A Tale of Two Thackerays

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

Last week, the country lost a man of great influence. A man who ended up changing the politics of his home state forever. A man who didn’t need to win an election to make the government apparatus bend to his diktats. But enough about Ponty Chadha!

In a just world, the demise of such an important man would be all everyone would focus on. However, if you turned on the teevee, all you heard about was the death of an old, obscure politician called Bal Thackeray. News anchors couldn't stop talking about how great this man was.  Even Arnab Goswami, who shows his independence by interrupting politicians of all political parties, suspended his usual persona to show us his gentle side. You could see that he was holding back his own tears while he was talking about the passing of this great messiah. After all, this was the person on whom Arnab had based the character he plays every night on India’s #1 variety comedy show, Times Newshour. In fact, perhaps for the first time in its history, everyone on Indian television seemed to be in agreement that the country had indeed lost its most magnanimous leader. Perhaps such a tragedy merits such unifying gestures. Even the members of the Hindi Film Industry – a group of people who cannot even agree on a name for their industry – were steadfast and united in their praise for the departed. The last time India had been united like this, Emperor Ashok was earning his stripes and establishing his candidacy for lending his name to the National Emblem. If there was any doubt to his greatness, would millions of people gathered for his funeral? If there is anything history has taught us it’s that if millions of people worship a person, he can never be evil.

I then realized that I should get out of my ignorant stupor and use the Google machine to find out more about such a dear leader. But I was shocked and astounded! There was no mention of the Bal Thackeray everyone was talking about on teevee. But there was lots of information about another person named Bal Thackeray, who lived in Mumbai too and wasn’t the omnipotent force for good that the our Bal Thackeray was. In fact, I couldn’t find any information about the original Bal Thackeray. The person Pritish Nandy called one of his ‘finest friends’ with whom he could always enjoy great conversation along with a warm glass of beer and whose death made Lata Mangeshkar feel orphaned. Someone seemed to have scrubbed all the archives of the news reports which point towards the contributions made by the original Bal Thackeray to the development of the country that his supporters evangelize about.

Though I must admit that reading about what Bal Thackeray’s namesake had been upto was quite a horrifying experience. He appears to have used Balasahab’s name to create a boilerplate for anyone who wants to rule through hatred and fear. Start by creating ‘an other’ by misleading a large group of people (united only through a single attribute which they share due to the accident of birth) into believing how their share of happiness is being stolen by another large group of people (united only through an attribute which they share due to the accident of birth). Pretend to be the messiah who will save them from this group and their usurping tendencies. Beat some members of the villainous group but do nothing to help your so-called own people.  Insulate yourself from any criticism by convincing people that anyone who dares to question you is insulting not only the proud traditions of your people, but is spitting on the legacy of the great ancient king himself and must be put down like the diseased-ridden animal they are. Lather, rinse and repeat.

Bal Thackeray is not dead. He will live through every instance of an innocent teenager being arrested for daring to share his opinion on the Internet. He will live through each time a mob ransacks a home/office/clinic because they didn’t like what the people residing/working there said. He will live through every work of art which is prevented from being shown to the public because it hurt someone’s made up sentiments. He will live through every filmmaker who goes to the house of a politician with an apology for their supposed transgression and a request to call off their goons.

Bal Thackeray made sure Gotham city will always have a Bane.

Along with a lot of dark nights.

Dude, Where’s My Patron?

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

As the festival of lights screeched its way into the calendar like a rogue firecracker, the city of Delhi got ready to say goodbye to the scorching summer and welcome the wavering winter by decking up its houses in different shades of lights. The ones belonging to minimalists were decorated like they were being prepared for a showroom opening, the dreamers had decorated their houses like they were characters out of a YashRaj movie and the large dwellings housing the extra enthusiastic were decorated with enough lights to power an entire solar system.

Of course, winter in Delhi also means another seasonal session of Parliament. Our MPs get together for a few days next month for another epic wastage of taxpayer money. Recently, we were provided with a preview of things to come when the leader of the opposition and potential prime ministerial candidate (pro tip: if a member of the BJP is able to breathe, then they’re a Prime Ministerial candidate) gave a speech specifying her legislative priorities. If on any day of the session her party sticks around for more than ten minutes before rushing to the ‘well of the house',’ she plans to introduce bills penalising those who dare to defy her religion by referencing names of mythological characters in movies and on teevee. She also talked about protecting cows from being slaughtered. The last time she was in the news for strongly advocating a policy position, she had demanded that the Bhagavad Gita be made the national book, after a small court in Siberia was entertaining a petition to ban it. Seems like she really has her pulse on the important issues of the day!

