The Literally Speechless

As the entire electoral procedure is set to get over in a few weeks, we all reach that point wherein we prepare ourselves to complain about the government’s oppression for the next 6 years. There is going to be unanimous hate towards the ruling party irrespective of who it is. We are pretty certain that it is not going to be the UPA again. On that note, let’s rejoice to the fact that Kapil Sibal will not be throwing punches in the air by attempting to censor the internet and effectively sound like some Vijaykanth movie villain who has a stupid devious plan to colour the moon orange or something. However, one must not judge a book by its cover. The UPA is no debutant to hatching stupid devious plans.

Censorship is resonant across people in the world as they must have certainly faced a degree of it in their respective lives. If not censorship, one must have obviously felt the aftermath of saying something seemingly out of place. We have grown up following certain rules imposed on us by our parents. Our parents grew up with rules imposed on them by our grandparents and the cycle goes on. As a community, we now tolerate most of these things and pass it off as a norm as genetics passed onto us, a blind iron curtain on the freedom of expression. Different households incorporate different cultures and subsequently, anyone who takes charge of a system outside his household tends to facilitate the same rules over there as well.

Let me illustrate with an example. When I was in the 12^th standard, we used to have weekly events like Shipwreck and Debate. One week it so happened that I opted to judge that week’s Shipwreck. Since our school had a surface area lesser than the hair on Sharad pawars scalp, everyone happened to know one another. So as the judge of a supposedly light hearted comic event in high school, I decided to make snarky personal remarks on the participants. I sneaked in a pun involving the name of the participants’ significant other in a rather casual way and ended up being lectured by the principal. This is how the entire scene played out

What I Actually said :“Uh. So do you/have you ever consumed alcohol? No? Good because you shouldn’t drink Rum-ya.” ( Ramya. So smart no?)

What went through most of the teachers minds : Hmm. 2:50. 25 more minutes till I can fin- RUM! HE SAID RUM. OH MY GOD CALL HIS PARENTS IMMEDIATELY NOW.

What my Parents were told :  “YOUR SON PUBLICALLY ENDORSED HIS VIEWS AND OPINIONS ON ALCOHOLISM AND FACILITATED THE SUBSEQUENT DESCENT OF 38 PEOPLE INTO DRUGS..so here tell him to write this apology letter and you can leave”

Okay maybe not exactly like that. They were told that I suggested the consumption of rum to a wide audience, which was also an exaggeration.( So exaggerating and exaggeration is justified) This however, isn’t a direct example of censorship on a small level. It is an example how someone can be incriminated for basically nothing just because they aren’t in the good books of the higher authorities. Be sure that, when somebody doesn’t like what you’re saying, you’re going to be pulled up on some bullshit charge. The provision of numerous such excuses remains one of the primary contributions of religion to the modern society.

With Kapil Sibal trying to censor facebook and bottleneck the entire happenings of the Indian web network, there are questions being asked about the overall freedom of one’s speech. Of course, the answer to those questions are like Narendra Modi’s interview tactics: Either rehearsed or non-existent. There is a clear line drawn by the government on the general acceptability of a particular string of words. I could be arrested by some lunatic party for just liking a facebook comment or a status. Actually, given the said partys’ history, I would bet on me just being beaten up by someone who looks like a failed wrestler and works for a failed politician. At this juncture, I would like to bring up the case of an American writer called Wendy Doniger who published a book on the Alternative History of Hinduism. Naturally, when most Hindu support groups heard the words ‘Alternate’ and ‘Hinduism’, they went bat shit insane and burned down all the copies. Because you know, Hinduism is all about peace and harmony.

These people constitute to the unwanted by-product of the country’s gene pool in terms of their mental approach to the entire concept of the media. Never will you see a channel grill any big shot politician for answers to the questions that actually matter. Most news channels just host a more executive version of Koffee with Karan while accepting a large load of their very own Koffee Hamper. It’s not because they want to draw the curtains on the truth, it’s simply because they do not want to die. This fear among reporters and TV channel heads is the reason we have unnecessary sensationalization that eventually leads to things like

“We have just received information that exposes the entire swiss bank account details of every politician in India with an trusted authority giving us the seal of acceptance. BUT FIRST SEE THIS GIRL WHO CAN BEND HER INDEX FINGER SIDEWAYS. IS SHE AN ALIEN? INCREDIBLE INDIA!! WOW WOW WOW. MORE ON THIS STORY FROM EDUCATED MINDS LIKE KARAN THAPAR AND THAT GUY FROM COMEDY NIGHTS WITH KAPIL.”

