! He appears on teevee! Why didn’t they prostate in front of him? They treated him like a . . . . normal! Preposterous! It was very brave of Mr Aiyar to not have reported this incident to the American state department. As everybody knows, the state department’s only purpose of existence is to make sure all Indian VIPs visiting America are treated with the respect they deserve. Also, for future reference, the only acceptable salutations are: A) SIR DR MANI SHANKAR AIYAR SIR, B) HIS EXCELLENCY MANI SHANKAR AIYAR THE EIGHTH and C) MANI HONEY. Mani remembers a time when social superiors were not forced to mix with the rest. Everybody knew their place in the world. The rich would be treated with the importance they deserved and the rest would be . . . . well, who cares about the rest? That was a golden age! When sitting in premier class meant something. If you asked for champagne, you would get champagne. If you asked for caviar, by jove, you would get caviar. And now? First class just means that you have more leg space than those unfortunate masses forced to travel in economy.

So, who do you think is the winning contestant? Did we leave anyone out? Send your answers to wearereallyscrewed@canabillionpeopleimmigratetocanada.com.

Hey Sister, Leave the Kid Alone

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

If you’ve ever watched a movie in a theatre in Maharashtra – India’s premium supplier of sub-inspectors and autocratic assholes – then you would know that every theatre is required to play the national anthem before every show of every movie. Last week, at a nondescript theatre in a nondescript part of Mumbai, a brave patriot ladyee was busy standing in solemn attention, honouring Tagore’s most popular poem the way our forefathers intended when from the corner of her eye she saw that a young, fancy lookin’ fella hadn’t bothered to stand up for the anthem. Incensed at this unforgivable blasphemy, she naturally did what the constitution says is the duty of every citizen: she slapped him. Now, some people might react differently, like giving the young man disapproving looks, or by rolling their eyes whilst tut-tut-ing the state of the youth or maybe even ignoring him because as long as they’re not harming you then what other people do is none of your business. But those people are amateurs. Real patriots choose violence!

Turns out, the disrespectful young man wasn’t even an Indian citizen. He was an Australian citizen of Indian origin. And that is the excuse he gave our brave patriotic ladyee. Thankfully, she was having none of it. She was sure he was Indian! He looked vaguely brown, had a fake accent and after being physically assaulted by some weird woman for no logical reason whatsoever, did not take the next available flight to a saner country.

The incident came to light (and was front page news for a Mumbai tabloid) because the lady in question is married to a mildly famous actor who was in that thing that one time. On twitter, while there were a few people mocking her for her idiocy, there were also a lot of them defending her. We don’t condone her actions, but we agree with the sentiment.

Recently, a BJP MP demanded that the next NDA government take back Amartya Sen’s Bharat Ratna because while answering a question asked in an interview, Sen said in his opinion, you-know-who is not an appropriate candidate for Prime Minister. The BJP was shocked – shocked! – that someone didn’t think that their dear leader wasn’t the greatest thing since the knife that was used to invent sliced bread.

Meanwhile, a restaurant in Mumbai had to close down temporarily after “allegedly” being threatened by youth congress ‘workers.’  No, they weren't protesting the restaurant's pledge to serve only “pure-vegetarian” food (because the sad, lonely, and boring group of people called ‘vegetarians’ also have a right to gather with their own kind), rather they were protesting the restaurant's practice of serving a satirical dig at the UPA along with the bill and no mouth freshener. (Maybe this is how vegetarian restaurants work? I wouldn’t know! In fact, I am pretty sure asking someone to eat at a restaurant which only serves vegetarian fare is a violation of the Geneva Convention against torture.) The youth congress workers went back to bullying some other helpless law abiding citizen only after the owner of the restaurant “voluntarily” apologized. The Congress was shocked – shocked! – that a person badly affected by their idiotic policies would express dissatisfaction with how they were running the government.

Maybe it’s because I interrupted my busy schedule of learning how to sleep with my eyes open to pay attention in civics class, all this doesn’t seem right? Maybe forcing people to show superficial respect for things that you hold in high esteem for some reason is a little, I don’t know, twisted? Or physically harming someone for not paying obeisance to a man-made symbol of reverence appears to be a little umm, excessive?

Our collective compulsion to make everyone agree with us and see things our way all the time is an indication of a much deeper malaise. We’re never short of things to be chauvinistic about: patriotism, religion, sports teams, phone companies. Anything to prove that I’m better than you! Those who have the courage of their convictions don’t need random strangers to validate them. The point of living in a free country is that if you don’t want to stand up while they’re playing the national anthem, then you don’t have to. Other people don’t get to decide for you.

