The Banned-its

DISCLAIMER: This article is a light hearted expression of my views on general stupidity and if you are a human living in the 21^st 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 14^th 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)

How to Get Away with Murder

Every newspaper circulating across india has almost the same general pattern with respect to its contents. The sports column is pretty much the “Here’s what is going on in sports aside from cricket, the greatest sport to have ever been played on the face of the earth and also the only one that counts.” It will feature the highlights from all sporting events covered in the way an engineering student would answer a 15 mark to which he has no clue about. Next comes the part of the newspaper which is responsible for actively striving to make a difference in the country and bring about a revolution against evil. This part of the newspaper feeds us all sorts of important information like what Sanju baba ate for breakfast or the detailed breakdown of Suzanne Roshan’s alimony amount correct upto 8 decimal places. We reach the front page after skipping what is essentially the Telebrands of the newspaper industry, which usually contains one of two things- Heart breaking Disasters or Politics. Off late, I’ve been coming across too much of the former topic on the front page, which is saying a lot when you’re living in a country whose political system resembles a badly done reality show like Bigg Boss or the News Hour.

Of course, after events that just unfolded yesterday, one does not need to rewind his memory too much to think of heart wrenching events that happened. The ISIS and Taliban have collectively made it easier for us to recollect acts of inhumane terror. It is pretty rare for an event to be of such a large scale that it creeps onto your timeline rather than stay desolately positioned in a corner of your newspaper page. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, let me elucidate.

Religious fanatics have a knack for taking things way too far. Think of them as the dumb geeks in the front of the class. They are usually not as smart as the other first benchers but they have an ego the size of their Golden guides. They will indulge in any form of ass licking to get a grade comparable to the smarter first benchers. The Taliban are the religious version of these faggots. Since they cannot follow the less vocal path of peace and tranquility to acquire a good name in the eyes of the imaginary guy in the robe, they will resort to hateful acts of terror in the name of god to proclaim their badassery. Discontent with merely the atrocity, they feel a compulsive need to justify themselves by contorting the facts into their own version of it. In their latest debacle, one of the members from this organization thought it’d be a good idea to enact out a Tarantino movie inside a school with children.

130. That is the rough estimated count of the children who died in that school yesterday. Here is where the stupidity of theTaliban becomes obvious. For an organization to shoot down students in a country whose GDP and literacy rate soars dangerously close to my CGPA, this is absolutely stupid. This however does not mean that I endorse the genocide of students in Norway, fellow keyboard warriors across the globe waiting for an opportunity to type out a rebuttal rant. I don’t want you to Taliban up what I’m saying here into your own contorted version of it.

Although this article is mostly fuelled by the more recent acts of terror in Syria, Sydney and Peshawar, I want to talk about a more underlying problem with terrorism. You know, besides the fact that it’s taking an uncomfortable number of innocent lives. My main beef with these shit stains is the fact that they cannot be reasoned with. They are not psychopaths who have a mental problem; they are rationally thinking humans who plan out this course of action without ever flinching once. My problem with terrorism is the aftermath of all these events where politicians come and give us excuses about how intelligence failed and how the police were too slow to act. My problem with this entire organized crime is how the policemen would rather beat up couples in a park than find their morality and do the same to the grandmother glasses wearing politicians with a tilak giving them orders.

I remember after the 26/11 attacks how the entirety of the news channel network in India focused on how the Anti Terrorism cell drew out a timeline complete with 3D renditions of the path taken by the terrorists and their strategies. There was a 1 hour feature on how they resorted to eating dry fruits because it was high on energy and easy to carry, complete with expert opinions from dieticians. Manmohan Singh would come to the press with his statements and excuses as compiled on Sonia Gandhi’s macbook.  Arnab would write down his 5 word debate and call on Sanjay Jha and some bearded retard from Pakistan and say how terrorists are cowards.  All this while Ajmal Kasab put his feet up inside his air conditioned cell while his chicken biriyani arrived at room service.

If you closely analyze any issue, it would always closely boil down to religion, general stupidity or the annoyingly clerical nature of the government. There is absolutely nothing keyboard warriors like me and you can do about this. I can act like a concerned citizen and pen down various articles and euphemize them into shit like ‘open letters’ or ‘response to responses by a response to a response of an open letter’ and share a few other articles that will move you. I will never come close to eradicating or even getting a terrorist to read what I have to say about him. Given that most terrorists wouldn’t figure out how the buttons on this machine make the lighted screen change, I wouldn’t expect them to do anything except preach their religion or have carnal intercourse with a camel.