All of you must have heard of the RTI from the few million times it was mentioned by Rahul Gandhi on Times Now. It is the Right to Information Act that had been brought in to promote freedom of press in the same way N.Srinivasan had been brought in to enhance the standards of cricket. The RTI is followed even lesser than Priyanka Vadra’s rally speeches. (If you haven’t heard of her, then my point has successfully been put across). One may exercise the RTI and take the matters to court but not many people would be interested in waiting several years just to have the government throw a bone to their cause. Consequently, the RTI implodes and ceases to defeat the cause of its conception. However, slowly, India starts fighting fire with fire and as people adopt these tactics, we hear the Gandhian generation poking us in the back with the evergreen complaint – “but it’s against our culture to rebel”

The past few years have seen a rise in the ballsy and brash nature of the general public, an epitome of which is, Arnab Goswami. We had previously been robbed of our dignity and speech and openly mocked by the politicians and now Arnab Goswami takes revenge for the masses by doing the same to Sanjay Jha, Abhijeet Mukherji and many others on a regular basis. Sarcasm and satire is rapidly taking the place of candle lights and fasts as means of making a point to the higher authorities. Took long enough for them to get a firm grip on the basic working of sarcasm but the achievement must be appreciated. As a country widely renowned for taking two steps back for every step forward, the least we can do is, take larger step forward and minimalize the backward falls.

It’s going to be a long time until we elect an actual leader considering the one we have almost elected now cannot even enter the USA (Iyer equivalent of the end of your life). In the coming years, we shall witness another wave of scams, presumably a higher number of riots and atrocities and hopefully a lesser barrier on the media censorship. Boundaries are widened by pressing them and somewhere along the numerous satirical statuses and shout outs into the void, we are going to reach a point where the thick skinned leaders actually get influenced by the same. Until then, let us just sit and wait for them to commit the crimes they always do and find ourselves getting arrested for talking about it. We will have movies that shed light upon shady events that are banned but will take no efforts whatsoever against the showcased shady events. The stupid nature of the movie censor board is why mindless movies like Dhoom 3 and Yeh Jawaani hai deewani gross 200 crores and Madras Café and Vishwaroopam end up fighting the right to screening. Way to go, India.

The Bollywood Conundrum

2013 was a big year for Bollywood as they celebrated 100 years of cinema. Not good cinema, just cinema. It was literally the celebration of still existing. One would expect that this milestone in the modern era of film making would have led to something commemorative like maybe good cinema, but nope. All we got was, the turds from Bollywood doing an item number in a collaborative short film while all the better actors were comfortably settled in Hollywood. (Obviously excluding Mallika Sherawat) In retrospect, it wasn’t the best of years for Bollywood in terms of the cinema. 2013 started with Race 2 and ended with Dhoom 3 which says a lot about the year actually.

Bollywood took the one high point they had and commercialized it to the “Ab ki baar Modi Sarkaar” level. It was known as the sole film industry in the world that integrated those cheesy songs along with a clichéd storyline. Now it’s just known as painful and there were maybe around 10 good movies in the past year that were actually a testament to the long standing history of the industry. Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, Table no. 21, Special 26, Ship of Theseus and Aashiqui 2 were a few of them. The rest of the bundle of film reels consisted of movies like Chashme Baddoor, Race 2, Himmatwala and R..Rajkumar. There were certain aspects of 2013 that deserved a notable mention and here they are;