It boggles the mind that most of our debates come around to trying to make people understand that not everyone shares their worldview and that’s okay. We adopted a democratic system of governance so that random douchebags couldn’t impose their will on us. Leaving people alone to do their own thing is one of the major features of democracy.

Now please excuse me as I go back to writing a series of strongly worded letters to the government asking them to ban the evil practice of vegetarianism.

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.

Your Call Is Important To Us

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

It was one of those weeks when the bad news just wouldn’t stop. However, one major event weighed heavily on everyone’s mind and ended up overshadowing everything else. An event which-years from now-will be considered the final nail in the coffin of life as we currently know it. An event which will be remembered as the starting point of the sordid state our future lives will be in. We are now marching towards the sort of nightmarish existence that all of our favourite ‘dystopian lit’ authors warned us about. The die has been cast, all the ducks are in a row and tyranny is knocking on our doorsteps. But enough about the elevation of Narendra Modi as his party’s campaign chief.

Earlier this week, whistleblower Edward Snowden and journalist Glenn Greenwald-confirming a lot of people’s vague suspicions and breathing life into a thousand conspiracy theories-released documents which revealed how deep the tentacles of the secret intelligence agencies of the US government are embedded inside the global communication system. They ‘allegedly’ monitor every text, every email, every chat, every phone call, every tweet, every ‘like’ on Facebook, every to-do list, every post-it note, every game of scrabble and every entry in your journal. (Even the ones that come with a lock. All the government wants to know is why you would not want to share your most personal, darkest, and most revolting thoughts with the rest of the world. What are you, an enemy of the state?)

The only groups of people rejoicing this news are (a) lonely people who finally have someone who is listening to them all the time and (b) the sycophants of the surveillance state. The people belonging to the second group are always excusing the government’s violation of citizens’ privacy with “if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t be worried.” But then these people never practice what they preach and don’t make all their personal information available publicly. WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?

Monitoring every activity of every citizen does not make us safer; it makes us more vulnerable. You may think you’re doing nothing wrong right now, but what happens when the state decides that something you do every day is now illegal or equivalent to treason. For example, what if they made googling “UPA Government + Achievements” a punishable offence? (Though the joke would be on them because they don’t have any, unless you consider ‘giving Manmohan Singh an ulcer’ an achievement). Binayek Sen was jailed by the Chhattisgarh government for possessing reading materials that were considered ‘sympathetic’ to the naxalite cause. In Iran in 2009, the government arrested, jailed and tortured thousands of protestors belonging to the Green Movement on the basis of their internet activity and GPS data placing them at the scene of the protests.

No politician or bureaucrat goes around wearing a “lose your freedom now, ask me how” button. Allowing a government to put their citizens under surveillance without any oversight will never end well. All the information they possess can and will be used against you. Being able to keep tabs on every movement of their citizens is the wet dream of most governments. Once you start giving up your freedom, there is no limit to what can be taken away in the name of ‘national security.’

Even the Indian government is working on a central control system which will be able to monitor its citizen’s activities across all communication networks. People who can’t get their shit together to make a website strong enough to let more than one person book a train ticket at a time are going to keep track of all our personal information. It’s totally not going to be misused because if there is one thing government departments in India are known for, it’s their ability to keep important information secure! Somewhere outside the big government office in the sky, standing in a line waiting for lunch break to be over, a dozen RTI activists are nodding in agreement.

As the leaked documents show, the NSA doesn’t even have to go through the formality of seeking a court order to access anyone’s personal information. They don’t even have to ask or inform the service provider because they have direct access to their systems. And they can do that for people who they don’t even suspect of any wrongdoing.

This march, the NSA collected ninety seven billion pieces of evidence from computer networks worldwide, six billion of those gathered from India.

We’re all now citizens of the surveillance state. Being a terrorist until proven innocent is the new normal

Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?

In God We Trust

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

There was once a young man called Sree,
Who wanted a lot of money for free,
He thought it was novel,
To fix a match using a towel,
But he was caught by the police before he could flee.

Last week, as the outrage cycle around the latest IPL scandal gathered steam, the match broadcast was eerily calm about the most popular breaking news of the day. For the commentators it was business as usual. There was no acknowledgment of the fact that someone they considered ‘one of their own’ had betrayed the very principles they purport to stand for. There was so much denial in that stadium that one expected the commentators to pay tribute to the glorious principles of the Juche republic. The only indication that something was amiss came when the camera spotted a young Aditya Pancholi flying over the pitch in a helicopter.

