What Does True Detective Mean to You?

While we wait for the next season of True Detective starring Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden as they spend eight episodes revealing details about the surveillance state, we realized that we needed to do something with our time. So we thought what better way to spend the time waiting for True Detective than to talk about True Detective. So we asked various news organizations, editors of respected publications, noted columnists, popular intellectuals, eminent bollywood personalities and Shobhaa De to tell us what they thought of the eponymous season of the greatest show on television.

We began by asking the dean on Indian columnists, Dr. Jug Suriya, to share his valued opinion with us. We found him living in a large refrigerator carton behind the old Times of India building at the appropriately named Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, muttering inaudible gibberish to himself. He was kind enough to give us a ten page summary of his thoughts about the show. We had to edit out the vivid descriptions of bestiality and a long anti-women rant to be able to publish one coherent paragraph:

One day, as I was sitting on the only throne we peasants are allowed to use, I had a bright idea. Influenced by a popular American television serial, I decided to make a detective show of my own. Called Bee Detective, it would feature the two Bs of my life, Bunny and the ghost of our pet, Brindle. I refer him as a pet, but he was more than that. He was . . . everything. But he died because Bunny couldn’t be bothered to feed him. Having a life threatening sickness is no excuse! Now, I realize that a column in a national newspaper isn’t the best place for passive misogyny and aggressive complaints about your significant other, but since I’ve been doing it for more than three decades, why stop now? Anyway, Bee Detective is a show in which a clever tramp and the ghost of a saintly dog who lived a full life and is still remembered by a certain someone whose heart he broke by dying but came back because the love that dare not speak its name is stronger than the cosmos (suck it Neil deGrasse Tyson), solve various mysteries. Actually, just one mystery. They try to find out what really turned the dog into a ghost. In the season finale it is revealed that the dog was killed because of the harlot’s negligence, and she is arrested and put in jail where she belongs, while the ghost and the tart’s husband walk off into the sunlight, living happily ever after. Check your local listings for time and availability.

Errr, okay then, Jug. Thank you, I think? Moving on!

Now, one couldn’t compile such a list and ignore India’s foremost chronicler of popular culture, Jai Arjun Singh. Since we didn’t have a contact for him or knew where he lived, we just said the name of his favourite movie three times and voila, a few seconds later he appeared outside our office! So we asked him to write us a small note sharing his insights about this gorgeous bite of television:

There are many ways for an artist to deal with the underlying darkness in all our lives. Some creators of art like to beat us in the head with the unseemly underbelly of human nature. Some like to be subtle and use a little humour, like a long scene in which two hapless men drag a dead corpse through the city, being chased by the bad guys, while hijinks ensues. One could even choose the route that True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto has chosen. Slowly revealing a small part of the story. Letting the onion unravel itself. If you’ve read any of his short stories or his novel, they carry the same dark, haunting themes as True Detective. In fact, in a coincidence that some might say feels like something that might happen in an episode of True Detective, the show reminds me of a little known 1980’s hindi movie starring Farooq Sheikh and Amol Palekar. Coincidently, both play detectives in the movie too. Talk about your odd pair! Directed by Vijay Anand, the movie was never released because it was considered too dark for Indian audiences! But I got a chance to see it in 2006 while I was working on a different project. Remind me to tell you the funny story attached to how I got to see the movie! Anyway, in the movie, Shiekh is the married family man forced to partner up with loose canon Palekar. Deepti Naval plays the victim, and her character is killed off in the first scene, a very unusual event for an Indian movie. However, after the supposed interval her twin sister shows up, and there is another strange twist to the end. You should catch the movie before it is lost to the vagaries of time.

Thanks for that, Jai! We can always count on you!

We also asked our good friends at the Caravan to send us something enchanting that would take our breath away! They were gracious enough to oblige, even though they were busy working on their ten thousand word cover story about the gentrification of a small neighbourhood in Kanpur. Since the passage was written in their patented house style, they didn’t feel the need to award anyone the byline for this piece. 

On a cold South Louisiana morning in 1995, Sheriff Tate wasn’t a happy man. He had barely had a wink of sleep last night, thanks to the lovely ladies of the bunny ranch. As any good Christian in Louisiana will tell you, a man who hasn’t had his sleep is waiting to possessed by the devil. The devil. That’s who was on his mind when he reached the scene of the strange event that had been called in earlier. As soon as he reached there, he told his men to back off. This thing, whatever it was, was above his paygrade. He’d need to call in a couple of those fancy boys at the CID.Or a priest at least. Looking at the thing surrounded by those strange objects, he said a prayer. That calmed him a little. Maybe, he thought, he’d even go to church this week.

He regretted calling the big guns in the minute he saw who they had sent. He had a bad feeling about this.

A really bad feeling.

Thanks, guys! Ain’t no party like a Caravan party because no one working at the Caravan ever gets to go home!

How could we ignore popular columnist and Strepsils spokesperson, Swapan Dasgupta? He usually doesn’t speak to small publications like ours, but we sent him a bust of Churchill and he was impressed enough to send us back his notes on True Detective:

These days it’s quite hard to find anything enjoyable to view on the old idiot box. Usually, I just entertain myself by visitng my home library and picking up one of the masters. My favourite is, of course, Dickens. Nothing warms the heart more in the freezing Delhi winter than sipping quality port whilst reading about some strong leaders who were principled enough to refuse greedy orphans extra grub. Stop asking for handouts, tubby. If only Oliver Twist had been able to get his hands on the works of Edmund Burke! He would understand that his creator wrote him into existence so as to subtly hint at the opportunities provided by the free market in Victorian England, and a lesson in how instead of letting government waste all that money in running orphanages, they should just leave these kind of ventures to private philanthropists. Anyway, I digress. What is clear from my limited viewing of True Detective is that neither of the protagonists have been to a college in the league of my alma mater, St. Stephens in Delhi. As I was telling my manservant Gungadin the other day, Mani and I used to solve such mysteries every week while we were in college. Sure, there weren't any murders for us to solve. But we had things just as grisly! I remember we had gone to Shimla once on a college field trip to stay in a sprawling ancient bungalow so that we could see where the wonderful perpetuators of the Raj went to escape from the claustrophobic presence of our non-Anglophile ancestors. So Mani and I set out at two a.m., to find a bottle of Sherry. Also, the whole town was closed but we roamed around the town singing old British war songs. Have the supposedly manly men of True Detective done something dangerous like that? We could’ve been abducted and held for ransom! Or worse, exposed to some ghastly waste of good air who didn’t even know or admire the House of Windsor. Long live the Queen! As they say in merry old Blighty, Tally ho!

Okay, then. Thank you for that, Mr. Dasgupta. Right ho!