But by all means, send Barkha Dutt and her crusade of journalists to the school to analyze what the kid from 6-B got for lunch that day and how his father works at a construction mine at minimum wage. Go ahead and tediously describe how you would mutilate and torture an ISIS member if you ever found one. Share and retweet open letters by famous personalities and call them a brave comrade for sharing their feelings. Debate on Quora, comment violently on YouTube videos, pick up a fight with the closest muslim in sight. Participate in widespread candle light vigils and wear a black arm band so that terrorists watching the news broadcast on their iPhones can shed a tear and proceed to kill another 150 people. Not a soul is going to stop you. But remember, not a soul is going to stop them either. This is what disturbs me the most when I see these events. This is how one gets away with murder.

Like it or not, the entire fiasco will eventually stoop down to the age old blame game where someone genuinely expressing his concern on the issue will be branded a racist pig for the wrongful portrayal of a religion and end up facing more government punishment than the guy who has the blood on his hands. I can loot, murder, embezzle, conspire and rape for all I care but god forbid I like a status on facebook. It’s time to stop reading your fictional books about god and get on with your own sense of morality. It’ll be quite a while until everyone puts their toys away, but unfortunately, there is no catalyst to this process. In the mean time, let’s just go back to things that actually matter. I heard Sanjay Dutt had masala Omlette today.

Greed, Chocolate and H2O

India is a nation that is now well accustomed to random politicians making stupid statements. Or stupid politicians making random statements, whatever. You can actually use any derogatory adjective in that string and still make sense out of it. If I wrote a blog on the detailed deconstruction of each and every stupid thing our beloved politicians would have said or done, I’d have more content in this free domain than the entirety of Arindam Chaudhuri’s IIPM scam database. Hence, I decided to highlight just this one issue which really disturbed me. Funnily though, it isn’t an Indian who’s saying funny things and being a jerk now.

My facebook feed off late has been concentrating on one common topic- Water. From the ALS Ice bucket challenge, to the seemingly righteous posts about how it’s a waste of water, I have been getting regular updates. This stands to prove a few things about the basic nature of humans on social networks. Mainly, it illustrates the fact that people can get annoyed for basically anything. Be it a funny photo or an awareness program for a life threatening disease. Suddenly, everyone is concerned about the water shortages in Africa. To get one thing clear, EVERYTHING is scarce in Africa. Except for widespread diseases and vegetation maybe. I could probably take a photo of a shattered bulb in my living room and get responses like –

YOU UNGRATEFUL PRICK! HOW CAN YOU JUST TAKE PHOTOS OF BROKEN BULBS? YOU SHOULD HAVE JUST DONATED THAT TO AFRICA INSTEAD OF WASTING A PERFECTLY GOOD BULB. THEY DON’T HAVE ELECTRICITY AND USE TRAPPED FIREFLIES AS LIGHTS OVER THERE. UGH.

I love how everyone is against the challenge but is completely okay with the concept of Holi and La Tomatina. But that’s how bandwagons function. You cannot have a bandwagon without equal support at both ends. Brushing that aside now, I should probably get to the actual topic I wanted to write about. For the 3 of you who follow the news, Nestle recently just made the biggest dick move in the history of dick moves since the mandatory set top box installation notice. Nestle wants to privatize all the water resources in the world. Suddenly, ALS seems like something fancier doesn’t it?

What may sound like some evil plan from a James Bond movie, is actually something your 23^rd favorite chocolate brand has been up to for quite some time. Similar to James Bond villain plans, Nestle has been trying to continually piss off people in the world in order to gain some money and attention.  Peter Brabeck, the chairman of the board of Nestle has gone on record to say the following- “The one opinion, which I think is extreme, is represented by the NGOs, who bang on about declaring water a public right. That means as a human being you should have a right to water. That’s an extreme solution.”

That’s right. Peter here thinks that water being openly available to everyone is somewhat of an extreme and unnecessary solution. This whole fiasco is doubly shocking for us to hear now because we had gotten used to words like free water and Aam Aadmi during the reign of a Mr. Arvind Kejriwal. While he is probably holding rallies in Chandini Chowk elaborating how Nestle is actually a conspiracy started by Reliance, the normal population are just distraught over the level of ignorance shown by this multinational conglomerate. This isn’t even the entire villainous story of this company. Apart from telling people that they don’t really need water like they need rights, Nestle has a record of going pretty dirty in their marketing strategies by manipulating women in lesser economically developed countries into using their baby nutrient powder over natural breast milk. That’s a new low even for these bureaucratic knobs.

