The Rape Rant

“I’m almost out of controversial topics to write about in India”- Said nobody ever. Having said that, we now look at one of the most shocking wave of events that publicly displayed the ugly side of Indians. It involved the humiliation and degradation of people while a minority sat and enjoyed the show. Although that may sound like the movie review for Kick, this article will deal with a topic I actually didn’t want to write about ever. The Rape show in India.

There is nothing funny about rape. Well, I couldn’t think of anything funny at least. There is a risk with doing jokes on rape that involve the rapid wrath of the violent feminist and the ‘understanding male compatriot’ (also pronounced as – guy attracted to a violent feminist) sections of the society. Apart from the nonexistent humor quotient in this topic, I also try to maintain the little class my blog has by not incorporating profanity in my articles. I have cruised past the culture articles and Sheila Dikshit jibes like a classy gentleman but when it comes to people like Mulayam Singh Yadav or his orangutan of a son, it becomes harder to not open that other dictionary.

India isn’t particularly renowned for the way it treats its women. We have this incessant knack for following whatever our ancestors did, no matter how stupid they were. This unquestioned respect given to the elders swings both ways. When it swings good, we have deserving professors and workers getting a gold watch on their retirement day. When it swings bad, we have Digvijay Singh and those folks at that party with the rising sun. So this blind path we follow in the name of culture has pretty much wrecked the stance of women in the society. There are women who are accustomed to this bullshit and then there are other women who are beat up and forced to be accustomed to this bullshit. The media and all those elders from your father’s office parties seem to have everything figured out with this situation. It’s almost always the generic answer for every question you ask.

Question:  Uncle what do you think about these rape things happening nowadays?

    Bullshit:  Beta all this is normal only. It’s because of western influence. This entire western hemisphere no, spoiling our Indian culture!  You leave that now beta. Tell me, are you going to US or not for studies now?

Over the course of this rape saga, there have been quite a handful of eloquent responses and views on this topic. As is the case with most things in this country, these responses range from mind numbingly good to Rahul Gandhi level. We continue to have powerful and inspirational speeches given by intimidating masculine personalities like Amitabh Bachchan and Kiran Bedi. On the flip side, there are also blokes like Abhijit Mukherji who read out random words from the dictionary in an attempt to sound like he is from an educated family. People like him make Arnab Goswami love his job.

Just like every article you read about rape, the next part will usually proceed to highlight the stupidity of our current batch of politicians. It will incorporate some smart ass insults. It will provide innovative ways on how to castigate these rapists, including a fully detailed thesis on how one can be tortured the best. Then I will end it gracefully by saying that rape is bad and the usual generic rant about how we can instill a nation of millions blah blah blah.

Let’s be brutally honest, all of that is complete and utter bullshit.

We are not going to change. The rapists will not understand any of those creative genital mutilation techniques you tirelessly described. They will continue raping because the overall IQ level of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar amounts to about 2 or 2.5. In a predictable statistic, most of our bright politicians hail from Uttar Pradesh only. There will be domestic violence, murders, kidnappings, rapes, honor killing and everything you would expect from a pea brained masculine figure high on Indian Culture. You, as an inconsequential being reading a random blog on a laptop will not be able to do jack shit about it. For every candle light protest you conduct, there will be this macho Indian dude from delhi or Haryana saying that candle light protests are an effect of western cultural influences and must be stopped. The balance is tipped to the side of the stupid Indian culture fanatics.

Western culture did not invent dowry, sati and your caste system. Western civilization didn’t construct caves with animal orgies. Westerners don’t worship a blue man’s penis. Stop blaming the shortcomings of a flawed system on another community because you’re too much of an uptight little bitch. The rape culture arises from the fundamental notion that women are pieces of property every man has a right to. That fundamental notion is the doing of our great ancestral heritage. You can give women 75% reservations in the parliament; tend to every whimsical demand made by angry feminists; castrate and torture the rapists all you want and do everything that is within your power to satisfy yourself, but every one of your attempts will be cancelled out by that one Subramanian Swamy of the society who thinks Chowmein is the primary cause of rape. If there is one thing worse than things like this being preached, its the fact that these things are being followed.

There is a regular influx of a rape report everyday in the newspaper. If I sat to cover every aspect of these events, this rant would go on forever. If I didn’t know any better, I will find more people offended by this article than the actual rape cultures in India. One step forward, Two steps back. Welcome to India. Enjoy your stay.

 

The Culinary Repercussions

With one bunch of loud egomaniacs shouting at each other coming to a halt after the elections, we have the next season of ‘shout and swear till someone takes you seriously’ starting with MasterChef USA. Don’t take me wrong, I have nothing against the show. I actually love watching Gordon Ramsay conjure up new swear phrases and slam everyone on the show. It serves as my second favorite pastime. First being, watching Arnab Goswami conjure up new swear words and slam everyone (Mostly Sanjay Jha) on his show. Fine dining was never a popular concept in India. The definition of fine dining in European and Western countries is given as – Full service restaurants with specific dedicated meal courses. Décor of such restaurants feature higher-quality materials, with an eye towards the “atmosphere” desired by the restaurateur, than restaurants featuring lower-quality materials.

Fine dining in India is when you use a fork instead of your spoon/hands to eat rice. MasterChef has changed that. For the better or the for the worse, I don’t know. It just led to people wanting boiled lentil soup instead of Dal Tadka and the rise of a new breed of arrogant customers who go like – Shit service man. I wanted SLIGHTLY seared tandoori. This is ABOVE AVERAGE seared tandoori. I hate this place.