However, outside the stadium, almost everyone with a soapbox was having a staggering meltdown of epic proportions. While news channels called upon a veritable who’s who of who cares to bloviate, print magazines and websites were commissioning pieces in which the writer gave voice to the anguish they felt at such horrendous treachery. And some people on social media were shocked – shocked! – that an activity in India involving billions of dollars was embroiled in corruption.

This is sort of scandal everybody loves! The politicians got to rail against corruption and crony capitalism, the very systems that they derive their power from. The Delhi Police looks good because instead of holding a press conference to provide justification for trampling on someone’s fundamental rights, they’re holding one to announce something they’ve managed to accomplish. Hell, even the Mumbai Police got a piece of the action when they took a break from crashing private parties to actually arresting someone remotely related to criminal activity. And news organizations got someone new to throw under the bus. Someone who not only seems guilty enough but is also powerless to actually make them pay for their supposed ‘transgression.’ Welcome to the national orgy of ecstatic sanctimony. Angry people get in for free.

So now that we know that our police can follow the trail of illicit money and actually catch people, we should get them to use their superpowers for good - like arresting some of the big ‘kingpins’ who’re responsible for serious violations of the law. Maybe even a couple of people in positions of power who use our social resources for their own personal benefit, to begin with. They don’t have to try very hard to find these criminals. According to an unconfirmed survey by the Ministry of Statistics, every two seconds, a new scam is born in India. 

Let’s also stop pretending that participating in a sport is a noble pursuit that remains untouched by the corruption, deceit, double-dealing, dishonesty and trickery that exists in the world?  If you believe that, you probably also believe that all those businessmen who spent so much money to get elected President of the BCCI did so because they love the game. They don’t expect to profit from that position at all. “Surely.” I mean, they’re highly successful people who have amassed large amounts of wealth. What do they know about making money, anyway?

There are more cricket channels in India than the number of times Vijay Mallaya has hit on his team’s cheerleaders. If you get the five asshole kids from your neighbourhood to play a match on teevee, some fans will even watch that. However, most sports fans are addicted to the narrative. To them, a match means more than just a match; it’s an allegory for the human condition. It’s where mortals turn into gods, villains get their comeuppance, and the underdog comes out on top. It’s where miracles happen. If you remove the narrative around the sport, then it’s just a bunch of people standing around, throwing a ball to each other, following some arbitrary rules someone made up hundreds of years ago.

So when something punctures this romantic bubble that sports fans live in, they tend to take the betrayal personally. We want our sports competitions to have a picture perfect ending. And yet, we don’t realize that without these ‘outside influences,’ we’re not going to get one. There is no cancer-surviving seven time Tour De France champion without the steroids. There is no Tiger Woods without the sex addiction. And there is no ‘poetic finish to a great day of cricket’ without the betting.

The IPL is sports distilled down to its basic purpose: to make money. It’s a huge payday for everyone involved! People don’t play well because of idealistic notions like “team spirit” or “for the love of the game.” They play well because that gives them more money.  They play well because they want to be able to sell you fizzy drinks, washing machines, luxury sedans, potato chips, underwear and energy bars.

After this scandal broke, there were a few fans protesting outside stadiums hosting IPL matches, asking for a ban on the tournament. One of the banners they were holding said that cricket was their religion. 

Perhaps it’s time for these devotees to learn that even gods aren’t infallible.

Hallelujah!

It’s Not Twitter Wot Won It

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

While ‘the nation’ sweltered in the blistering summer, its political establishment used this opportunity to remind its citizens that mother nature’s wrath pales in comparison to the mind-numbing torture that is going to be the slow trundle towards the General Election from Hell by having its two top dogs give duelling speeches. The nation lay divided, forced to pick a side. Would they choose the frog who might one day turn into a handsome prince? Or would they choose the hare who assumes that he has won the race even before it has begun?

Nobody really knows what is going to happen but that hasn’t stopped those brave men and women who weather the blowing winds of common sense everyday to bring you fake narratives that have no basis in reality from making predictions about the outcome. Those heroes who have never been right about anything, ever. There are no words that can describe their contribution to the public welfare. To a country plagued by unending problems, they continue to be an unintentional source of hilarity. You find these legends everywhere! They’re the ones shouting at each other on teevee. They’re the ones writing columns in language so archaic that Macaulay would be proud. They’re the ones voluntarily submitting themselves to receiving a hundred metaphorical lashes from the internet by writing a post explaining their hypothesis.