There are two kinds of marketing bullies in the industry. One are the actual geniuses; the Don Drapers and the Steve Jobs of the marketing world. They will use sly mind games to get you to buy their product, but once you see through the plot, you will applaud their method. The other type of bully you will usually come across are the C.I.A fellows who will barge into your face and use brute force to make you buy their item. Nestle is basically the douche head of the C.I.A. They actually took the time from their busy schedule involving meetings and cocaine to cram in a flight to some village in Africa whose name sounds like a frog choking on a boulder, just to convince a bunch of pregnant ladies to not feed their children natural nutrients. This is the maximum level a salesman can aspire to go to. This is basically what you would get if you crossed Suresh Kalmadi with some the owner of a textiles shop from Gujarat.  Basically, Narendra Modi on steroids.

The fact that more than several lakhs of infants have died because of improper nutrition doesn’t seem to pose a concern as big as a downward profit graph for these people. We’re talking about Africa here, by the way. Everything in Africa is continually trying to end you. In the midst of these real life Hunger Games (No pun intended..not intentionally at least) , for an organization to gain the upper hand and indirectly kill hundreds of thousands of infants seems like something that should have come up in the news.  Instead, we see Arnab Goswami shouting at inanimate objects like Sanjay Jha and that autistic son of the president.

EDIT:  Abhijit Mukherjee is apparently not autistic, but actually that dumb. Sorry, Autistic people. I’m sure you found that offensive. If you found that at all..but okay.

Unless you can create a space-time portal that enables you to magically transport yourself to Africa within 10 minutes, it may seem like you can’t do anything about this. Fortunately for us, the internet intervenes and makes life a tad bit easier. Since you’ve reached the end of this article, it is safe to assume that you weren’t doing anything productive anyway. Go ahead and sign the petition to join the many people who thought this was wrong. The Nestle Boycott is also a movement that was started way before any of us were born. Evidently, people have been taking a shit on this company for quite a long time. Join the boycott movement too, it’s not like you’re losing out on any great nestle products anyways.

 

This is the Uday Chopra of chocolates and you should be ashamed of even manufacturing this, Nestle.

While I’m dishing out orders to you anyways here, also Like, Comment and Share so that I can get up every morning and not hate myself. Come on guys. Be grateful that you can read these articles at the comfort of your home while kids in Africa have to kick rocks at deer for fun while trying to not get kidnapped by Joseph Kony. Or Branjelina.

 

Petition form link : http://action.storyofstuff.org/sign/nestle_water_privatization_push

 

 

The Glass is Half Full

Unless you live under a rock or in Zimbabwe or something, you would have probably heard the biggest headline article this week concerning the Indian Elections. It was a pretty big occasion and was fittingly hyped to that level. But that was before the counting process and after the voting booth selfies. Then the results came in and the hype broke all barriers. It was like Slumdog Millionaire all over again but of course with some fundamental differences. One can be characterized as a controversial and shockingly realistic story of success and the other one was Slumdog Millionaire. The election fiasco probably got a lot more popularity mainly because there was no Frieda Pinto type of character in that story.( If you’re thinking Mayawati, then you need serious therapy )

India has always had this reputation of pulling a rabbit out of the hat. They run their own political thriller drama and call it Politics. We have the imported lead characters from Italy. We have the underdog who cannot get a US visa, maybe because he pronounces it ‘Bheesa’. We have comic relief from both highly educated people like Arvind Kejriwal and also from those who use a calculator to count their fingers, like Rahul Gandhi. Adding all these elements up, you would have no doubt that the underdog would have emerged victorious in the Lok Sabha Elections this year. You may know that every character in a story has a number of haters and a number of followers. The love-hate arguments they have eventually lead to the popularization of that character. I am not the biggest fan of Narendra Modi but since the milk is already spilt, I’m going to try and take out some positives from this situation for those who are like me.