This exercise would be incomplete without asking our self appointed media watchdog website, newslaundry, to send in a small contribution. Apparently, Ms. Trehan was still busy signing out of her latest facebook Q & A session and Abhinandan Sekri was occupied talking to his image in the mirror and laughing at his own jokes.so they probably had one of their minions write and send this in:

There was a huge problem with True Detective that no one seem to have noticed. What was Ms.Lange doing with the Yellow King anyway? I haven’t watched beyond one and a half episodes because the misogyny of the show really made my stomach curl. Why was she a prostitute? Why didn’t she get a real job? Why did she let people treat her this way? What sort of bubblegum feminist lets people get away with having sex with her? Real feminists have ugly hairdos and never even think about sex because they can’t stand the sight of men. Wait, why are you putting me in a straightjacket and dragging me away. Don’t taze me, bro.

Alrighty, then. That was . . . well, a bunch of words stitched together to appear as if it is coherent? Anyway . . .

We also asked famed director and Emraan Hashmi enthusiast Mahesh Bhatt for his thoughts on what we assume has become everyone’s favourite show:

The meandering melancholy of the first episode of True Detective draws you in. The plains of Southern Louisiana are ripe for making anyone feel such existential angst, let alone a character like Detective Rust Cohle, who can barely keep up with his facade of sanity.  The mumbled dialogue adds to the whole experience instead of being a turn off. True Detective also doesn’t shy away from adult scenes, a thing I’ve tried to incorporate in some of my movies with various degrees of success. Sure, some people question my aesthetic, and refer to it as ‘soft porn’ and ‘voyeuristic,’ but I ask you, isn’t all art voyeuristic? Don’t we all carry that little voice inside ourselves? The one which wants us to bear witness to the intimate details of someone else’s life? Doesn’t the oversharing eagerness of the modern world make us all voyeuristic? I just put on screen what everyone wants to see. You need me to show you the unvarnished truth. You can call me names to make yourself feel better, but you know deep inside of you that I’m just the living embodiment of human need. Don’t you ever forget that.

Rrrrright. Thank you, Mahesh! Thank you for the magnificent monologue!

We also asked self-proclaimed culture critic and the loudest voice in every South Bombay party, Shobhaa De to share her opinion with us. Why did we do that? Well, because we probably hate ourselves and like to see us suffer, slowly dying a little everyday, because what else is there to do in this world. Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, Shobhaa De:

Bakwaas! That’s the first word that came into my mind when I watched the pilot episode of True Detective. These hollywood wallahs have so much to learn from the hindi movie industry. I couldn’t even try to watch another episode. Not even if someone paid me to. Maybe the creators of True Detective should learn from the creators of Dabang. Now that’s a movie (or two!) So much masala. So much entertainment. So much paisa wasool. I like my entertainment like I like my columns, without any trace of intelligence. Hey HBO, if I wanted to entertain myself by listening to some fool go on about the purposelessness of life, I’d have been a regular at Shekhar Kapur’s weekly brunch. Also, what was with all the nudity and objectification of women? Hollywood wallahs need to learn that women can be sexy with their clothes on too! I’d pick a Munni gyrating suggestively to lewd music than a naked hooker any day! Now please excuse me I’m late for a soiree at Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi’s house.

Thank you, Mrs. De. You keep doing you!

Now, as we were about to wrap this up and send it to print, an envelope was delivered to our offices by an old man in khaki shorts. He warned us that we need to run the following as it is or we would pay for our sins. When we opened the envelope, we were surprised to receive a note from the people at NitiCentral, even though we had never asked them for a contribution or even told them that we were seeking one. Even we’re not that into self-hatred. But we do want to live. So here is an unsigned contribution from NitiCentral:

HBO is every left-libber’s favourite network. They mostly like it because of the sex and the nudity and the violence, even though left-libbers claim to abhor all those things. They’re hypocrites, basically. Look at this True Detective shit they’re talking about these days. I haven’t seen an episode, but from what I gather it’s about two NGO workers needlessly harassing the king of the yellow people. Apparently, even though the Supreme Court and the SIT have given the yellow king a clean chit, the two NGO fame-seekers want to frame him for murder. Classic left-liberal conspiracy mongering. The needless insult to kind, god fearing people hasn’t gone unnoticed. If these liberals believe in their atheism so strongly, why do they feel the need to defend it from religious critics? Tells you everything, really.

So, whew, we’ve finally come to the end of our journey. If you’re still reading, then you’re much braver than we previously thought.

Now, what did you think of True Detective? Please send your thoughts and opinions to feedback at hbo dot com. Tell them we sent you.

Wanted: A CEO for the Central Board of Film Certification

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

Situation Wanted

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interested candidates may send their application to:

CBFC@nosexpleaseweareindian.com

Thank you for your interest!

What’s a nice beer like you doing inside my shampoo?

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

A few days ago, some crazy people in my neighbourhood were celebrating their favourite festival by ‘unintentionally’ waking up everyone else early in the morning. So, to drown out the incessant ass-kissing of an invisible wish-granter in the sky so that I could go back to arguing with people on the internet, I had to switch on the teevee. It was the least worst option and it helped me maintain my tenuous hold on sanity. Suddenly, just as I was about to satisfactorily end a particularly strained exchange of sly-tweets by calling my rhetorical opponent the H-word, a stream of grunts and other cave man noises emanating from the teevee grabbed my attention and I was able to witness the most mesmerizing piece of media that I have ever seen: a commercial for a shampoo made from beer.

Remember when paying small-time conmen a lot of money to pretend to put your name on a single grain of rice was a thing people were into? Watching this advert was like that. Someone boiled down the essence of conventional wisdom about being a man and put it in a single fifty second advert. The ad begins with the model—who is obviously a real man because he has a large moustache—‘getting his neanderthal on’ by  continuously shouting the words ‘man hair’ at the screen, as if that’s a concept which exists in real life. And while he continues to repeat those two words, he does other manly things like hitting a piece of log with an axe, scaring away a large bear by using only his booming voice and arm wrestling. The ad also contains things every ‘dude’ is supposed to love – Beer! Women! Presentations! Men with waxed chests!

Now, this may come as a shock to a lot of you, but I’m not really a ‘spiritual’ person. But the first time I laid eyes on this work of art was the closest I’ve come to believing in the existence of god. This advertisement is the Picasso of prickery. The David Lynch of douchebaggery. The Mozart of misplaced masculinity. Maybe even the Jhumpa Lahiri of jackassery. 

I have no idea why the makers of this wonderful product even need to advertise it. It sells itself. Who doesn’t want to spend all day smelling like they just woke up in their own alcohol induced vomit? And who wouldn’t want to get with that? Isn’t it very woman’s dream to end up with a guy so riddled with insecurity that he needs to add beer to his shampoo to prove something to himself? And let’s face it. Women’s hair is different from men’s hair. Why? Maybe hormones or something. I don’t know! I’m not a bearded lesbian enrolled in gender studies working on a thesis discussing the impact of exploiting a person’s lack of self-belief as a marketing strategy. Blergh!

