DISCLAIMER: This article is a light hearted expression of my views on general stupidity and if you are a human living in the 21st century, there is a pretty high chance that you will most certainly find some parts of this offensive to your kin. If you do not enjoy attempted satire and casual jibes at redundancies in the society, I suggest you read this article fully and blow up in a murderous rage rather than stage protests and riot like its 2002.
It’s finally the start of a new year, which means an entire avenue of new opportunities and chances has opened up for us to conveniently ignore while doing the same stuff from the previous year. It is that special time where we look back and reflect upon the mistakes we made in the previous year and concentrate on typing out a strongly worded Facebook status that conveys the same. The human population has seen loads of these kinds of new dawns and has promised to make amends to their troubled lifestyle. Annoyingly enough, with every passing year, there is just a steady increase in the general pansy nature of people. Ironically, I’m going to be ranting about the people who seem to be complaining a lot these days.
You would have thought the ‘angry young man’ trend would have died down considering that the man associated with it, now has 2 grandchildren and a son already going through mid-life crisis, but this is when the world decides it’s a cool image to don. There used to be a time where there existed three kinds of people – the supportive, the reprimanding and the neutral (i.e. – the guy who tells you to down those 4 shots of tequila, your mother and the bartender). Trends took a massive detour and now the only kind of person you’re most likely to come across is the guy who got offended because of something you did. The news has gone from being the source of information about the happenings all around the world to just being the forum for broadcasting the stupidest thing said in the past 12 hours.
Everyone wants to be famous. It is a globally consistent behavior amongst everyone. I write this blog because I want people to read it. If I wanted nobody to read my work, I’d write self help books or have a steady job in the Times of India. People will continually try to oust each other to reach the zenith, and the funny part about that is that they are not concerned about the competition. They just want to win it. Like how a group of people created an imaginary friend called Jesus and made a religion out of it, we Indians made our competitive intentions clear by making around 4 million imaginary friends, 2 holy epic stories which we continually insist were true, and laws protecting the story tellers. Or like the time the Muslim community got offended over a movie? I bet there were Maharashtrian Hindus across the world calling their respective Vijays and Deepaks also across the world asking for which movie they could protest against. It’s like we’re Dubai when it comes to competitions that don’t matter, and in competitions that matter, we’re Bangladesh or something.
Every week you see someone actively trying to get their 15 seconds of fame by saying something incredibly stupid. Take for example, this one fellow called Abu Azmi. I’m pretty sure none of you would have known his name unless his goat went missing or his 14th wife ran away but he got his fame by expressing his opinion on the Delhi rapes. How many of you even knew that Pranab Mukherji had a son before he made his famous remark on the character of women who get raped? Akhilesh Yadav, Bill O’Reilly (Firangi Sardesai) and most of these babas are actively using their stupidity to plate food in their house. They must have brainstorming sessions with an orthodox lady holding a glass and hold a press conference for the statement that made her drop it in disbelief.
All said and done, we have grown accustomed to stupid statements but there are a few instances where the pansy nature of people’s sentiments takes a dirty, ugly turn. Obviously, since I said it takes a dirty, ugly turn, religion had to be involved in this process. Take this whole cinema banning franchise which recently opened by the crème de la crème of the annoying members of the religious crusade. I remember a time during the release of a Kamal Hassan movie when all of them teamed up like the Avengers to boycott every movie that was released. The Muslim community apparently felt offended at how the movie portrayed Taliban camps as ruthlessly violent and strict as opposed to the love picnics with care bears and chocolate fountains they actually are. In response to the Muslim community getting a foot ahead in this ban race, the other religions came along and did their thing. This is an actual conversation I had during that week.
ME: Dei. So when is Vishwaroopam releasing?
Friend: Don’t know da. Muslims are protesting against its release.
ME: Oh. What about the other movies? David?
Friend: Christians.
ME: Aadhi Baghavan?
Friend: Hindus.
ME: ….damn it.
I don’t remember a time when the old movies created this much of a controversy even though they used to tackle some pretty touchy issues. One would argue that the onset of the world wide web and its immense power to shape someone’s opinion would be one of the reasons why everyone has turned into a hyper sensitive ball of hormones, but I cannot possibly say that without irony taking a glorious turn into an endless pit.
The latest movie to make its rounds around the protests and uproars is one particular Rajkumar Hirani masterpiece called pk. It ventured into the topic of mass religious institutions and obviously, you cannot go there. You know the drill when you offend a right wing North Indian from Mumbai .There has to be a commendable degree of violence involved along with some broken English and a tilak. The main argument was about how the movie poked fun at Hindus and didn’t sufficiently insult the Muslims. Believe me, there would be around 16 Ashutosh Gowarikar movies, Bill Maher documentaries, 5 John Oliver feature shows and 5 days of continuous podcasts from Bill Burr if the Muslim community didn’t 9/11 anyone uttering 3 syllables closely resembling the prophets name.
More than an attack on the movie, the protests are a raging reflection on the general nature of people who take part in these protests. I’m pretty sure there were Delhi jaats who protested the release of the movie and then updated their Facebook status a week later to – ‘Boss charlie hebdo ke saath galat hua. 2.5 men mei kya todu tha. #FREEDOM OF SPEECH #Jesus is Charlie’
On the minimal bright side we can find here, we can rejoice the fact that Rajkumar Hirani and several others have tried to speak out about the obvious problem religion poses in the country. I see atheist populations rising and hopefully, within a few generations, we would have a place where people don’t need 4 million gods, a man on a cross and [obvious name but censored because I don’t want to become a tangdi kebab] tell us the difference in morality. Until then, we have the woeful pleasure of being stuck in this ugly transition with the riots and the protests. Like Aamir Khan said in a movie that didn’t get banned for offending several sections of the society, we have a choice. We could either ignore everything that’s happening around us and let it happen or we could take a step towards fixing it. You’ve seen what happens when someone sets out to fix a problem like this in our country, so let’s just sit back and watch this entire fiasco implode while we watch critically acclaimed non offensive masterpieces like Son of Sardaar.
(Yes, I was sarcastic)
The Daily Offensive 