I wasn’t familiar with that many people who were aware of the happenings of Indian politics before our trusty tea vendor came into the picture. I didn’t pay attention to politics either and honestly, was quite ignorant of it. I don’t know if college kicked in or mob mentality did but, I started watching political debates and reading articles in the paper. Such may be the case of a large population of the Indian mid 20s crowd. This is a major advancement in terms of overall awareness considering that most people didn’t give two shits about Pranab Mukherjee or Prathiba Patil being president. To be honest, I’m pretty sure their own families didn’t take out more than 10 minutes to congratulate them either. Abhijeet Mukherjee looks like he still doesn’t know what a president is and the location of Pratibha Patil is almost unknown now. Well, at least she isn’t using tax payer’s money to abscond to an exotic location anymore. Getting back to the point, I’m happy that Agent Dandiya helped a larger population be aware on the political drama. It is pretty hard to get 20 year olds in college to agree or follow someone who orchestrated mass riots and indirectly killed thousands believes in this dry state concept. Ridiculous

I would not want to go into awful stereotypes of how muslim extremists are the sole cause of terrorism related activities but then again, they are stereotypes for a reason. At the very least, one may be able to find a tiny positive out of the 2002 communal riots. Let’s say you are a member of the Lashkar E Taliba and you want to carry out your quota of regular bloodshed. You proceed to go look for a nice beautiful and populated place you can annihilate happily. Excluding regular distractions from weird shit like goats or whatever they do for fun in the Middle East, how would a terrorist go about figuring out his Modus Operandi? He would first eliminate all the places which he cannot bomb and hopefully, with a Hindu extremist leader in control of the country, India will find its way onto that list. Who in their right minds would want to screw with a Hindu extremist with a colorful history of indirectly killing Muslims? Exactly.

Following politics isn’t something which widely resonant in the country, but political jibing and complaining is more common than the number of engineering students here, which is saying a lot. When India’s arguably best economist was handed the position of Prime Minister and the rupee still sank to new lows, you might find yourself at a loss of words. Expectations soar higher with every new line in your CV. Narendra Modi is what someone may call, street smart. He will find his way around things through any means possible and not give a damn about the path he takes, but that seems like a glamorous portfolio only until you are thrown under the bus by the government.  Concentrating on the brighter note, with the massive margin he won in the Elections, it would be safe to assume that he has the joint approval of a vast majority in India.  This would imply that, most of the voters would be in whole hearted support of his future decisions, even if it is borderline hypocrisy at some point of time. Then again, hypocrisy is seen as a lesser crime than freedom of opinion so we’re in the green here. India will continue giving their support for the new prime minister and as citizenry of democracy, that counts for a lot.

The biggest boon this election campaign brought us was the disintegration of the Congress party. It’s funny how it took this long though. There will be no more of Kapil Sibal and his eyebrows babbling nonsense on live television. There will be no more of Dr. Subramanian Swamy acting like a stuck up 15 year old Hindutva supporter. Although I feel bad for Manmohan Singh, I’m happy he’s ridden of his duties to the Italian estrogen bomb called Rahul Gandhi. Our daily quota of slapstick entertainment will come to a standstill without Rahul Gandhi doing monkey antics on live television. Sanjay Jha will fill in for Rahul Gandhi in this, mainly because his bills are paid by stupid statements and Arnab Goswami’s anger. We have escaped diving deeper into a forest fire but we haven’t extinguished the flames completely. With the rupee gaining a tiny amount of credibility over the days, the overall situation has begun to show some hope. So here’s to moving one step forward and not having to fall another 2 steps back.

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 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.

 

The GPA lust

 

 

One can almost take any issue and make it sound like it’s one of India’s primary flaws. I can even make a plausible argument about how dyslexic bears are ruining the GDP of our nation. But enough about P. Chidambaram for now, let’s get back to what I was saying. Everyone seems to have figured out what the problem is with India.  Some say it is corruption, some say it is the BJP/Congress and the others just watch The News Hour and let Arnab tell them what’s right or wrong. So, here I am today whining about yet another aspect of this lovely country I usually refer to as freaking bullshit the education system.

Bumping into a group of elderly aunties at a family function is like going to a Viva Examination. You know exactly what questions they’re going to ask you and yet you still don’t know what you want to say. We engineers have been trained through the years on how to hold the nerves during the viva examination and still come out with a D grade. What happens at weddings isn’t quite very different either. Throw a stone anywhere in a wedding and it’ll either hit an elderly aunty or an annoying kid (Although at a Maru wedding it will most definitely land in one of the 153 food items but that is an aspect we shall look at later on). When you walk into a group of aunties or uncles, it’s almost the same plethora of bad jokes and questions about your future every single time. Both of these categories divide intensely and come back to essentially the same topic- Your Grade Point Average.

I’m not saying they don’t genuinely care about the grade point average but if they actually did care about it, they would have maintained it themselves instead of just getting married into a wealthy household (Insensitive and all, yeah I know. Read the name of the blog maybe?). Then, there are the programmed questions which follow regardless of your answers to them.