Look, women have it so easy. As India’s #1 love guru Chetan Bhagat once said, women don’t have to do anything to attract the opposite sex. They come on their own! (Also, if you’re taking dating advice from Chetan Bhagat, then you’re probably going to spend the rest of your life coming on your own.) It’s the men that have to do all the hard work. Like a dancing peacock, a man whose hair smells like beer is telling the female members of his species that he’s ready to mate. And as most of the adverts on teevee tell us, the only reason men do things is because they want to get laid. From deciding which deodorant to mask their body odour with to offering a ride to a senior citizen in distress, the motivation behind every action is the possibility of sexual intercourse. Any other reason will force the other members of the ‘Real Mens’ Club’ to throw them out and confiscate their man card.

My favourite part of the advertisement is when the protagonist warns prospective consumers to not drink the shampoo just because it is shaped like a beer bottle. Is that such a big problem? Of course, these days’ shampoos have less chemical content than our actual food, but is there really a huge outbreak of people falling sick after drinking their shampoo? You see, drinking beer shampoo is hazardous to one’s health because it is basically a tasteless mishmash of hops, water and surly carbohydrates. It shouldn’t go anywhere near your mouth, no matter how much its manufacturing process also describes how regular beer is made.

In two thousand years, when our future generations finally recover from nuclear destruction and are able to find their way back to civilization, they will look at this ad and hold it as an example of how the ancients were really crazy, just like we look at the historical porn at Khajuraho and discover that the people that came before us were really into some kinky stuff. Who knew the human body could even bend that way? I know what you’re going to say: It’s not porn! It’s art! Look, I don’t make the rules here. As per the guardians of Indian culture, it’s not art if it involves any sort of nudity. Wait, does that mean that the people who started Indian culture were against Indian culture?

That makes my head hurt.

If only there were a beverage I could consume that would make me temporarily forget my confusion.

UPA Ministers Say the Darndest Things (Part 1)

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

In these modern times, there are not a lot of activities that can be classified as a ‘sure thing.’ Heroes have turned into villains. Villains have turned into heroes. Nothing is permanent anymore. Even death and taxes aren’t the pillars of surety that they used to be. However, in this darkness there is one tiny speck of light that is always shining. A small aberration that fills you with hope. Whether it is day or night, rain or shine, you can be confident of one thing: That somewhere in this vast land of ours, there is a minister belonging to the central government who is publicly saying something unintentionally hilarious. This is a bet that comes with its own money-back guarantee. Never before have so many incompetent people been part of the same body. They might have made things worse than they found them and choked the Indian dream even before it began, but when it comes to saying stupid things, they provide us with an embarrassment of riches! Now, as the General Election from Hell creeps upon us, let us take a gander at some of these great men that history will not have kind words for.

Our first contestant is the Minister of Petroleum and the generic south Indian villain from every Ram Gopal Varma movie, Veerapa Moily. He recently took over the news cycle by storm when he declared that the best way to save petrol is to close down petrol pumps at eight p.m. every night. Apparently, that will make sure people will use less petrol because as we all know, when the government makes something illegal in India, there is no way anyone can get access to it! That is why there is no alcohol sold for more than three times the price on dry days. Even though a better way to save petrol would be to try to cut at least one vehicle from every government cavalcade, or, I don’t know, encouraging investment in alternate forms of fuel. But hey, none of these are out-of-the-box non-solutions masquerading as a reasonable idea.

So, after saying something so ridiculous that even Manmohan Singh was pissed off enough to deny that any such proposal existed, Moily said that the suggestion didn’t come from him, it came from the people. Yeah, someone hacked into his brain and made him say things. Previously, when he was law minister, he said that the government was finally closing down the ‘Bofors’ case file since ‘nothing’ turned up after twenty years of investigations and no one wanted to celebrate the golden jubilee of the case. This made lady justice cry like a regular Nirupa Roy.

Our second contestant is our Minister of External Affairs and human bobble-head, Salman Khurshid. He recently dismissed the NSA’s spying on Indian citizens and our embassies as ‘a study of computer patterns.’ All the US is doing is monitoring every activity of every internet user! Nothing to see here! Invading the privacy of citizens of a sovereign nation is not as important as, say, detaining a movie star for questioning for a couple of hours. He also burnished his credentials as a civilized member of society when he threatened Arvind Kejriwal with bodily harm. Back when he was Minister of Corporate Affairs, he warned corporate India against 'vulgar salaries & perks.’ Because if anyone knows about not indulging in vulgar salaries & perks, it’s a professional politician. Maybe he should bring this up the next time his colleagues in Parliament pass another resolution to triple their salaries and benefits?

Our next contestant is Health Minister and the poor man’s Avtar Gill, Ghulam Nabi Azad. This great scholar once suggested that the best form of birth control would be to provide villages with enough electricity so that they can watch late night teevee and stop worrying about making babies. To be fair, watching Indian teevee at any time of the day kills everything from brain activity to hunger. So who needs condoms and birth control pills and education when you can just scare people into limiting their sexual activity to platonic hugging?

However, his pièce de résistance was his ignorant statements calling homosexuality unnatural. Before you get angry at him, remember, it’s not his choice to be daft. He was born this way! He’s just trying very hard not to contemplate what homosexuality means. They told him that it’s wrong. It has to be! Otherwise, his whole life has been a waste. Whenever he sees a happy gay couple, it stirs up certain feelings in his heart. He is reminded of what his life is really missing. He wasn’t always this dead on the inside. Back when he was in school, his heart used to fill with starburst whenever he laid his eyes on Pershad, his best friend. Pershad was the boy who made him a man. All he wanted to do was spend his life staring into those deep blue eyes and caressing that innocent face. But that wasn’t to be! One day Pershad’s Dad caught both Ghulam and Pershad physically expressing their love for each other on the banks of the lake. Instead of trying to understand them and letting them be who they are, Pershad’s dad thrashed both the teenagers. And then he took Pershad and moved to another city. The next time Ghulam saw Pershad, twenty years had passed. That innocent face had all but disappeared, replaced with a constant expression of sadness and despair. They didn’t have to say anything to each other. The look of longing they exchanged said it all. So, no. Homosexuality isn’t natural. If it was, it wouldn’t have caused the most precious gift in his life to be taken away from him. Forever.

(. . . . To be continued)

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.

The CIA Ate my Homework

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

As we head towards the General Election from Hell, all the participants are working overtime to ensure that the ride is as nauseating as possible. From the trash talk between the political parties, the social media food fight between their supporters, to the issues that our news organizations imagine we are having a ‘national conversation’ about, we are really rich in things to feel embarrassed about.  In fact, the Met department predicts that we are in for a torrential downpour of stupidity and irregular dust storms of hypocritical behaviour.

Continuing his election blitzkrieg, three time ‘Gujarat Idol’ winner Narendra Modi recently gave a speech about education. One of the things he railed against was western education. Because that’s the problem with our education system! Not a system which lays more emphasis on learning rather that understanding. Not a curriculum that makes people literate instead of educated. Nope! Hey, Nalanda university was #1 in Time magazine’s list of ‘best universities to send whichever offspring of yours is designated to be a monk’ of 1197 A.D., so the only reason our education system is suffering now is because the CIA is eating our children’s homework and we’re not doing anything about it.