1. Comeback Movies : The industry is famous for celebrating the mere existence of some aspects and sometimes these celebrations of so-called legends result in comeback movies. 2013 kickstarted this wave of bullshit with Govinda leading the line. Deewana Mei Deewana was some movie with Priyanka Chopra, Prem Chopra and Johnny Lever. You would question Priyanka chopra’s career choices but after Pitbull, I guess she would be ready to do anyone anything. Juhi Chawla came back and did a movie with Sanjay Dutt called “Hum hai rahi CAR ke”. The Car was capitalized upon because that pun was probably the smartest of all the ideas that went into the making of the movie. There was also Preity Zinta’s own production movie called ‘Ishkq in Paris’ but we cannot criticize her decision making skills considering that she owns a Punjabi cricket team with the Parsi owner of a company called Bombay Dyeing and calls it “Kings 11”. None of the words in that sentence have any coherence with the next.
2. Debutants: This year saw quite a few faces try their hand at the box office. They could be broadly classified into 3 categories depending upon how their debut movie would work out for them in the long run. In the first category are those whose first movie really cemented their position in the industry and promised a constantly rising graph, like Sushanth Singh Rajput or Dhanush. There were still others who bombed pretty badly like Tapsee Pannu or Girish Kumar and then there is Tammanah who chose to burst onto the bollywood scene by agreeing to do Himmatwala and subsequently Rahul Gandh-ied her chances at Bollywood.
3. Critically Acclaimed Cinema: I never really was a fan of parallel cinema or those silent type Oscar movies. I did not enjoy Dallas Buyers Club and I had to be woken up every 5 minutes when I saw Lootera. A movie must have both aspects of the entertainment quotient and that sense of ‘deep-thinking’, critics ogle about. The Lunchbox really didn’t help me stay awake much either. You may call me someone who deserves only movies like Dabbangg 2 and R..Rajkumar but I hated them too, so stalemate. 2013 included a lot of these critically acclaimed movies like Barfi, Lootera, The Lunchbox and B.A. Pass. These critically acclaimed movies are basically the equivalent of Hockey in India. However good you are, you’re still going to lose to that royal douchebaggery that is cricket. Barfi however, enjoyed its fair deal of success  and was sent to the Oscars. You know you’ve really messed up when a movie based in Kolkata is representing your country at the Oscars. With all the prevalent stereotypes people have about us, we definitely don’t need any bong stereotypes being added now.
   ( EDIT : Barfi, I learn was actually from 2012 but I made a joke and all for Barfi so I don’t wish to remove it now. I’m sure you understand.)
4. Music: However predictable the music in cinema gets with every passing second, it is still an integral part of any movie watching experience. You question the entire purpose of watching a movie if you learn there isn’t going to be any bad music accompanying it. It is a must-have for all movies to incorporate a cheesy, catchy, pop song whose lyrics make Javed Akhtar cry for humanity whilst stabbing himself in the eye multiple times. Some films however, chose to move away from the Yo Yo Honey Singh trend of music and that led to some really nice music this year. Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani, Barfi, Aashiqui 2, <obligatory A.R Rahman album which really just had decent-ish songs but has to make the list just because crazy fans will go crazy it was A.R Rahman> were some of the amazing albums to have come out.

Now I’m no Rajeev Masand or Taran Adarsh so I must dish out credit where it is due. Aashiqui 2 was maybe the only good sequel to have come out this year. That is partly because the first Aashiqui flopped in advance for this. It wasn’t much of a race to be called the best sequel considering the contenders were movies like- Once upon Ay time in Mumbai Dobaara! It’s funny how they thought numerology would help this movie even after loading it with bullshit of enormous quantities. But enough about Sonakshi Sinha. The first part of the movie looks at this one like Amitabh Bacchan looks at Abhishek Bacchan.

Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani was also listed as one of the best grossing movies this year. It featured Ranbir kapoor being directed by Ayan Mukherji. Ayan Mukherji directed Ranbir Kapoors’ Wake Up Sid and moved on to this project. I must admire Ayan’s creative genius. He first made a movie where Ranbir Kapoor plays a college student who has no plans and then goes on to discover success and find love hiding right under his nose, to making another film with Ranbir Kapoor playing a college student who has no plans and then goes on to discover success and find love hiding right under his nose. One had Konkona Sen Sharma and the other had Deepika Padukone, guess which one made 100 crores? Talking about creativity, one must applaud Raanjhaana. Dhanush found yet another way to end up psychotic and this time, it involved Sonam Kapoor displaying her vast range of 3 emotions. Parineeti Chopra, yet again, found herself playing a bubbly annoying whitewash north Indian and managed to rope in Sushanth Singh Rajput in this tale of Shudh torture. Sushanth Singh Rajput I learn, was actually an All India AIEEE topper. His engineering mind must have told him to choose the script involving love making scenes with two heroines and scrap the other films which had an actual script.

I could rant on about Krrish 3, Dhoom 3, R..Rajkumar but I won’t be making any jokes you haven’t heard before. 2013 unfortunately didn’t have any Salman Khan, which meant I couldn’t make inappropriate jokes about him and also meant that no additional brain cells were wiped out (Since Bhai has this reputation of wiping out people on the road stuff).