Now, Mrs. Swaraj is neither joining PETA nor appearing on the cover of Vogue wearing a saffron fedora anytime soon. These are the issues she talks about because she knows that these are the sort of issues that are going to get people to talk about her. She has to be seen doing something! You think talking about child malnutrition or illiteracy is going to get her on prime-time? She knows her constituency well. They’re going to be quite happy that she’s pissing off the asshole secularists by trying to legislate a belief that exists solely because some dude said something hundreds of years ago. Holy foolproof argument, batman!

Anyway, we don’t elect our politicians to lead. We elect them to be patrons. We want extra gas connections, free colour teevees and subsidised prices. Get your 'sound economic policies’ off my lawn.

We don’t need a government run by professionals who know what they’re talking about. That is why we ended up with an environment minister who thought global warming was a hoax and a health minister who thought that late night teevee was the best method of birth control. We’re happy enough if the government is being run by someone with whom we can establish some sort of kinship. Like in UP, where the two main parties spend all their time in government avenging “their people.” One of the first thing Mayawati does after taking office is to transfer anyone with the last name ‘Yadav’ holding positions of consequence in the police or the bureaucracy to posts which are considered as ‘punishments,’ replacing them with her people. Then whenever Mulayam wins back power, one of the first things he does is to transfer those people back. 

Elected officials - whether they are in the ruling party or the opposition, whether they are an MP, MLA ,a member of the municipal corporation or local panchayat - can do a lot to change the lives of their constituents. But most of our elected officials are not there to do real things. They have favours to payback and coffers to fill. If they spend their time in office learning about the issues that actually affect people, when will they find time to earn enough kickbacks to be able to pay for the next election campaign?

And no one really bothers to burden our ‘lawmakers’ by asking them questions about policy. The latest ‘comeback kid’ of Indian politics, amateur comedian Laloo Prasad Yadav has been getting lots of coverage lately. Most of the articles focus on the fact that he’s making jokes at his rallies again, which, for some reason, translates into him becoming a strong contender to win back the state! Having lost a number of elections doesn’t mean that Prasad has to now offer specific solutions to people’s problem. That would be silly thing to do! Instead, he has generously offered to award the chief ministerial post to a member of any caste, should he win the next election. Who wouldn’t like to elect such a progressive leader?

Now please excuse me while I courier my local MP my proposed thousand page draft bill that bans the use of the word “chillax.”

Let’s just hope he can read?

The Young King and the Selfish Giant

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

As he waved to the cheering hoards after his victory speech, Obama looked like a vanquishing hero from a big-budget Hollywood movie. This would be the perfect place for the credits to roll in the inevitable Obama biopic that will be made starring Will Smith as Barack, Halle Berry as Michelle - in an Oscar-winning portrayal that will finally revive her career – and the armour suit from the original Robocop movie as his Republican opponent, Mitch(?) Romney. It is a great story! The opposition threw everything they had at Obama. Continuous denial of his legitimacy, allegations of voter fraud, blocking legislation that would help the economy recover, blaming him for things that Bush was responsible for and using dog-whistle rhetoric to keep reminding their base that he’s black. Yet he still came out ahead, winning a decisive victory by pulverizing Romney in the Electoral College. And the non-crazy half of America and the rest of the world heaved a sigh of relief when they found out that the next commander-in-chief of the largest military in the world wasn’t going to be a cartoonish Bond villain slash Business Consultant. The End.