Seems like even the guy who highlights the ability of his state to attract foreign investment as one of his major achievements feels the need to vaguely blame ‘the west’ for our country’s woes.

Remember Edward Snowden? He is the whistleblower who revealed how the NSA is like a cute and hilarious LOLCAT because it is in your computer, watching you watch your porn. Well, he applied for asylum in India. That’s right. He left a country whose government illegally spies on its own citizens under the guise of national security and sought asylum in India. That is like leaving Canada to seek asylum in France because you don’t like to speak French.

The government gave such a swift reply to Snowden’s application that even Usain Bolt was jealous. The Indian embassy in Moscow didn’t have to wait for an official confirmation from the relevant authorities in New Delhi to know what to say. However, they still spent one hour pacing around their offices impatiently to pretend that they have ‘given the matter due consideration.’ In case you’re wondering, the answer to Snowden’s request was an emphatic ‘No,’ followed by the rhetorical question, “You Mad, Bro?” This wasn’t because Snowden made them work on a Sunday, but because the embassy officials are answerable to a government whose head treats the American President with the same reverence that farmers in UP treat their Zamindars. Yet this same government always blames any sort of citizen protests against it as being funded and encouraged by a mysterious ‘foreign hand,’ usually found hiding in the western hemisphere.

And then there are our leaders of regional parties. They rally against the use of the English language and oppose economic measures that would benefit the country by couching their opportunistic actions in banal declarations against the west. In fact, our socialist and communist leaders hate the west so much, that a majority of them send their children to study there. Want to turn our state capital into London but hate the west because something something neo-colonialism!

Somebody tell all these idiots that ‘the west’ is not some homogenous and monolithic entity that is united by a single aim: to cause our downfall. Whenever we have a public discussion about a problem we are facing, there will be some genius who will find out a way to blame the west.  Whether it is ‘western culture’ or ‘western education’ or ‘western media,’ they are always causing us some imaginary trouble. An all weather straw man for every belief system!

Most of the problems that we face in our country are not because there is a secret cabal of shady foreigners meeting every week to decide upon a new way to humiliate us and bring us down. It’s easier to blame outside entities for your problems because then you don’t have to introspect or take any responsibility for your actions. I’d try to do something, but what is the point when some foreign entity is going to swoop in and destroy whatever I’ve built.

Any elected official who uses this rhetoric as an excuse to not do anything should have his position taken away from him.

If only there was some sort of western import that allowed us to do that.

No Country for Bold Men

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then we start again from scratch. 

United Nation of Ban-a-ton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

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.

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.

Fear and self-loathing in New Delhi

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

Members of constant anti-democracy infomercial, the Indian parliament, were going through an existential crisis recently. They were searching hard for their place in the world. They looked around and wondered: are they just another degenerating life form in the senior citizen play pen that they belong to? Are they simply disposable pawns in the hands of their party high command? Serving at the high command’s pleasure, not having a voice of their own, doing the same thing day in and day out, burying their aspirations, their needs, and their principles for the larger good of the party. Are they just biding their time until they go back into the abyss thanks to the sweet release of death? Will they ever matter? Will they ever be able to look themselves in the mirror and not feel repulsed at what they have become? Will they be able to go back one day to the people – who keep electing them in the hope that maybe, maybe, this time things will be different – with their heads held high? Our elected representatives were having a morbid crisis of morality. The air inside Sansad Bhavan was full of melancholy. Lawmakers were searching for answers to which they did not even know the questions. And then, as the fellow once said, seek and ye shall receive, they finally found something that would not only unite them with purpose, but also redeem them in the eyes of the cynical electorate. No more tarring all of them with the same brush because of a few bad apples; they would get back the respect they deserve. The clouds of dread were replaced by the unseasonal spring as the honourable members finally found the source of all that ails this country: cartoons.

Yes, cartoons. You better believe it! Apparently, those terrorists at NCERT, a government department whose original mission was to develop a cure for insomnia, dared to print in one of their textbooks about politics, cartoons depicting our esteemed politicians in a non-positive light. Outrageous! Our great leaders are nothing but beacons of justice and propriety. Those self-proclaimed ‘esteemed educationists’ at NCERT are misusing their government-given positions to damage Indian democracy. As Pranab Mukerjee – the nearest thing the UPA government has to an adult – said the other day, cartoons are not for children. Yes, exactly. They might be old enough to learn about hoohas & peepees (I would have known the actual scientific terms for them if they had bothered to teach my class the chapter on reproduction and not deemed it ‘out of syllabus’), learn about how history was full of monsters who killed millions of people on a whim, and might even be expected to comprehend how until six short decades ago they were second class citizens in their own country, however, showing them mildly amusing cartoons about politicians will ruin their innocence and mentally scar them for life. And that is just not cricket, old chum.

This is not the first time the hard working parliamentarians have had to defend the very roots of our democracy from egregious outside attacks. Recently, they have been metaphorically pulverized by powerful forces like 80’s hindi movie villain ‘Baba’ Ramdev (He’s got his own private island, thousands of followers who subscribe to his every diktat and lots of financial backers in foreign countries. ZOMG! HE’S MOGAMBO!), famous actor & king of the pox people, Om Puri and former policewoman and current fake teevee judge who prevents irritating people from divorcing each other, Kiran Bedi. These three dared to insult and question the very dignity of our parliament by making somewhat truthful assertions about our MPs in a public forum. So our fair and balanced lawmakers took the only recourse available to them. (No, they did get any of the goons they have on a retainer to beat up these people! Those are for people without ‘friends’ in the media, silly!) They passed a censure motion against them. You may think this is not appropriate use of our lawmaker’s time, but who cares what you think anyway? You’re an elitist having access to basic necessities like education, clean water and electricity. The only opinion that counts is of the caricatures of poor people that live in our politician's heads.

Now some say that our MPs sully the very institution they pretend to revere by pulling various idiotic stunts like tearing bills they do not agree with. That is nonsense! The sanctity of parliament is not disturbed when the MPs frequently stage a walkout. They are just setting an example for the rest of the country to follow. Walking is good for your health. Keep walking! Neither was the dignity of the parliament affected when our MPs rushed to the well of the Lok Sabha with large amounts of currency. This was proof that India has finally arrived. We’re not that socialist country whose MPs can be bought for trifle amounts of money anymore. Now our MPs have ‘fuck you money,’ and only actual dollar billionaires can afford to temporary lease their integrity. If that doesn’t say progress, I don’t know what does. The parliament also maintains its status as a temple of democracy when the speaker of the house flouts the very rules she has been sworn-in to uphold by giving special consideration to a prominent leader of her party. Even real temples give preference to important people! It’s the rule of nature. If god wanted poor people to get any importance, he would have given them money.