All said and done, I love how the Bollywood industry is. Sure, there are stupid actors like Varun Dhawan and Sonam Kapoor but these are the imperfections we can always make fun of. I would hate for Bollywood to become like Hollywood and dish out continuous parallel cinema like 12 Years a Slave and Lincoln, but it would help if they didn’t make movies like Krrish with Avengers in mind. We are still far away from creating a Nolan or Scorcese experience but I’d rather not imagine a Shutter Island with Akshay Kumar or an Inception with Shah Rukh Khan. We edge closer to their bold comic standard with Go Goa Gone and we drift farther away from it with Yamla Pagla Deewana 2. Here’s to another 100 years of moving one step forward and two steps back.

*DIng dong ding* Your kind attention please

As a student who does college away from home, I’m pretty used to the frequent train and bus journeys. Almost every 2 weeks, I am commuting to some weird place in an overnight bus or a train. Some journeys are horrible and some are memorable. They are memorable because they make you want to kill a litter of puppies with fire and that is not a feeling you usually get. Most of you might immediately jump to the defense of the Indian railways system and tell me how advanced and sophisticated the entire system is. But then again, no you won’t. Don’t get me wrong. I love how comfy the seats are in the sleeper class and how hospitable those bedbugs are. For them to be screwing with the happiness of every single passenger day in day out and maintaining the uniform torture is something admirable.

I am writing this post from a train right now while I am surrounded by an entire bank of blog content. Let us make this description a little more sophisticated and separate these annoying bags of blood and tissue into three categories depending upon their age.  The mentioned incidents have occurred over the space of my 3 years of both train and bus commute to/from Thanjavur or Trichy. Let’s check out category 1 which involves the lowest form of life.

No, it’s not Subramanian Swamy, It’s babies.

Okay it’s a little like Subramanian Swamy, I’ll give you that.

BABIES :

Babies are the evolved versions of the bedbugs. They possess this magical ability to piss everyone off and to shit their pants at will. I wouldn’t say crying at will was very magical as most people I know now can pull that off better than these maggots. You know how hard it is to walk in a straight line in a fast moving vehicle? Imagine these little excreta banks doing this when they can’t walk a straight line on a normal basis. The parents, obviously fed up of listening to baby gibberish and staring at human waste for 80% of their average day, would decide to leave their kids to roam around a fast moving train to get some alone time and calm themselves. This tactic is so stupid and still so abundantly used that I’m tempted to make a religion out of it. I’m pretty sure even a mass murderer would be held in higher regard than someone who doesn’t help a kid up after it trips and falls over flat ground. Then again, mass murderers and terrorists are held in pretty high regard in this country. On a completely random note though, this Narendra Modi is one fine fellow no?

One time it so happened that I was to share a 2 tier 2^nd A/C compartment with a couple and a kid roughly 5-6 years old. I usually engross myself into a movie or something else on my laptop until I eventually feel sleepy and then pack up. This was one of those nights where Satan wanted to stretch his arms and do some genuine evil. Like all normal people, I push my footwear under the seat below and go to my upper berth where I set up my laptop and hang up my figurative middle finger to the world. Kids usually have this tendency to screw people’s lives up without actively realizing it, much like that one political party in India. (Or all the political parties in India)

So this particular hyperactive bundle of joy was clearly a football enthusiast, complete with a t-shirt that said- Football. Owing to his apparent love for the game, he was kicking things around. The father managed to settle the little dude down but he wouldn’t listen. So like any Indian would, he just gave up.  The result? My flip flops found themselves all the way to that metal link between two compartments, a discovery I made when I took the decision in the morning to just leave the slippers behind and accept defeat. Not the biggest story of tragedy but annoying enough to hate the kin. Now let’s move on to the next type of irksome company you rendezvous with in your travel.

OVER ENTHUSIASTIC TEENAGERS :

Every once in a while you come across that one group of teenagers or college students who act like teenagers, who think they are Jim Carrey and prefer to shout out all their jokes. Only problem is, they aren’t Jim Carrey and their jokes would make Navjot Singh Siddhu contemplate suicide (Since murder isn’t quite a new thing for him). They most probably are either just teens traveling for the first time together or mentally retarded. Even in this, the category falls broadly into two main types. Type 1 involves those who are so adherent to their stereotypes that it’s not even funny and type 2 consists of those who actively make an effort to not to showcase their stereotype. The LCM for them both is their extravagant sense of negative humor and positive reinforcement of irritation.

A train journey with them is a different experience altogether and I don’t mean for this to be in a “coming of age” type way. It is this cocktail of bad jokes in Tamil mixed with testosterone and overconfidence. As a proud practitioner and admirer of shit jokes and bad humor, when a particular joke is deemed as bad by me, it really speaks volumes about it.