On each of the days the frog and the hare were giving a speech, the fans and paid sycophants belonging to the opposition managed to get a hashtag mocking them to trend on twitter. (I use the word ‘mocking’ very loosely here. The kind of people that were posting tweets using either of the hashtags are an embarrassment to humanity.) So, naturally, it somehow became conventional wisdom that whoever wins the hashtag war (yes, that’s what they’re calling it) on twitter is going to win the General Election from Hell. There were actual human adults who are paid for providing information to the public taking this argument seriously.

I am old enough to remember when a twitter outrage cycle used to take a week before it reached the mainstream media. Now, it’s all over the news cycle in a couple of hours. That’s because twitter helps news organizations to find a great substitute for an actual issue without leaving their desk. Take that, people going to remote locations to gather information. .

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love twitter! It’s one of the good things about the internet. Some of my best friends are twitter users! It’s really great for having funny conversations, getting to know like minded people and finding out the best place to have brunch in Zanzibar. It also enables a person to cocoon themselves from contrary opinion. When you only follow people who are like you or agree with you most of the time, it becomes easy to believe that everybody is concerned about the same things you are. However, at any given moment, there are more people on twitter not giving a rat’s ass about issues closest to your heart. If you think that twitter has any impact on the real world, then you need to go out and speak to an actual human. (Though I wouldn’t recommend it. Did you know you cannot even re-tweet or favourite things that you say in real life? How crude! Human interaction is the worst.)

If anybody with a large number of followers thinks that it actually matters, then please note that Nirupama Rao, India’s Ambassador to the US, has more than a hundred thousand followers and her twitter feed is basically links to articles everybody else on the internet read two weeks ago and sepia toned photos of her travels (no, she doesn’t actually need to use any filters. She’s so boring that all her photographs look like they were taken with a box camera and took a month to develop). Our minister of re-tweeting compliments, Shashi Tharoor, has more than a million. And the worst thing to happen to the memory of Anne Frank, Justin Beiber, has more twitter followers than the population of Canada.

Maybe the backlash to such useless discussions will finally reach the ears of the people that run news organizations in this country. Maybe they’ll realize the error of their ways. Maybe it will dawn on them that they don’t have to be stuck in this circle of banality forever. Maybe they’ll figure out that they do not have to spend the rest of their lives being party to the extended foreplay between Swapan Dasgupta and Mani Shankar Aiyar. Maybe this time, when they ask the question, Did we pay too much undeserved attention to social media?, they will actually mean it. Maybe for one brief moment, they will look the viewer in the eye and do something unheard of: report the news.

Or maybe, they could just have another panel discussion.

Whatever.

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.

Goodbye Privacy; We Hardly Knew Ye

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

Recently, internet overlord google announced that its going to allow a lucky few the privilege of paying fifteen hundred dollars to be able to get their hands on a pair of google glasses, as long as they write a fifty word essay - encapsulating their desperation for owning something no one else has - in fancy jargon. That’s because a new device isn’t “in demand” or “cutting edge” enough unless it’s creators treat potential customers like an abusive spouse treats their victim. You’ll never be good enough, y’hear? I don’t know what’s worse: that there are people willing to debase themselves to receive the momentary validation of owning the next big thing or that a fifty word paragraph is now considered an essay? Somewhere in hell, my third grade English teacher is shaking her head in horrid disapproval. (I assume that she’s in hell because she never returned any pen she ‘borrowed’ and dead because she’s not on Facebook). 

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about because you get all your tech news from that studious cousin who helped create your email account, google glasses are like normal glasses except they can do everything your smartphone can do. Like make calls, reply to instant messages and tweet sepia-toned pictures of your food. In a few years, all those douchebags who have loud conversations in public because they insist on wearing a bluetooth headset everywhere they go will be replaced by assholes shouting things at their glasses because the damn thing won’t understand their fake accent 

I bet everyone is looking forward to using another device which you can buy but not own because for you to be able to use it to its full potential you need to provide its manufacturer with your personal information. What other choice do we have, really? Not use a device? Pffft! Send an ‘inland letter’ instead of an email? Too slow! Learn to write on paper? Whatever, grandpa. If you can’t trust a huge corporation bent upon monetizing every moment of your existence then who can you trust?