If only there was a medium which we could use to illustrate the absurdity of this whole event.

Shobha Narayan wants you to give bigotry a chance

Devil incarnate and minister in the UPA government Kapil SIbal owes Mint columnist and the-good-life connoisseur Shobha Narayan an apology. He has made her lose a lot of sleep over the worst law in the history of the world, the Right to Education bill.

Before you begin your judging and call her names and everything, you need to realize that Ms. Narayan is a big supporter of education.

Educators may pore over curriculum; combat staff attrition; mull over real estate and infrastructure; but they dream of catalysing change, inspiring young minds and changing the future. For people deep in the trenches of teaching and learning, this fundamental right of every child to a decent education ought to seem self-evident. Knowledge—to paraphrase Rabindranath Tagore—should be free. Yet, most educators I know are against the Right to Education (RTE) Act—for reasons philosophical and practical.

I am not an educator. I have taught classes, but I approach this debate from the point of view of a parent and citizen.

I don’t know Ms. Narayan, but I have read one of her articles. So I feel I am qualified enough to comment on the mental process that led her to the conclusions outlined in her article. Now, how many of you can dare to paraphrase Rabindranath Tagore in support of your argument, without using your fancy internet search engine? I thought so. For your kind information, Ms. Narayan has committed Rabindra Dada’s whole oeuvre to her memory. She can quote Tagore like you can quote your favorite teevee character.

Now that we have established that Ms. Narayan is a great supporter of education of all peoples, let her educate us about the realities of real life:

The human face of the RTE Act and one that stares parents in the face is the 25% quota. Affluent urban Indians—and certainly the readership of this newspaper—send their children to elite private schools. The new reality is that these schools will have to mandatorily admit a 25% quota of underprivileged children—whether it is a Sanskriti, Bombay Scottish or Vidyashilp. This mingling of social classes is certain to cause discomfort even if few parents will vocalize it. “In principle, I have no problem with this,” we will say, and may even believe it. We will call forth our childhood hardships and tell each other, “I believe that my children ought to socialize with, and learn from, all types of children.” We will feel the halo shining around our heads.

Yes! We have all been well trained by the liberal media to be politically correct and try to say the terrible thoughts that come into our head using non-terrible words. But, right now, at this moment, this great visionary is going to break out of these shackles and hit us with a truth bomb.

Of course, class has nothing to do with character. Intelligence is marginally correlated with wealth, if that. In many cases, the plumbers, drivers and dairy farmers who work for the urban elite are just as honest, if not more, than their employers. Children do learn from their less-privileged peers. But usually, such learning happens in an organic, semi-structured way—over summer holidays at grandparents’ homes when the driver’s son teaches your son how to play pithoo.

Of course. All non-elite people are honest. They never lie, cheat or steal. They are so honest that if you leave a billion rupees on the street near a whole swath of them and come back in ten years, not only will you find the billion rupees where you left them but you will also get the interest amount that you would have gotten if you would have invested the money in a high-yielding bond. Such is the magic of poverty! No, we’re not overcompensating at all. What makes you say that?

Now, don’t get Ms. Narayan wrong. She is not a racist. Some of her best employees are government school teachers!

The lady who helps clean my home, Rosie, is an erstwhile government schoolteacher, who discovered that she makes more money cleaning homes than teaching. She lives in Yelahanka, in the vicinity of a number of Bangalore’s top private schools. In theory, Rosie’s daughter, Jenny, could and should be my daughter’s classmate. Jenny is a tall, bright girl with limpid eyes and a quick wit. She smiles often and asks questions. She is polite and curious. She is of the same age as my younger daughter; and they could learn from each other. In theory.

Yes, in theory, if this were a perfect world, or if we had realized Karl Marx’s Utopia, or if all of us always did the right thing, or if wishes were horses, we wouldn’t even be having this debate! But real life does not work that way. Theory is good, but you have to be practical after all. Look, Jenny, don’t take this personally, but you’d know all this if you’d had the opportunity to have a decent education. But we can’t have everything, now, can we? Love the things your mama gave you, like your limpid eyes, your smile and a society which won’t ever let you forget where you really belong.

However, if you think you’re going to blame Ms. Narayan for enumerating all these practical problems, then think again. She is not to blame. In her hearts of hearts, she has the best intentions. She wants people like Jenny to have a good education. But the real culprit is someone else. A person so ruthless that her mere presence sends shivers down the spines of anyone unfortunate enough to cross her path. Who is this person? I’m afraid I dare not even speak her name. The only person who can even talk about her is someone who is immune to all her devilry:

Children are cliquish. I don’t like this fact, but cannot escape it. I can invite any number of outsiders—from hovels or gated communities—to my daughter’s birthday party, command her to “be nice”, and after the initial “hello”, she will return to giggling with her school friends. Lectures about egalitarianism carry as much weight as all those lectures about “starving children while you waste food” and “I studied under the street lights while you forget to switch off the lights”.

Yes. Ms. Narayan’s daughter is the real culprit. Behind that (probably!) cute face, lies the mind of a sheepish villain. This child prodigy, a ruthless doyen of child society does not play fair. She will chew and spit out children like Jenny the minute they step into her circle of influence. This is why you can’t have nice things, Jenny. Ms. Narayan’s daughter might say mean things about you.

There, there, Jenny. Don’t cry. You probably cannot afford to lose all that salt from your body anyway. Listen, don’t worry. Ms. Narayan has got you covered. Due to the fact that she is a great egalitarian, she is going to solve your problem like America solves global terrorism: by throwing money at it:

I would be willing to pay an RTE fee in addition to what my children’s schools charge me, particularly if I know that it will help a child get an education. Educating underprivileged children is a pet cause among affluent parents—and I say this without rancour.

Yes. She wants all the poor, underprivileged children to be educated. It is her favorite cause, after all. Just not with her child. She is even ready to pay up so that you can open equal but separate schools for underprivileged children. This way everyone is happy!

The RTE Act, as it stands now, seems to me to be a massive government cop-out. [. . . ] As a parent, I laud the intent. I am willing to help make it work. But as a student of psychology, I don’t think plonking underprivileged children in elite schools is the solution.

Ms. Shobha Narayan’s solution, as it stands now, is a massive cop-out. As a connoisseur of unintentional hilarity, I applaud her effort. But as someone who learned everything he needs to know about psychology from Fraiser re-runs, I think she might be suffering from a case of wanting all the poors to get off her lawn.

That is all.

[Mint Lounge]

Chinese Democracy in New Delhi

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

As the summer sun in New Delhi charred everything it could get its rays on, world leaders descended on India’s capital for the BRICS summit. The summit got off to an awkward start. Apparently, the Russian delegates got drunk on their flight here and were hitting on the wives of other delegates. While the Indians were busy making sure their guests had more food on their plate than any normal human being could possibly eat in one sitting, the Chinese delegates were going around giving everyone wedgies and forcefully taking their money. The South African delegates were just happy to be get out of the house for once because no one ever invites them to any summit and they wanted to use this opportunity to show off their sparkling personality.