Type 2 are generally the Bros from the Bro college of Brongineering in Dudepur. Most Bro conversations cannot happen without a reference to Tam Kroos or Cristyano Donaldo of Reel Madrid in Spen. They often also include exclamatory remarks about goals from the 19^th century like :

BRO 1: Bro andha goal by Zlatan Ibajbfaivbkarginic for PSG was ulti theri bro like wow.

BRO 2: ZOMGLOLZ. who is this zladan and why has he joined psg? Sastra has better placements bro.

<Seemingly infinite cackling from both the bros>

Life had never seemed less unworthy to continue. But we need to move on as I stare at my word count reaching new levels of LOL. I wrap up quickly with my last category of Travel Animosities- The dreaded Uncles.

THE ADVICING UNCLES:

The last thing on a students’ mind while traveling back home, is their future. Unless of course the future in question corresponds to the F, 20 in seat number 30 which we already religiously checked before boarding the train.

*Muffled cries of engineers asking me not to reveal trade secrets*

The only thing scarier than the train derailing and crashing into a pile of flaming cacti is, a middle aged gentleman waltzing into your compartment and settling there with his trusty box of curd rice and futile advice. If you closely pay attention to these few moments, you can actually experience how 9/11 must have felt for the people inside the WTC.

So as this gentleman slowly flies this plane into your entire mood, you realize that life is cruel. He proceeds to question every aspect of your seemingly pointless life and judges you irrespective of what you say. The reason why they are an unpleasant company during travel is, because they will try to make you engage in conversation even if you shoot down all their attempts of it. Once I was on my way from Thanjavur to Chennai in the afternoon train and I wasn’t sleepy. So naturally I pulled out my laptop and started watching a movie (Which, by now you must have realized is, the engineers solution to everything). It was the first Thor movie and I was quietly stationed in my berth with headphones and all. This elderly uncle comes to charge his cell phone at the point and notices me watching this movie. Well aware that I am wearing headphones, he rambles loudly and out of courtesy, I remove my headphones and ask him the dreaded question- What?

“Why pa you are watching movie. It is 1.30pm in afternoon. According to <insert random god name> and <insert random Sanskrit word> it is the best time to study”

Thanks to the 90184571039857 gods and 1047591837 religions, it is hard to find a time which is not ideal for studying. However, trying to avoid further conversation, he laughs. I laugh. He laughs more. I slowly put my headphones back on and turn away, questioning why bad things must happen to good people.

But anyways, like any wise man would tell you- These small experiences play a huge part in shaping who you are in the future. So in the future, if you find me convicted of manslaughter or something, blame that wise old crack for predicting this and arrest him instead. But for now, I’ll be content with you just liking this blog post and coming back regularly for more.

 

The Fine Print

When I set out to start a blog, I asked myself : What distinguishes me from the rest of the fish in this contaminated pool of students that is engineering? Then it struck me. I was amazing at offending people. People talk about how easily a particular subject or a sport comes to them and believe me, I’ve tried my hand at most of those and you can guess how they ended up, considering I’m not a 9.6 GPA student or a renowned sports personality. You must be wondering why I am rambling about these random facts when I should just go back to my original content and make fun of Culture, Iyers, Gujaratis and people in general. So here’s why this post is digressing from the usual

Recently, after the most recent post that is, “The Hypocrisy Chronicles” I received a lot of mixed reviews from friends and family about the overall content filtering I must incorporate in my articles so as to stop life threatening repercussions from people I offend. So this article is the much needed disclaimer my blog needs. Think of it as the Shah Rukh Khan scene from most of the movies nowadays. No, not necessarily from his films- I’m talking about that anti tobacco ad in which his lungs make a special appearance and exude more tar than the entirety of Kodambakkam.

Now there are two ways I could tackle this disclaimer notice. I could either go through it fast like that mutual-fund-investments-are-subject-to-market-risks thing or I could convince people using logic and reason into not taking any offence. I’m going to use the less traversed path of logic here because stupidity has already been maxed out in this country. Let’s get right to business now with the general disclaimer points

–          This blog is in no way in support or against any particular political party. It has been created just to make fun of them. Don’t blame me if your party or constituency has indulged in a higher amount of stupidity than the rest. We understand how much of a task it is to sound the least stupid. I do Engineering.

–          As an atheist myself, I do not bias myself towards any religion whatsoever. All of them are equally screwed up if they are inadvertently responsible for a group of stupid extremists acting like overenthusiastic English teachers and deriving their own interpretation of the fairy tale they believe in.