Middle Aged Aunty eating Ice Cream asking you questions, let’s call her Bobby : Toh beta, I forgot to aks itself- what is your percent in college haan?

Troubled Child going through a lot of stuff and is unable to comprehend anything, let’s call him Rahul Gandhi. Or Ram. That’s shorter : Aunty college mei there’s no percentile and all. I have a 7.3 GPA.

Bobby : Hawww beta how you are going to get job and all? How you are going to go to Amrika? (America)

Ram : I’m going to do BA journalism, aunty.

Bobby: Oh acha acha okay. Good good. Where do I get more ice cream?

(Walks away as she does not know what a BA is. Only MBA, MBBS and MTR are the short forms she knows)

 

Also, most recently the JEE coaching centers were reveling in happiness having gained the acquisition of a new face to fund their massive cheating of the public and extorting them for their money. Much like what Sonia Gandhi felt after labour. Ever since this Satya Nadella became the Microsoft CEO, the scene in India has been crazy. Even Satya Nadella must cringe in his sleep and cuss his fortune for being born Indian when he wakes up to texts from his fathers’ uncles’ sisters’ friends’ neighbors’ drivers’ aunts’ dog asking for a job via jugaad.

The main reason for this sort of behavior comes from the over competitiveness of the Indian genetic pool and how they stoop down to any level to get their education degree, even if that involves not getting educated at all (Yes I’m looking at you wanting to champesthanu me). People who mug up mathematics or C++ for an exam inadvertently gain just as much knowledge as your average Pakistani, which is clearly not a lot. It must break the hearts of all the people who prepared an exam JUST so that people wouldn’t mug up probable questions and answers to see 102 JEE coaching centers and millions of people mugging up the important questions right up to the millisecond before the exam. I have come across brilliant people who have failed math in the 7^th and gone on to reject IIT only because they actually want to learn some genuine stuff and not because of how pretty the degree would look. They make the difference between a smart Indian and well, a guy from Andhra.

Blaming the people from Andhra is like blaming the goods out of a factory for being so shitty. It’s the factory’s fault the goods aren’t competent and it is the factory that is answerable. The factory in question here is the State Board system where you can get a 200/200 if you mug up the whole syllabus. As a CBSE student, a 100% was so beyond the horizon that I could actually see myself getting hitched with Scarlett Johansson and fathering 23 children while winning the Nobel Prize in Mathematics and releasing a death metal bestselling album, before that could actually happen.

I could rant about how grades aren’t supposed to matter in the long run and how you are responsible for what you become but what guarantee can I offer you? I am an average student in college. When somebody like Bill Gates tells you that you can lay off the books and still make it, the statement carries some weight because, you know, he’s freaking Bill Gates. When a fellow student tells you that, he is either delusional or intoxicated. Everyone glorifies the failures that go on to become successes and the successes that go on to become failures. Nobody likes the clichéd story starring a straight A student who gets a good job and is successful. When you look to glamorize the education industry and complain about the products being on par with the likes of Udhayanidhi Stalin or Uday Chopra, you know you’re that annoying customer who wants a pizza at a grocery store and is visibly upset when they deny you those impossible standards of service. You want to emulate success, not create it and you think following the process given below will help you:

Get a 99.999% >> Get into a college via a cool merit seat >> Maintain a 9.5 GPA and all that >> Get placed in some cool Company >> Work your ass off until 60 >> Retire saying you were a smart man and ruin the subsequent generation >> Go to kitty parties with wife >> Become the Male Bobby.

I’m nobody to preach to you. I’m just somebody who writes a blog in hope of landing my opinions and getting more followers. You could actually listen to what I say or you could turn a deaf ear here, but what you must definitely do is, tell your friends about this blog and keep reading.

 

 

The Culture Propaganda

Look up Indian culture in Google and you shall find 2 things. One would be the vast history and unmatched richness of the famous Indian culture as explained by some knowledgeable person who has studied these subjects in grave detail. The second thing you would find in abundance is some bullshit article by someone who makes Charles Darwin turn in his grave and cuss nature for its incompetency in this whole natural selection procedure. Most probably would be Baba Ramdev, a politician or some guy from Delhi whu tlks lyk dis 2 u cz hez 2 kewl 4 u bb. Unfortunately for us, we are usually faced with the Salman Khan of cultural scholars. You guessed it right, the ones who portray it in the most unrealistic and stupid manner.