Hopefully, the movie version would be better than election day coverage we saw on teevee. It was a prime example of why news viewership is at its lowest ebb.  Al-Jazeera was continuously wondering how a country could change its President without first having a huge number of people gather and protest in a large, historic park. What do you mean the President leaves office after losing an election? And the military has no say on choosing the winner? You must have a really kind emir! The BBC World Service was bemused that anyone would want regular, timely updates about an event that could potentially have an impact on their lives. Oh sure, you can have election coverage. But, first, here’s a six hour documentary on making biscuits. Meanwhile, CNN seemed to have been broadcasting from a dystopian future in which humans only exist as holograms and the dominant species on earth is made up of large screens which constantly need to be swiped. As the night progressed and Obama’s path to victory began to look apparent and it became clear that at least for the next four years a majority of Americans had vetoed the Republican party’s plan to install a President named after a glove,  Fox News – America’s election HQ for racists, bigots and wearers of adult diapers –  was self-destructing on live teevee. One of their analysts, Karl Rove, even called the swing-state of denial for Romney. That was because he had been given millions of dollars by anonymous billionaires to spend on defeating Obama and he had nothing to show for it. Karl Rove was last spotted outside a bus station, offering to give a hand-job in exchange for a ticket to Mexico.

Watching Indian news channels was a real learning experience. Apparently, Obama battled ‘anti-incumbency’ to keep his ‘vote-bank’ together and was at an advantage because of still being able to maintain his image as a ‘youth-icon.’ The most important issue in the election was ‘friendly relations with India.’  And no matter who won, they would cancel all outsourcing to India, forever.

Our journalists seemed confused by the events of the day. Not that I blame them! America has such a strange way of selecting their President. The political parties in America choose their leader a long time before election day so that the voters can at least get to superficially know who they are voting for. The large number of people present for Obama’s speech had gathered there voluntarily without being provided with any alcohol or poultry related incentive. And they were cheering not out of subservient formality, but out of actual love & respect for their political leader. Americans don’t realize that choosing your leader can be hard work. This is why real democracies just let the party high-command pick them.

Now, here’s what we won’t see in the movie: collateral damage from drone strikes, secret kill lists, the war on whistleblowers and the continued dominance of the military-industrial complex.

But, hey, that’s what crappy sequels are for!

Barack the Vote, America

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

In a couple of days, when a majority of Americans get in line to vote for the next President, it would behove them well to remember 15 September, 2008, the day when Lehman brothers filed for bankruptcy and bought the global financial system to the brink of collapse, while the Bush Administration did nothing; or maybe 29 August, 2005 when Hurricane Katrina flooded the town of New Orleans causing extraordinary damage to both life and property while the Bush Administration did nothing; or maybe 1 May 2003, when President Bush gave a staged speech on a navy vessel declaring the end of the Iraq war with a ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner in the background; or maybe even back to 6 August, 2001 when during his daily ‘presidential brief’, Bush was presented with a classified document titled ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.’, a warning that subsequent events revealed wasn’t heeded. 

Earlier this year, during the Republican National Convention, as Mitt Romney accepted the nomination for President, the crowd applauded tepidly. The convention didn’t look like a meeting of happy party members enthusiastically nominating a Presidential candidate. It appeared to be more like a Klan meeting. An auditorium filled with resentful people who were angry at the world for moving on and leaving them behind. A whole swathe of people with low I.Q’s yearning for a past which only exists in their head. A political party whose members had resigned from reality and were more than happy to live in the bubble where they felt safe and happy. Just like their guns, you’d have to take their bigotry, ignorance and fear from their cold, dead hands.

In the movie Game Change, Ed Harris’s John McCain warns Julian Moore’s Sarah Palin of letting the extreme wing of the Republican party co-opt her. Holy Foreshadowing, Batman! Because that’s exactly what happened. Not only did she become the uncrowned leader of the extreme wing of her party, she became its mascot. Yes, the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower is now the party of a reality teevee star who denies climate change, hates gay people, has nothing but contempt for anyone who has read any other book besides the bible and thinks Barack Obama is an Islamist Atheist Communist Terrorist-hugger. (They can’t even reconcile to the fact that a single person cannot be all these things at the same time.)