Let me elucidate the underlying plot of MasterChef for those who are unaware of it. It’s basically a cooking contest where some dramatic underdogs cook for this judging panel. Akin to most reality shows in India, the judging panel consists of one highly talented veteran in the field, one soft spoken confidence booster and another wannabe expert who does something worthless for a living. Honestly, how is wine-tasting even a profession? I’m slogging with 30 exams in one semester for an engineering degree and there are professions where you have to basically just drink alcohol and make faces to earn money. He gets to judge other peoples work and I have other people judge me for not working. There is a difference between a person who criticizes you and elaborates on your shortcomings and the person who just says you suck in a senseless manner. That usually leads to insults like- You look like um.. some big thing that’s really big. Let’s be honest here, we watch the shows only to see how the bad dishes are received by the judges. Here is the basic template of every bad food review on the show ever.

Knowledgeable judge 1 : What is wrong with you? You can do better. Just do this, this and this and use this instead of this next time.

Soft spoken Judge no.2  (Usually Gay for some reason ): I love your spirit. You never give up. I kinda maybe sorta didn’t not hate that one small thing which you managed to not screw up. Kudos to that.

Stupid judge no.3: Basically you are a suxxxx. This dish tastes like um.. toilet. Worst. Totally not oolala.

 

I had made it clear that the concept of Masterchef isn’t what made me write this article. So what’s my rant about the food now? I’ll tell you.

Fine dining came up in the world because they thought they needed an Anna University-esque standard for grading food. Due to the lackluster life decisions made by the world, we are stuck with flamboyant chefs claiming to be masterminding the art of cookery by simply serving us boiled rice with a 54 page long description. With the monkey see, monkey do attitude, my facebook and instagram feed looks like:

“Pan fried stuffed Indian bread infused with various herbs and spices from exotic forests in Gujarat accompanied by a mouth watering exemplary mixture of moderately sweet yoghurt in boiled rice, brought directly by pink unicorns from the heavenly rice plantations in Puerto Rico slightly seasoned with a marinated sauce made from lemons and Heaven Jizz. Ah my dinner. #MasterChefUSA”

Yes, this is my dinner.

It’s freaking thepla with curd rice, pickle and kara sev.

So, with the western hemisphere coming up with a widely popular TV series involving day to day tasks, the Indians were ready with pen, paper, a big name actor and a large sum of money to make an exact rip off and act like the Leonardo Da Vinci of modern television. MasterChef India was sanctioned within a heartbeat and Akshay Kumar went from making bad movies to hosting knock off TV shows, a big step in his illustrious film career. Star Plus led the race among the other mentally dead channels to secure rights for MasterChef India. Which in India, implied the clearing of 10-12 hours of broadcast time usually occupied by soaps and telebrands to make room for re-runs.

“Oh wow, a repeat of MasterChef India. I’ve seen this episode but let’s watch it again because I like it”, said nobody ever. Hopefully.

You know how when a monkey tries to build something perfected by humans, it fails miserably because it tries to monkey-fy the item? Yup, MasterChef India gets summed up within that one line. The Indians know that they are never going to make risotto and penne pasta unless Maggi gives them the packet with masala, so why even try? They stuck to their roots and made stuff like rasagulla black forest cake. Yes, you heard that right. In addition to garnishing rasagullas onto a black forest cake, the task involved baking the cake with the rasagullas inside it. And we wonder why India leads the race in Diabetes.

I’m assuming all of you have already seen MasterChef USA or Australia and are familiar with the Mystery Box challenge. It is a task in which all the contestants are given the same base ingredients and it usually turns out to be something very unexpected like pig brains or liver or something. Considering the fact that most of the contestants on the India version are middle age housewives, I understand that the creators could not take a chance and give them some meat related dish in fear of it being a Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever stupid day they don’t eat meat.  Naturally, the Mystery Box challenge was dumbed down to typical Indian standards and this is what it finally looked like. After around 15-20 minutes of suspense, 700 different adjectives and 60,000 zooms and pans on various faces, this was the dreaded mystery box.

A corn cob, an apple, Amul Dahi, A dry coconut, flour, red mirchis, peanuts and that moon shaped thing that always is out of stock in Pazhamudir Chola. Wow. Gordon Ramsay would have killed a baby after seeing those set of ingredients kept on the same table. That was less of a cooking challenge and more of a “Um so we had these few items lying around and the sponsors refused to give us money to buy any more things, so cook with this” challenge. You would be surprised to know that MasterChef India is actually on its fourth season now. I bet they’re making bread butter jam in the elimination round for lack of ideas.

As is the case with most of our shows, sports or states, Pakistan wanted some of it. This led to the conception of MasterChef Pakistan. Although not the worst show, this version sets the bar so low that one of the invention challenges involved some guy making omlette and toasted bread. Obviously you don’t believe me.  I came ready for that reaction.

All these things just serve to prove one basic thing. Even coughed up hairballs will seem like fancy five star meals if you set them up on a rectangular-ish plate. Come back if you can make a visually appealing dish even when it’s on a stainless steel round plate which makes more a louder sound than an exploding Boeing 747 when dropped. I’m just throwing punches into oblivion here. Obviously people aren’t going to stop acting like Gordon Ramsay or that weird guy who wears multicolor pants on MasterChef Australia. Let me just get back to watching MasterChef Pakistan. There are only 4 people left in the competition now! I’m in the 3^rd episode.

 

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 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.