Not wanting to be left behind, our governments are also coming up with new ways to keep tabs on the public. For example,  one of the world’s largest defence contractor in conjunction with the US government has developed a new software that can gather and analyze all the information about a target from every social networking website in a matter of minutes. The software is sophisticated enough to help its user(s) gather detailed information about the person they’re spying on. They can know who their target’s friends are, the places they frequent, photographic evidence which places them at a particular spot at a specific point of time and the amount of sugar they like in their coffee. But that’s okay, because they’re only going to make us safer, aren’t they? It’s not like they will misuse their access! When has anyone in government ever used their position for their personal benefit? You worry too much!

If we were living in an 80’s dystopian movie, this would be the point at which Arnold Schwarzenegger would finally discover what was really going on and would have to kill a large number of people and destroy a couple of big warehouses to save the world from the Orwellian hell it had wrought upon itself.

We teach our young not to talk to strangers on the street but don’t even think twice about giving up our personal information to someone on the internet. Networks get hacked; storage devices get lost and every embarrassing photograph is ‘two degrees’ away from being turned into a meme.

And google glasses make it easier to invade another person’s privacy. Now you don’t even need to tell anyone that your glasses are instantly broadcasting everything to the internet. Who needs permission when you can share pictures of that weird couple by the bar with ten thousand of your closest friends?

In the future, everyone will have their fifteen minutes of being mocked by the internet. One day you crash a party full off college kids and someone takes a picture of you trying to recapture the glory of your younger days by butt chugging a keg of beer and instantly uploads it to Facebook where a large number of websites pick it up and every low-life on the internet tries to make themselves famous at your expense.  By the next morning, you lose your job because you told your boss that you had to leave work early to visit your sick grandmother, your girlfriend breaks up with you because no one wants to associate with a global laughing stock and the police arrest you for lewd public behaviour while every sanctimonious anchor on teevee tut-tuts at your plight.

Now please excuse me as a large man with a pronounced Austrian accent who broke down my door just told me to get to the chopper.

The Gods Must be Crazy

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

One of the major myths of society that percolates into our subconscious from the time we are children is that growing old is a bad thing. It’s there in our conversations and in our popular culture. There is a whole industry built around making old people feel younger. You can fight ageing – an inevitable process that has been taking place for millions of years – by applying some chemical cocktail on your face. Why age gracefully when you can make your face look like Hiroshima after the nuclear bomb? We are constantly told that growing old is a horrid event that we must endure until we are able to escape it through the sweet release of death. Being young is where it’s at! Yeah, because who wants financial independence and emotional maturity? Who needs to deal with small problems that can be easily overcome when you can just close the door of your room and blast a song full of profanity to show everyone how angry you are? I, for one, don’t subscribe to this fallacy and can’t wait to grow old. You get to say stupid things and treat people badly without any repercussions. You can make people squirm in their seats and puncture any serious conversation by releasing a loud fart. In fact, my spirit animal is AK Hangal. However, not everybody on twitter shares my enthusiasm about the ageing process. This is most apparent when something happens to someone people used to revere when they were children. People become more aware of their decreasing mortality whenever a childhood icon dies/retires/says something racist. Wait, celebrity x died of a heart attack? WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAPPEN TO ME???!

This was the case last month when Sachin Tendulkar announced his retirement from one-day cricket. Nothing makes you feel your age than when the guy you watched grow from an awkward child prodigy into an awkward adult genius decides to hang up his ill-fitting jockstrap for good. We could handle the exit of eternal bridesmaid Rahul Dravid or ungraceful retirement expert Saurav Ganguly because we still had Sachin. But now even he’s gone to spend more time not spending any of his money on his family.

If you weren’t born in the 80’s you can’t fathom how important Sachin was to his countrymen. Sachin Tendulkar was a hero to a nation in dire need of one. Who can forget his memorable innings as the brand ambassador of a popular soft drink brand! Or when he launched a thousand bankruptcies by appearing in a credit card advertisement and asking people to go get it! Who even knows how many kids’ lives he saved when he revealed the secret of his energy!

Sachin was the perfect poster-child for the post-liberalisation era. A great icon! He was proof that if you had luck, talent, humility and enough gumption to hire a ruthless businessman to manage your affairs, you too could become so successful that Parliament would pass a special act to prevent you from being exorbitantly taxed on a business transaction. That is also why he doesn’t have to spend his post-retirement years scrounging for money, unlike his predecessors. There are no low budget advertisements promoting ‘English speaking courses’ in his future. No humiliating interviews with Karan Thapar. He doesn’t need to participate in a reality show where he gets paid to be the butt of everyone’s jokes. The BCCI will not dare to even try to rein him in if he does something they don’t approve of. Even troll king and the talking tiger from ‘Life of Pi,’ Bal Thackeray, was more than respectful when criticizing his fellow exhibitor of Marathi machismo.