In the Republican bubble, the guy who ordered the kill on Bin Laden and drops bombs on terrorists using his killer flying robots everyday is soft on terrorism. In the Republican bubble, the guy who saved the American auto-industry from receding into oblivion and saved the global economy from collapse is hurting economic growth. In the Republican bubble, not constantly wanting to bomb every country in the world in alphabetical order is ‘going on an apology tour.’ In the Republican bubble, a person whose life has been investigated, examined and analyzed to such an extent that even his letters to his college girlfriend have been made public still remains ‘unvetted.’  In the Republican bubble, passing a healthcare law that has eluded five previous Presidents and is based on a successful law enacted by a Republican Governor is the sort of tyranny last seen during the Third Reich. (Oh, and by the way, the healthcare law was the only achievement of a one-term Governor known as Mitt Romney. Wonder what happened to that guy!)

When Mitt Romney first started running for office back in 1994, he pretended to be more liberal than his opponent, Edward Kennedy. He pretended to be a pro-choice, gay rights advocating, independent minded, moderate Republican. Even though he lost, he used the same shtick to become Governor in 2002. However, by the time he had started running for President in 2005 moderate Republicans were an endangered species. By 2011, when he announced his second run, moderate Republicans had become an urban myth, like unicorns or a person from Bangalore who doesn’t constantly talk about the weather. So post-2011 Mitt Romney became a ‘severely’ conservative candidate who wants to ban abortion & gay marriage, repeal the healthcare law and cut taxes for the mega-rich. Now he was for deporting undocumented immigrants, building a large fence on the border with Mexico, constantly hugging Israel and denying the existence of global warming. However, since we live in the era of YouTube, for every position taken by conservative Mitt Romney, there is a video of moderate Mitt Romney advocating for the opposing side. Even chameleons escaping a garden full of predators change colour less often.

Romney’s stated foreign policy goals are too unrealistic even for a Tom Clancy novel. He wants to start a trade-war with China and has been constantly talking about bombing Iran to prevent them from making a nuclear weapon. However, during the foreign policy debate with Obama he jettisoned all the previous positions he held and basically took the stance that he’d have the same foreign policy as Obama except he’d be more racist.

Not that Obama is a President who metaphorically walks on water. He’s made more than his share of mistakes and hasn’t been able to deliver on some of his campaign promises. He hasn’t been able to close Guantanamo Bay, his stance on drug use is purely political and he has expanded the Imperial Presidency. Yet, with him you know where he stands on most of the issues. And he doesn’t falter from doing the right thing just because it comes with a political cost. Mitt Romney is a shape-shifter who tries to fit into whatever mould he imagines you want him to.

The world is still recovering from the after-shocks of the last Republican presidency.

Let’s hope America doesn’t saddle us with another.

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

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Entitlement’s Children

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

A few years ago, a rent-a-mob ‘protesting’ a book attacked the institute where the author had done his research and destroyed important historical artifacts. A few months ago, the Indian government lodged an official protest with the US state department over a joke on a teevee show. A few weeks ago, an MP from Gujarat threatened a toll booth operator who dared to ask him to pay the toll.  A few days ago, members of the Pune police force physically attacked organizers of a music festival who refused to provide them with free tickets to a concert. These disparate events are connected not only by their absurdity, but by the feeling of entitlement present in the attitude of each of the perpetrators.

We’ve become a society of entitled individuals.

Our politicians feel entitled to living a privileged life on the taxpayer’s expense. Why pay for anything ever again when someone was foolish enough to send you to a legislative body? What do you mean I went for a vacation to Las Vegas? I was there in an official capacity: to study the effects of topless ladies doing amazing circus stunts on the general population. My luggage was a few hundred kilos over the allowed limit because as your elected representative I carry a heavy burden on my shoulders. One of the few times our MPs come together is to either give themselves more perks or to censure a private citizen who has dared to criticize them. Just because we barely show up to work or leave early if we do, doesn’t mean you should be criticizing us. If you think this is easy why don’t you try it? Haha, kidding! If you even think about doing this we’re going to send you into oblivion.

Our police lords over the very people they are hired to serve. The police in this country are like the ‘guardian’ of an underage heir in a 1980’s Hindi movie. Not only does the guardian cheat the heir out of all her money; he also turns her into his own personal slave. What do you mean your car got stolen? Are you sure? Why do you even need a car? You should try walking. Nobody walks to their destination anymore. Maybe the thief did you a favour? No, no need to write down a formal complaint. I’ll remember all the details. They don’t call me ‘Detective Karamchand’ for nothing!