–          So obviously this blog was not made for entertainment purposes, I could have made Vine videos or posted links to Koffee with Karan episodes for that. This blog was written with the sole intention of putting out my thoughts irrespective of how you feel towards it. Nothing I have said on this blog has any ‘wrong’ content, just maybe crudely put offensive content. Taking offense over some content here is purely your fault, and in no way mine.

–          Unless you’re mentally still stuck up in 896 BC, you would know that you cannot survive in this world without embracing your stereotype. If you’re from Andhra, you’re probably the kid who mugs up the calendar. If you’re from Delhi, you’re probably a dude-bro who says stuff like- “what bro menchester unity losted yesterday. Shit ya dimaag kharab hua hai”. Stop blaming me for highlighting the most popular product from your factory.

–          There will be no edit outs of any sort unless I’ve gotten my facts wrong. I don’t really spend my time researching on much data and if I’ve said any facts wrong, please tell me and I will correct it immediately. However, if something offends you or makes you uncomfortable, try opening the windows of that narrow path you call your mind.

–          Lastly, if you got offended for anything I said about Sonam Kapoor or Rohit shetty, I would kindly ask you to just close this page and give up whatever you feel. Like your pulse or something. (For lack of a better phrasing to “haha kill yourself”)

–          Just because we are in India, I will have to make this bullshit disclaimer stating that I do not endorse suicide because of my previous comment. I don’t want India TV at my house the next time some teenager commits suicide.

I could brandish the “I AM AN INDIAN AND I HAVE A RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH IN THIS COUNTRY” card anytime but we’re in India and the only thing that can be brandished here is your caste and your money. The closest we are to free speech is, Arnab Goswami and funnily, he has gained this level of freedom by denying the people on his show their right to speech altogether. Having said that, I’m actually pretty lucky that, most of said politicians wouldn’t be able to comprehend a sentence like- The existing strata of fraudulent excuses for life who masquerade as the harbingers of contentment and glee must be castigated with punitive measures such as watching Dabbangg 2. Their reaction would probably just be like “hehe dabang bola”.

Also, most of our leaders are from a different generation. Mostly around the cretaceous period or something. Finding something offensive is a far enough goal for them considering they would spend 73 hours finding the dot after www. It is to you mediocre IQ population that I send out this humble plea to. Stop being such a stuck up L.K. Advani and start having an open mind about the content here. I may have come off a bit rude in this article but I want you to know, I love it.

 

P.S – Obligatory Culture joke : What is the difference between Jesus Christ and a photo of Jesus Christ?

         ..You only need one nail to put up the photo

P.P.S- Don’t be a smartass about it if you’ve already heard the joke.

The Hypocrisy Chronicles

It’s election time in India now. That means quite a few things apart from the spurious influx of money. It is literally the designated front for fake promises and random bullshit and what else comes to mind when you say fake promises and random bullshit? Exactly. Womens Rights

In a country that is almost surely going to be ruled by a gujarati, you wouldn’t expect there to be a sense of learning from the past. It’s a system of forgive and forget or as they like to call it – Clean chit for murder, genocide and tax evasions. India is almost one of the worst places for a girl to be born. Actually, due to the women infanticide, it’s one of the worst places for a girl to even be concieved. It must speak volumes of your country when even the X chromosome doesn’t feel safe. It’s one thing to roam around streets feeling unsafe and a completely different thing to be unsafe right from when you are -5 months old.  I do not blame the judiciary system in this case. It’s unfair to expect the judiciary system to do something totally out of it’s given functions and expect it to dish out completely disparate things like justice. Shame on you, selfish indian.  It’s obviously the fault of the girl who waltzs into a gang of men late in the night at around 6.30 and she herself is to blame for getting raped. Which was also her actual plan in the first place. Because, a secular democratic republican <insert random politically sound word> country does not allow for the constitution to be corrupted by things like logic. That is just another one of those western civilization cultures that we must teach our youth to not inherit. We must make active efforts to make them imbibe our rich culture and hence treat women correspondingly.

Let us begin by addressing the most important and maybe the only working self defence tactic to have ever been used in a rape situation. Let us tell our children how we must always have a blue colored superhuman friend who possesses the capability to spawn saris from his fingers and save a damsel in distress from an excerpt out of one of the 2 blockbusters in Indian culture- The story of Draupadi. A beautiful epic which teaches us values of courage, determination and well, polygamy. But just so that the youth doesn’t get a wrong image, it is NOT okay to actually fall in love and get married to one singular guy. 5 men, one wife? Yeah that’s alright bro, just make sure you say its culture first, then its cool. Let us go over the rich cultural teachings we have so selectively followed over the years

–          All indians are my brothers and sisters. Except when they’re of the other religion. And oh, no girl is my sister after 10pm and 3 drinks. Unless of course it is my actual biological sister. In which case, we are talking about 6-7 drinks and 12am.