Any park early in the morning shall most definitely contain a group of elderly masochists talking about how the younger generations are so spoiled by modern western culture and how rotten and corrupt the modern politicians are. Then they take their 73^rd piss break and ride off in their scooter without a helmet, RC book or insurance papers because their son knows someone who can do ‘setting’ for them. Not like they were responsible for raising the current generation or something. Obviously they are used to much simpler times where marriage didn’t involve complex theories like love or anything. Everything was settled in discretion and a respectable amount of sophistication in a calm and composed manner and all the necessities were taken care of.  Oh yeah and some woman also came along with that dowry. Wife, I believe it’s called ? I’m sorry, I’m only acquainted with the term that’s used when a woman is married, not when a 5 year old girl is. So as you see, I’m pretty new to these old lingoes since I’m from the newer generation where common moral ethics and some bullshit go into this new European concept called rational thinking. But obviously those bearded stoners were too busy writing story books like the Ramayana and the Kamasutra that shaped our culture while the rest of the world was engrossed in the less important shit. Like you know, the laws of physics and all.

To add to all the drama hosted by the culture freaks, there would always be that one idiot who professes his ultimate love for the Indian culture he so helped develop through the years. Honestly, I could write a stupid ass proverb right now and make those self proclaimed literary scholars ejaculate to its versatility and relevancy to the current political situation in Iran.

“Washington Apples are always Red”

–          OH MY GOD. DO YOU NOT SEE THE BEAUTY OF THAT STATEMENT?? HE IS SAYING THAT PEOPLE OF A PARTICULAR SOCIAL STRATA NEVER CHANGE BECAUSE THEY ARE DEFINED BY GOD TO BE THAT WAY. GOD IS GREAT GUYS. WORSHIP GOD. EAT YOUR APPLES. KIDS IN SYRIA ARE STARVING BECAUSE THE WASHINGTON APPLES ARE RED. LET ME JUST WRITE A 809 PAGE ESSAY ON HOW THIS POLITICALLY RELEVANT PHRASE WILL HAVE AN IMPACT ON GLOBALIZATION, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND SOME OTHER WORDS I READ.

I’m pretty sure culture and religion were also founded on similar basis, wherein some loud guy was preaching to these hoard of nomads who just wanted food. Some of them might have wanted to stab themselves in the eye and roll around in a vat concentrated hydrofluoric acid. This was the first recorded incident of atheism in the modern world. ( Or like the educated class call it – Sense )

Indian culture is also the fall back option for most arguments which don’t have any sensible rebuttals, because obviously the best rebuttal to a sensible argument is the biggest hoard of bullshit humanly imaginable. The Indian constitution, Mollywood and almost the entirety of Telengana ( Or however it was mugged up and spelled by the telugu population ) were formed on these principles. Just recently, Kerala witnessed something which was the most horrendous crime to have been committed by the scum of the society who do not seem to abide by any particular rules or any moral values. In other words, Sheila Dikshit recently was appointed the governor of Kerala.

Apart from these crimes, the crimes that went more noticed were the Delhi Gang rape where in just a simple group of men ganged up and attacked a Delhi woman who was left humiliated in her own state. Some people call it the most shocking incident to have happened in Delhi for a long time, others just call it the Delhi Legislative Assembly Elections.

( Okay enough Sheila Dikshit jokes. I was actually thinking of something on the lines of Sheila ki Jawaani but let’s save that up )

When you live in a country which is crawling with religious saints who are offended by even the slightest taunt, it is pretty hard to talk sense. This sort of thinking is what contaminates the gene pool of India and gives rise to those Sonam Kapoors and Rohit Shettys. How can anyone possibly think that a government who’s own police officers look to blame the entire Delhi Gang Rape incident ( The actual bus one. ) on the girl saying she had alcohol to drink and was roaming around at untimely hours. I believe there was actually a probe investigating whether her male compatriot was her boyfriend or just her friend. This is less of a judiciary system and more of a hormonally imbalanced teenage sleepover.

Most of you will just read this article and feel angered for a few minutes. Some of you would have gotten offended in the early stages and have not even made it this far into the article. A few of you will have actually understood what I’ve tried to put out through my ill timed humor and nasty Sheila Dikshit jokes. When someone as laid back as me decides to go writing about current affairs, you know this nation is pretty screwed. Obviously I cannot do anything by sitting in my boxers and writing this blog but when around 50 of you are inspired enough to write your own ill timed nasty humor on Sheila Dikshit, maybe, just maybe you might spark something.

So I’m already on 972 words and I’m scaring myself. So until next time, suckers. Thanks for reading !