Our governments feel entitled enough to tell us what books we can read or what movies we can see or which words on teevee we don’t deserve to hear. Because in real life nobody ever abuses anybody else and children are born when two flowers suddenly fall on each other. Why should we let you decide what you want to watch or read? Who do you think you are, an adult? The government can also place any restriction on the Internet because they’re entitled to their own interpretation of the law.  You can’t see this because . . . terrorism?

One of the major myths in this country which has become part of the conventional wisdom is that old people always know better. This is the sort of thinking that empowers arbitrary groups like the ‘Khap Panchayats’ to make decisions for other people, especially the young. A bunch of old, entitled men sitting around, making idiotic pronouncements which their community takes as gospel truth. A group of people so wise that they force members of the same family to kill each other for violating their ‘code.’

We’ve also convinced ourselves that we’re entitled to everything that we want. Whether it’s the parking spot someone else has been waiting for, or the first place in the line. If we don’t like something in the public domain, we’re entitled to break public property to protest against it. We’re entitled to discriminate against people based on an attribute of theirs we don’t like, but when other people do the same then they’re being racists. We’re entitled to use loudspeakers for our early morning prayers because what sort of heathen would object to worshipping god?

Nowadays, everyone seems to be entitled to their own facts too. Foreign investment equals colonialism! Global warming is a hoax! Eating crappy Chinese food makes you want to rape!

Now please excuse me while I let my dog out so he can relieve himself on my neighbour’s car.

Another One Bites The Dust

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

As the lights dimmed and he headed back to his ‘make-up’ room, he looked back once again to the stage to see the last remnants of his dignity. He had just done a scripted-to-look-impromptu dance with a former leading lady who appeared on his show to promote her comeback movie. He used to be the biggest superstar in the country and now he has to suffer a thousand indignities everyday being a circus monkey for people he wouldn’t even have looked at when he was at the peak of his career. People who only are allowed to appear on his show because he needs them. His first teevee show gave the channel enough ratings to keep them on the top for a decade. Now, to attract a decent audience, he needs to use people with sad stories to sell as a crutch. His father was right: if you want people to stop caring about you, grow old.

One of the most popular tropes on twitter among people who don’t have anything funny or original to say is to make a ‘joke’ about someone in the news being a contestant on Bigg Boss. This sort of came true last week when commode enthusiast and alleged cartoonist Aseem Trivedi became a contestant on that show. Because the best way to fight injustice is to participate in a show famous for playing psychotic mind games with its contestants and is moderated by a man whose career is dedicated to making bullying seem kitschy-cool! Trivedi made so much noise about being in jail and when he was freed he voluntarily entered a large compound in which he, along with other inmates, has to follow a rigid set of rules – which if broken invite their own set of penalties, receive food rations barely enough for sustenance, and can only exit when asked to do so by a presiding authority. Well played! Seems like all our modern messiahs want to do is become famous enough to get on teevee.

Of course, in India, the shortest route to fame - other than leading a vague protest against the government’s policies - is to become a contestant on a reality show. We love the people on reality shows! Sure, we forget about them the minute the current season of the show ends, but electing a proper Indian Idol is more important than electing a proper government.

And we have a whole spate of reality shows to choose from! You have your regular talent shows, in which people who didn’t succeed in their actual chosen profession select people who are going to fail in theirs. Nowadays, most of these shows have turned into a contest to determine who is more poor and desperate. Will you vote for the grocery vendor from a village without electricity situated deep inside the Himalayan mountains whose parents have to trek 200 kilometres just to catch a glimpse of their only offspring on teevee or would you vote for the orphan from the streets of the badlands of UP who survived famine, caste war, family feuds, dacoit recruitment officers and Anu Malik’s poetry to reach the finale. Why wouldn’t you help them achieve their lifelong dream of winning a show that didn’t exist until a month ago, you monster? Some shows also feature celebrities – and by celebrities I mean anyone who might have appeared in a movie or television show or had their photo appear in the newspaper that one time  – dancing and singing away, shamelessly asking their ‘fans’ to vote for them. Perhaps the only thing more pathetic than contestants on reality shows assuming that they have fans is people on twitter assuming that those who follow them actually give a crap about which first world problem prevented them from sharing their bon mots with the rest of the world. Even the scripted banter on these shows is more banal and cliché ridden than Ravi Shashtri’s commentary.