–          Anti Violence and Satyagraha for life!! Except whenever I am bored and want to start a riot. Let me pacify myself and say its for religious purposes only.

–          “Girls who wear skimpy clothes are a disgrace and an insult to our culture and ethos.” But hey let’s take this sculpture of a penis entering a vagina, place it in a temple and call it some bullshit god name so that it is socially acceptable and worshipped throughout. ( It’s called a shiv ling for my more rational, atheist friends who are unaware)

( More examples are welcome. Comment below )

The worst things to have happened to women can be broadly classifed into two categories – Men in courtrooms and the people making up the religion rules. In India and all those muslim countries, these two  have the common denominator of making random rules with respect to a non existant entity and punishing innocents while excusing the guilty. I say that only because all the TV shows and movies have taught me that the judiciary systems overseas mean business and follow things like ethics (Indian translation: ROFLMAOZZ). When your own media doesn’t want to project a good image about the system, you know it’s screwed. And we’re talking about channels like India TV and Zee Marathi here, where a girl with a growth on her little finger and Uddhav Thackeray are both held in higher regard than the Dalai Lama. With the current state of affairs, it’s actually no surprise that Delhi is the rape capital of the country. Whenever someone is convicted, the said felon just says “Jaanta hai mera baap kaun hai?” until the unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Then he calls his father and uses his contacts to move that immovable object using “jugaad”. In the words of Gandhi, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win”

In a more relevant scenario, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they follow you, then they fight you, then they rape you, then they destroy you, then there is a court preceeding for 43 years, then they walk away, then you die”

I heard very recently of the shame that befell a lady from Suri, a place near Kolkata : she was from a place called Suri, near Kolkata. Also, she was tied to a tree and gang raped by the orders of the village elders for being involved with a muslim guy. I’m sorry but do you people not see the stupidity of your bullshit religion in all this? 80% of all the elders in the country have a mind narrower than the average human hair strand and they seem to be dictating the rules to the current generation. I will never understand the age old classification of a pure woman and an impure one. We’re talking about a human here, not Hatsun Ghee. Wearing a stupid boorka and covering yourself makes you as much of a pure woman as war brings you peace.

The youth can be the key to the nations future only if they are brought up by rational and competent parents. Don’t try teaching your daughter to be safe, tell your son not to rape. Don’t pull the god card and induce fear, use the less traversed path of logic. Don’t be the guy who has this obstinate determination to force his beliefs down someone’s throats, be the guy with the obstinate determination to convince them without the fear of a god, to shove it down their own throat. I have never tried to convince someone to discard their faith, but I do not see the point of following something that is so flawed. We are talking about an Indian population that discards an entire syllabus because of a few spelling errors but goes on to follow one of the most flawed religions to ever exist. I’m not going to be the guy who goes – RTI WOMEN EMPOWERMENT VOTE FOR ME PLS. I’m not going to propose a 50% reservation for women and ivory toilet seats with platinum health faucets. Hell I’m not even going to tell you to promote women equality. I am however, going to tell you to shove your culture into a trash can and use your own heads to get a grip on morality.

It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit. These continuous chronicles of hypocrisy serve as nothing but an insult to my sub par intelligence. As nothing but a rambling from a college student, my screams disintegrate into the fog of blind opinions. It is your choice on whether you wish to be one among the fog or one among the listeners. It is however, mandatory that I stop this article here. Like, Comment and Subscribe to me, as I become a shameless self advertising weirdo who is essentially the ‘P. James Magic Show’ guy on the internet.

 

Endings

Around 9-10 years ago, Carter Bays and Craig Thomas set out to replicate their own version of the greatest sitcom to have ever aired. Friends is widely regarded as the greatest sitcom to have ever existed and for someone to even think of starting their version of is really commendable. Today, the series finale of How I met your Mother released and honestly, I loved it. It made me sad, it made me laugh, it made me gawk and it had a pinch of everything. No, it did not make me cry. 