Living in India and not having had a conversation about cricket is like being a white person in a Karan Johar movie and not being racist. It’s easier to go along than spend the next few hours explaining to people that you don’t think that spending five days glued to a teevee screen watching 22 guys play a sport invented by bored royals so that they could pretend to be athletic might not be the optimum utilization of your time. Being able to fake a conversation about cricket also prevents you from being lynched because in this country, there is no other topic of discussion more important than cricket. We pretend that there is nothing wrong when the whole country stops any productive activity because some people are playing a match, somewhere. We are constantly fed bullshit narratives about how cricket “unites” the country and for a few hours, people take a break from making life miserable for each other in exchange for shouting cricketing advice at the teevee/radio/website hoping that the professionals playing on the field are able to hear them. We have to revere everything that happens on the field and worship those who play on it. Whether it’s movies, politics or sports, India doesn’t accept mere humans. We only have time for Gods.

Now please excuse me while I download a Nintendo emulator on my computer so that I can play all my favourite childhood games and try to recapture my youth.

Hell is Other People

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

Whenever a horrific incident imbibes itself in the consciousness of the people of our country, there are various stages of grief we go through together. Now, these are not based on any trenchant analysis by renowned mental health professionals. Instead, these are based on our values, our ancient culture, and the wisdom that has been passed on from generation to generation since the Indus civilization.

First comes shock. We feel this when we first hear of the incident. We wonder what kind of animals would do such a thing. We are taken aback by the fact that such people live and breathe among us. We can’t really believe that this happened! Despite there being plenty of proof and a large number of incidents documented in the past. Yet we imagine that this is the first time a deer distracted by the headlights got run over by a car. Wait, the snowball turned into an avalanche? Did not see that coming!

We feel guilty that we didn’t do anything to make sure such incidents didn’t happen. We kick ourselves for suffering injustice silently; for being those monkeys made out of stone and not hearing, seeing or saying anything. But the thing that we find most scary is the thought that this could happen to us too. That makes us angry. We get angry at everything and everybody. And we want revenge! We want heads to roll and bodies to pile up. No time to stop and consider how we contribute to an environment which leads to such an event. We want scapegoats and we want them now!

While the people are angry, the government is in denial. They did nothing wrong. They were all doing their job. In fact, according to them, they did an excellent job. And no, they’re not showing any cowardice by getting the police to suppress dissent using British Raj era tactics. They just retreated into their guarded palaces because they wanted to give the people some space. They aren’t holding onto to power within an inch of their life or anything. And refusing to meet people because of the misbelief that they aren’t going to vote for you anyway is not hubris. Neither is comparing people asking for justice for a fellow citizen with terrorists wanting to overthrow the state. And the advisory issued to news channels covering the protest, was as harmless as advice from a friend. No one was threatening anyone with dire consequences. Whatever gave you the idea!

Of course, it doesn’t take long for any discussion to devolve into a partisan food fight. Everyone stews in their righteousness, because they sincerely believe that this is just another event which happened because people don’t listen to them. Just another example of why the world is screwed up because of the other guy. If only more people would listen to us! You also can’t just be sad and upset about something by itself. You have to retroactively be upset about all the events that took place in the past. And simultaneously be upset about whatever is going to happen in the future.

Then we become mired in farce. Politicians want to make symbolic gestures towards the dearly departed. News channels want you to never forget until the next big story comes along.  And the rest of us just want to go back to our busy lives after someone assures us that we will be able to meander through the rest of our days in peace. Why don’t you just leave us alone, troubles of the world?

* * *

Life in India can make you quite cynical. When you see democracy being sold in packages of various sizes everyday, it’s quite hard to believe that words like “freedom,” “rule of law,” or “justice” mean anything.  Yet, there seemed something different about the current protests. When it started, it was a spontaneous expression of anger. It didn’t have the cold, calculative machiavellian organization of pasts protest. Nor were the protestors made up of the rent-a-mobs used by most political parties. They were outraged citizens who weren’t dead inside like the rest of us and still thought that they could change the world. They were also naive and so blinded by anger that they were not even sure of what they were protesting. They were in dire need of a civics lesson and those among them wanting to do unspeakable things to the accused should probably see a shrink.

We were trying to have a national discussion about things we need to do to make the country better for its female populace but we got caught in the same trap we always do. We lost our way somewhere between chemical castrations and mentally dented presidential scions.

Let’s hope it’s not too late to find our way back.