Then there are a zillion ‘crime shows’ which portray crude dramatizations of real-life incidents while the anchor pops in after every scene to give a very serious monologue requiring very serious background music. Judging by the ratings of these shows, it seems India really loves watching ‘people like us’ suffer fatal consequences for bad decisions.

The worst of the lot are those interchangeable ‘youth-centric’ shows. Their basic conceit is to humiliate everyone involved in the show on national television. A whole generation has been brought up watching these shows, confusing notoriety with fame. Possessing a real talent has been replaced by possessing an ability to bully, cajole, outwit or seduce. Bonus points if you get bleeped every two seconds.

Perhaps that is going to be this generation’s teevee legacy: a bunch of illiterate people shouting the f-word at each other, completely devoid of any context.

Everybody got Oscar Fever

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

I never understand why publishers put book blurbs on the first few pages of a book. I get the blurbs on the back; you know a book isn’t worth reading if it hasn’t even been blurbed by Gary Shteyngart. But why put them on the inside? I’ve already bought the book! You won me over! Stop trying to tell me how good the book is; just let me start reading it! And why should I care about what the ‘Denver Post’ said about the book? I don’t even like Denver! It’s like going into a restaurant, ordering your meal and then being told by the waiter how good the food in the restaurant is until your order is served. The chicken you’re about to eat was called ‘Superb!’ by the San Francisco Chronicle. The ‘Denver Post’ gave it three stars! And the Times of India was kind enough to state ‘come for the waitresses, stay for the chicken!’  What’s with all the insecurity, bro?

The same sort of insecurity that rears its ugly head every year around the time when we first hear about India’s entry to the Oscars for the ‘Best Foreign Film’ category. If only we'd nominated a better movie; we might even have won this year!

Here is how the nominating process works: If the producers of a movie released in the past year – and which stayed in the theatres for at least seven consecutive days –  want it to be considered for ‘Best Foreign Film’ at the Oscars, they have to fill a form, pay a service charge and send a copy of their movie – with subtitles in English – to the Film Federation of India (FFI) by the middle of September. In the last fortnight of the same month, a secret cabal of alleged ‘bollywood insiders’ chosen by the FFI meets at an undisclosed location and takes a look at all the movies that people have bothered to submit. They choose the least crappy movie and ship a copy of it to the Academy as India’s official entry. Then the Academy takes the movie and screens it for a secret cabal of Academy members who choose which movie to nominate.

Each nominated movie follows such a long and tedious process. And the process is easily influenced by marketing, bias, corruption, prejudice, bullying and the favour economy. It’s really a stretch to presume that the ‘best’ movie gets nominated each year. And yet there is always lots of ‘controversy’ and hand-wringing whenever the nomination period rolls around. Another self-inflicted wound on our national insecurities! Remember when we lost our national marbles over Slumdog Millionare, a movie that flopped miserably when it was released in the country but became a national obsession when it was nominated for a couple of Oscars. We are so desperate for validation that we pretended that a badly made British clone of a 1980’s Hindi movie was the greatest thing to happen to Indian cinema since Alam Ara.

Granted, award shows in our country are a farce and people generally get awards just for showing up and the Oscars are a much lesser sham than our shitty award shows, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is not some infallible earthly representative of the movie gods. Why get so hot & bothered about a random group of people giving awards to a random list of movies? An award show will always share the sensibilities of the people organizing it. 

Not that we make a lot of movies which can compete with the best in the world! It’s a wonder people in the rest of the world don’t like movies which tackle serious issues with the sensitivity of a starving otter who just spotted a school of fish. Hey Italy, you might be able to make a critically acclaimed, universally praised, inspiring movie about a group of blind orphans who went on to become Europe’s most popular dance troupe, but can you make the ‘leading men’ in your movies act like neanderthals with an I.Q. of a human toddler and the libido of an orangutan in heat? I don’t think so!

Next time we have a national freakout over sending the ‘wrong’ movie for a nomination, let us remember that we’re fretting about not winning an award from the same Academy who thought ‘The King’s Speech’ was the best movie of 2010.

A movie about a guy giving a good speech.

You know who else liked to give good speeches?