I see a lot of hate coming from the online social community regarding how they had decided to end the series and this post is coming to address those woes. I will not stir anything controversial, nor will I dish out ill timed bad humour in this particular post. So if you do not want to read on further or you haven’t watched the episode yet, please do not read any further

Say what you might but, HIMYM has always had the knack of surprising you and has lived up to it’s name when it released the finale. People were bound to complain either ways when this show had ended and this is understandable. I see people wanting alternative endings and claiming it would have been better that way. This is why I think it wouldn’t have : 

Alternate Ending  1:

<big romantic gesture by ted which subsequently gets him with tracy>

Ted : So kids, that’s how I met your mother.

Kids : Hm. Cool. What’s for dinner and why have you been telling us her story now for no reason?

Ted : … I was bored and missing your mother. Pizza?

<end credits>

AUDIENCE : THAT SUCKED. I TOTALLY SAW THAT COMING. CARTER BAYS AND CRAIG THOMAS ARE THE WORST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD. I HOPE THIS IS AN APRIL FOOLS PRANK ( LOLOL TIMING JOKE YAY I TOTALLY KILLED HIMYM )

Alternate Ending 2:

<big romantic gesture by ted which subsequently gets him with tracy. Barney and robin don’t break up. Tracy doesn’t die>

Ted : So kids that’s how I met your mother

Kids : ..thats cool dad but why didn’t you just tell us the story of barneys wedding ? kinda pointless to narrate out the entire 1 season long stories about how you almost met mom.

Tracy : that’s right honey. Pizza?

<end credits>

AUDIENCE : ARE YOU KIDDING ME? DID I WAIT 9 YEARS TO JUST SEE SOMETHING SO NORMAL? I MEAN I WAS EXPECTING WALRUSES DOING BACKFLIPS THROUGH FIERY HOOPS HELD UP BY BARACK OBAMA IN A TUTU. CARTER BAYS AND CRAIG THOMAS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR WASTING 9 YEARS OF MY LIFE. PLEASE MAKE A HIMYM MOVIE, A FEW SPIN OFFS AND ANOTHER ENTIRE MOVIE, I NEED CLOSURE. GOD DAMN IT I HOPE THIS WAS AN APRIL FOOLS JOKE (ROFLMAO NEVER GETS OLD)

My point here is, that people would have reacted badly to any ending that would have come their way and that is one of the bets the producers had to take while making a TV show that would resonate with almost an entire generation. Even through the bad times when the show got almost as drab and dry as Glee or Castle, there was a huge fan base still religiously downloading the episodes week in, week out. So when the series finale would come out, it would create a sense of withdrawal from one of the regular routines that defined their week. Now, let me go on to tell you how the finale was actually pretty perfect.

For all those smart asses making jokes about how the show should have been named “How I met your stepmother” or “How I met your mother and ditched her to go marry Aunt Robin”, your jokes collapse on themselves because Ted had actually set out to tell the story of how he met tracy but was later convinced of going for Robin. If you think about it, Robin had been the highlight of the show. The show started off with Ted wanting to get with Robin and ended with him doing precisely that. He loved his wife and circumstances prevented him from being with her all the time. Is that his fault?

Teds’ residual feelings for robin had prevailed through a majority of the show and everything major that happened in it was due to Ted or Robin. Stella left him at the altar (Robin), Victoria left him (Robin), Barney and Quinn(Robin) and in several more instances. Accept it or not, the kids raised a pretty fundamental question that would have come up if the show hadn’t ended like it did. It made no sense at all for him to talk about all his failed love ventures when all he had to do was, to tell them about Barneys’ wedding. Ted and Robin may not have been the perfect couple, but by marrying off Robin and Barney, they would have killed the Barney character completely. The show functioned on Barney’s ill timed humor and awesomeness which was nullified in the past season. Most people fail to appreciate how carefully the show had been crafted up till the last detail with the mother encounter episodes (which was amazing, by the way) all the way up to the blue trumpet. When someone starts questioning the motive behind each of Ted’s actions throughout the series, it leads to a series of interconnected questions that go all the way up to the conceiving of the show in the first place.

I could tell you how the finale was close to reality. I could tell you how life doesn’t always give you the ending you want. I could tell you how fairy tales are only fiction. I could rant on about all that until most people start seeing my point of view but I do not enjoy writing novels. Many people wouldn’t agree with me on whatever I’ve said but like I’ve stated before, you cannot end a 9 season TV show with something mediocre. When the impact is huge, the ending deserves to be explosive.

Thank you ,‘how I met your mother’ for the 9 seasons. Please don’t do a spin off. There’s only a finite amount of support a fan can offer you.