The dysfunction was not limited to the lower-rung delegates. There were more cat fights among the heads of state than there are during a Spice Girls world tour. They couldn’t even decide what to order for lunch! Hu ‘What you looking at MotherF***er Spice’ Jintao wanted to have authentic Indian cuisine because the Indian food available in China is too Chinese for his taste. Dmitry ‘Assassin Spice’  Medvedev wanted to try this new bistro in Hauz Khas that he had read about in ‘Ballistic Missiles Weekly,’ Manmohan ‘Baby Spice’ Singh wanted to skip lunch entirely because his stomach was still working on a piece of chicken he had eaten for dinner yesterday while Dilma ‘Here to make it a non-sausage fest Spice’ Rouseff would go for whatever the group decided because she was tired of circling the mall and all she wanted was to sit down somewhere and have a refreshing glass of ice tea. The leaders finally decided to order from McDonalds so that no one got what they wanted and everybody could claim to have compromised. This also helped in breaking the ice as all the leaders agreed that while they may have problems with each other, nothing is worse than western capitalism wrapped in a bun.

This thawing of the ice also allowed the Indian Prime Minister to release his inner ‘Funmohan.’ All these non-Indians get him, man! They know that beneath the tough exterior lies the real Manmohan. This super-Manmohan-who is funny, sensitive and caring-is nestled between the buzzer connected to an office in 10 Janpath and a hologram of the 1873 edition of the Oxford English dictionary. Manmohan Singh at an international summit is like that episode of a sitcom in which the character with the least amount of camera time suddenly finds himself at the centre of attention. It is a bizzaro world in which he is treated with kindness & respect. People actually listen to what Manmohan has to say and don’t collapse into a coma as soon as he opens his mouth. He schmoozes at these shindigs. And sometimes, even lets a journalist ask him a real question! Though not an Indian journalist. Those wankers have got it out for him. He talks to real journalists from real newspapers. Indians and hacks not allowed.

This year the jovial atmosphere of the summit was ruined by a few so called non-violent Tibetans. Not only did they harm themselves, they almost caused an international incident. How dare they think that they can avail the freedoms guaranteed to them under the Indian constitution? They didn’t even bother going through the proper channels! And by proper channels I mean the dear leader of Indian news. Did they even give him a single interview? No! Did they have the decency to rent a fake mob? No! Did they hire former journalists as their PR agents who would advice them on what time to protest so as to draw the maximum amount of coverage or how to make a crowd of a few hundred people seem like thousands? No! Such amateurs. They didn't even try to come up with catchy slogans. There were no pictures of Gandhi. And no obeisance was being paid to the glory of Bharat Mata. YAWN! Get your oppressed soul off my lawn.

I, for one, am tired of such ad-hominem attacks on the government. You use British Raj-era tactics on your own people a couple of times and suddenly they start questioning your democratic credentials. What you don’t understand is that this was for the Tibetans’ own protection. These people are so flammable that they needed to be kept indoors, away from Delhi’s extreme weather. So what if they can’t visit Tibet? They can ‘street view’ it on Google Maps and see what China has done to their erstwhile home. And if there is one thing we can be assured off, it is that China is very kind to territories it occupies. Just ask the people in Aksai Chin. They probably don’t even remember that they were once part of India! And as for the people from Manipur who got arrested because of racial profiling, well, s**t happens, get over it. They were simply collateral damage in the arduous task of maintaining law & order. If they don’t want this to happen again, they should try not to look so Chinese all the time.

Frankly, there is enough freedom in this country. You can say and do whatever you want as long as you don’t hurt the made up sentiments of everyone else or cause the government any perceived embarrassment or don’t point out things which might inconvenience people with a lot riding on some really big projects. All they’re asking for is a little mutual respect. You respect their right to do whatever they want and they will respect your right to not be transported-under ‘mysterious circumstances,’ of course-to the big twitterverse in the sky. Capiche? 

In an unrelated story, does any freshly democratic country want an old, well-written but barely used constitution? Asking for a friend whose country doesn’t seem to have much use for one anymore.

What’s Hot: Your guide to a festive weekend!

Did you miss valentines day because you were working and your asshole boss would not let you take the day off and even made you work late? Or is that what you told your partner even though you could have easily taken the day off and when you said “late” you meant you were canoodling with you office sexytime partner? Well, in case you want to make it up or even if you didn’t screw up a made up hallmark holiday and want a weekend out on the town, we are here to help you! We go everywhere and taste everything so that you don’t have to! So here are the most happening events taking place this weekend. Enjoy!

Books

Talk about intellectual stimulation! On Friday, in preparation for World Cup 2011, Roli Books presents a special coffee table book,1983: A Circle Jerk, a pictorial essay of the most glorious day of Indian cricket which did not involve either Sachin Tendulkar or beating Pakistan. The book is the brainchild of India’s only world cup winning captain, Kapil Dev. He has also chosen the title, written the foreword and selected the pictures that were included in this historic book! The MC for the event is another member of the historic team, Kirti Azad. We are glad that both of them took time out from their busy schedule appearing on various news channels to attend this event. Unfortunately, no other members of the historic team will be at the release ceremony as they had something better to do and/or are dead. After the book release, a few select guests will be taken to a small concert hall where international superstar Bryan Adams will perform along with world famous music composer, Biddu.

Movies

This week is all about politics!

Whose speech is it anyway?

Mistaken Identity! International Espionage! People who have no idea how to do their job! From the makers of 27 Dresses: The Shivraj Patil Story comes the most awaited comedy of the year, Whose speech is it anyway? The movie opens with a minister of the Indian government reading a wrong speech at an international conference. He then catches the wrong flight and is then kidnapped by pirates, who think he is someone else! Hijinks ensues, and one hilarious misstep after another almost starts world war 3. Starring Paresh Rawal as the minister, Tom Alter as generic white guy who talks in accented hindi and Rajpal Yadav in blackface as an incompetent Somali pirate.

Prime Minister Slow Motion

This political thriller set in contemporary times is about a geriatric politician who is prime minister in name only. He stands by and watches chaos reign all around him. He is happy to rest on his past laurels and all he wants to do is hold on to power long enough so that his rival, the leader of the opposition, is never able to fulfil his ambition of holding the second most powerful office in the country, (the first being the host of Times Newshour).  All this ends when a young, dynamic leader, a scion of the most powerful political family in the country uses his influence to challenge the status quo and then becomes Prime Minister. He then starts solving problems from overpopulation to climate change. He falls in love with a village belle after eating a meal at her house. She is then kidnapped by his political foes, who are aided in this mission by foreign powers. Will the leader be forced to choose between his country and his lover? Will the foreign powers succeed in dividing the country? Starring thespian Dilip Kumar as Prime Minister Major Slow Motion, AK Hangal as the leader of the opposition and the evergreen Dev Anand as the young, dynamic and charismatic leader who saves the day. Katrina Kaif plays his mother. Anushka Sharma plays the village belle he falls in love with. The movie also contains a sultry item number performed by the demure Dolly Bindra.(The makers of this movie insist that none of the characters in this movie are based on anyone in real life. In fact, the story of the movie is a modern interpretation of the err…umm…. Mahabharatha. Yeah, that sounds about right.)

Exhibition

This week, an exhibition of the photographs of budding photographer Sunanda Pushkar, is being held at Lalit Kala Academy. The model for all the pictures is the photographers muse and husband, former Union minister, Shashi Tharoor. The exhibition includes many haunting images like “Shashi Tharoor staring thoughtfully into the future” and “Shashi Tharoor standing next to the parliament building and staring thoughtfully into the future”. There is also a humour section which displays playful images like the one in which Shashi Tharoor pretends blowing a trumpet which is also called Shashi Tharoor. Unfortunately, the controversial image “Shashi Tharoor riding a holy cow” was removed after lawful protest by members of the Hindu Janajaguriti Samiti. Light music and entertainment will be provided by visiting international superstar, Bryan Adams who will be accompanied by the Prince dance group, winners of the first season of India’s Got Talent.

Theatre

The India Habitat Centre has a special treat for all it’s members this weekend. A special performance of the one man show “My Struggle for India”, written & directed by noted playwright and part-time politician Amar Singh. It is a touching story about a man who just wants to do right by his country and is betrayed at every stage of his life by the people closest to him. He loses everything, including his pants, but still keeps carrying on, refusing to ride into the sunset. Starring award winning Hollywood actor Danny DeVito, this touching story will have you crying harder than a small child who just found out that his dad killed Santa Claus!

 

Food

Opening this weekend, in the heart of the capital, is a new fusion restaurant, The Berlusconi Plaza. That’s right! Placed right between the CWG games construction site and Palika Bazar, this new “concept” restaurant is just what the city needed!  You thought Chicken Manchurian was a big fucking deal? Wait till you let your tastebuds satiate on such signature delicacies like Mutter Meatballs and Sag Spaghetti! Come for the great food, stay for the awesome dessert! You can choose between “The Italian Senator”, in which a leggy Italian blonde hooker blows you while you eat your favourite ice cream or “The ND Tiwari”, in which an underage girl-child from Bangladesh feeds you crushed strawberries and cream while another rubs ben-gay all over your aching limbs! On the opening night, dance to appetizing tunes from the 90s, courtesy of guest DJ and international superstar, Bryan Adams.

Jairam Ramesh takes a brave stand against fictional wizards!

Jairam Ramesh, the UPA’s most forthright comedian and India’s #1 collector of wigs designed by Susan Boyle , has finally come out against a crazy, cultish breed of human beings who believe in boy wizards and magic wands!

No, I’m not talking about the RSS, silly!

It’s fans of Harry Potter!

India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, who suggested Harry Potter may be at least partly responsible for the decline of the country's owl population. "Following Harry Potter, there seems to be a strange fascination even among the urban middle classes for presenting their children with owls," he reportedly said.

Finally, someone brave enough to stand up to those irritating and demanding human beings commonly referred to as “kids”.Toupee Gandhi will not stand by while all those helpless parents, terrorized by fear, yield to the demands of their powerful and cruel children.

Jairam always knew this would happen. How, you ask? Well, Jairam always knows. It’s among his many gifts. He’s psychic like that! They don’t call him Captain Haircut for nothing!

The report by the wildlife group Traffic, also cited the dark arts of magic as being responsible for the owls' decline but did not blame Harry Potter, instead suggesting that a number of owls were being killed, trapped and traded for traditional rituals."While the exact number of owls traded each year in the countrywide is unknown, it certainly runs into thousands... There are anecdotal reports of owls becoming rare throughout India due to loss of suitable habitat, especially old-growth forests," it said.

Ha! Screw you, “Traffic”! What do you know? You’re just a bunch of people doing comprehensive research on a particular subject. You don’t know what Jairam Ramesh knows. Not only does Jairam Ramesh think outside the box, he’s so far away from the box that the box appears as a dot to him. After all, he is, what Malcom Gladwell calls, an outlier.

"Shaman or black magic practitioners, prescribe the use of owls and their body parts such as skull, feathers, ear tufts, claws, heart, liver, kidney, blood, eyes, fat, beak, tears, eggshells, meat and bones for ceremonial rituals." The report, which is supported by WWF India and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, says that half of India's 30 species of owl can be found on sale in markets.

You better stop teaching black magic to little kids, Harry. Or Jairam Ramesh will take all the owls in the world and hide them in his hair. Why? Because he can.

 

The Hedwig effect: Harry Potter blamed for endangering owls [The Independent]

(via IyerDeepak)

BREAKING: Arundhati Roy arrested by fashion police!

After appearing at a public event a couple of days ago, noted writer and regular user of Dabur Amla Hair Oil, Arundhati Roy, was arrested in the evening today for crimes against fashion. She has been taken into stylist custody. Tomorrow morning, she will appear before a panel headed by Justice Tim Gunn which will decide on further action to be taken. Her sentence might include watching the movie The Devil Wears Prada everyday for the next year and a free lifetime subscription to Vogue magazine.

An insider who refused to publically give his name as he wasn’t appropriately dressed said that Ms. Roy has been repeatedly warned against committing such heinous offences like wearing a cocktail dress to a morning event and buying off the rack.

Noted designer Manish Malhotra termed her outfit at the public event as a ”seditious felony against couture”. “She acts as if the rules of fashion do not apply to her”, he continued.

Sources in the ministry of fashion told us that in a report submitted by LIFW agents assigned to spy on her it was revealed that she gets her hair done from the same barber as Jairam Ramesh.

Sagarika Ghose, CNN-IBN journalist and the second person ever to be given the title Nightingale of India, wondered on twitter “Why has Arundhati not yet understood that Jimmy Choo is an integral part of the modern Indian woman’s wardrobe?”

Armageddon is almost here: Pakistanis in America pretending to be Indians!

According to this Reuters report, Pakistanis in America are pretending to be . . .  wait for it . . . . . wait some more . . .  . INDIANS!

"A lot of Pakistanis can't get jobs after 9/11 and now it's even worse," said Asghar Choudhri, an accountant and chairman of Brooklyn's Pakistani American Merchant Association. "They are now pretending they are Indian so they can get a job."

This news has made everyone at TImes Now come in their pants. Jinnah is rolling in his grave, and has started hitting the bottle again. Gandhi is smiling, not because he heard this news, but because he made friends with Che Guevara in freedom fighter heaven and he’s high. Nehru just shrugged and is continuously eating Lady Mountbatten’s head by telling her that he knew this day would come. And Sardar Patel is still mad at Hari Singh because WHAT THE FUCK TOOK YOU SO LONG TO SIGN THE DAMN THING, HARI?

Anyways, this is big news in the subcontinent, because this is even bigger than Arsenal fans trying to pass for fans of Manchester United! (Or vice versa! Or do all the kids love Chelsea these days? Real Madrid? Delhi Daredevils? Facebook United? I DON’T REALLY KNOW THESE THINGS!) or Red Sox fans cheering for the Yankees!

This is so because India and Pakistan were roommates almost six decades ago and had a really bad separation. And everyone is still bitter about it, mostly because Pakistan took India’s Kenny Chesney CD collection. EVEN THOUGH INDIA BOUGHT ALL THE CDs. And now, India is in a polygamous relationship with America and a few European countries and Pakistan is in a monogamous relationship with China, which is unhealthy because China always insists on being on top.

Anyway, this nationality switcheroo seems a bit strange, because most racist Americans (i.e. Republicans/people from Arizona) don’t know an Indian from a Pakistani. For them there are only two types of brown people. One is all those people from Burritoville, who bring up their kids, mow their lawn and sleep with their wives. Everyone else is an Ay’rab [sic], who do their taxes, make funny smelling food and watch those musical movies.

However, on this blog we are nothing but fair (snigger!), so here are some helpful tips for all those people who want to pass as a person of Indian origin living overseas:

9. Find out who Rajan Zed is – If I wanted to tell you, I wouldn’t say “find out”, now would I? This is important not because you need to agree with him, but whenever someone asks you where you are from, you can always answer with “Did you hear what Rajan Zed said now? . . .  Can you believe that guy? Sheesh”. Also, this might even lead to guest blogging opportunities at Sepia Mutiny.

8. Watch and love every hindi movie ever made – Not only is it important to watch those movies, you HAVE to like them. Even the crappy ones. And it is your solemn national duty to defend them in front of people who don’t like them. Even if your argument doesn’t make any sense.

7. Join the Narendra Modi fan club – You need to spend at least two hours everyday trolling the interwebs for blogs/articles/tweets about “NaMo” or any of his other brethren and attack whoever dares to write about them, without even reading what the blog/article/tweet is all about. If you don’t know what to write, just throw in the following in your word salad: “The mainstream media sucks, Congress bias, something something Sonia Gandhi and/or Rahul Gandhi”. Check the comments on www.rediff.com for more inspiration.

6. Always act guilty around your parents – A sure sign of Indian upbringing is when you see a perfectly normal, confident person act like a bumbling idiot in front of his or her parents. No matter how successful you get, no matter how much money you have, your parents will always make you feel guilty. You can’t fight thousands of years of civilisation. (Which reminds me, Mom, Dad, if you are reading this, then please remember that I didn’t do anything. I WAS TRICKED INTO WRITING ALL OF THESE THINGS). 

5. Excel at science and/or medicine – Let’s face it. Most kids of NRI’s are ready to do their PhD’s before they celebrate their tenth birthday. As to why, refer to reason no. 6. Hey, don’t take my word for it.

4. Don’t marry your cousin – That is because then you’ll be mistaken for someone from Arkansas. And believe me, you’d rather be from the caves of Tora Bora than from Arkansas.

3. Whenever someone tells you that your English is really good, thank them and inform them that their English is heavily accented.

2. Don’t kill your wife -- No, seriously. Don’t.

And the #1 most important thing to keep in mind while trying to pass as Indian in America:

*cue drum roll*

1. Don’t blow shit up.

Bada Bing, Bada boom . . . G’night everyone!

Today in comical attempts at racism

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, racism can be funny! And instead of outrage, it invokes pity!

Here are a few examples:

First, everyone’s favourite American election issue, Outsourcing! (They hate it so much that they even made a terrible movie about it!)

 

There are so many things wrong with this video.

a) The background music is probably middle eastern. But really, India, Arabia, all brown people must listen to the same music, no?:

b) None of the background pictures are actually Bangalore. One of them is Connaught Place, New Delhi!

c) What’s with the accent?

To be fair, the “many, many” jobs guy is simply hilarious!  Hey, NRI’s, you should hire him at the next birthday/anniversary party to entertain the kids, so that the adults can talk about the desh, without getting disturbed.

Anyways, seriously, Arkansas?

Your state is famous for only two things, cousin-marriage and giving birth to Presidential candidates.

And out of the two Presidential candidates, Bill Clinton pretends he’s from New York because now that he doesn’t have to run for an election, he doesn’t want anyone to remember his hee-haw connections and as for Mike Huckabee, that’s just another hilariously stupid thing about Arkansas.

So if you rednecks want to compete with people from India, then, instead of blaming other people, get an education. Oh, sorry. Let me spell it out for you: ej-u-cay-shun. It means book-larnin’.

If you want your children to be competitive in the international market, maybe get them to read something other than the bible or Going Rogue? Or maybe you shouldn’t have sent your children to Jesus school, in lieu of college?

If you want jobs in Arkansas, then maybe it’s best not to teach your children that evolution is not true and global warming is fake? Because if you do, then they’re going to end up like you. Bitter, dumb and clinging on to their guns.

Who am I kidding? It’s obviously those damn foreigners, who take away jobs you are not qualified to do!

*****

Now, you may not know this, but seems like England is having elections! I know! I thought Susan Boyle became their Prime Minister for life last year? Or whatever. How do British elections even work?

Anyways, this post is not about that. It’s about idiotic racist emails!

Two Tory councilman have been suspended for sending out a racist joke via email, because the Tories are trying to convince everyone that they aren’t bigoted and racist anymore and welcome everyone to their party! As long as they are rich, white and straight!

So here is the joke:

A Somalian arrives in the UK as a new immigrant. 
He stops the first person he sees walking down the street and says, "Thank you Mr UK man for letting me into this country, giving me housing, money for food, free medical care, free education and no taxes!"

The passerby says, "You are mistaken, I am an Afghani [sic]!"

The man goes on and encounters another passer by. "Thank you for having such a beautiful country here in the UK!"
The person says, "I not from the UK, I am Iraqi!"

The new arrival walks further, and the next person he sees he stops, shakes his hand  and says, 'Thank you for the wonderful UK!'
That person puts up his hand and says, "I am from Pakistan, I am not from the UK!"

He finally sees a nice lady and asks, "Are you British?"
She says, "No, I am from India!"  Puzzled, he asks her, "Where are all the British?"
The Indian lady checks her watch and says: "Probably all at work."

Haha, what jobs is she talking about? There are no jobs in England!

And those which exist, are all thanks to those damn foreigners!

Here are some suggestions on what the Indian lady at the end of the joke should say, to make it less racist and/or better:

a) All the British people are at the pub, drinking themselves silly!

b) All the British people are auditioning for Britain's Got Talent!

c) All the British people are working for my husband’s company!

d) All the British People? They’re all resting because they knawed on a terribly large piece of spotted dick and now all of them have food poisoning!

That’s not funny, it’s true.