From Commas to Full Stops.

Every year around this time, you may notice a considerable increase in the number of nostalgic posts and links to sad songs from the 80s. Mostly, it’s because Game of Thrones comes out around this time, but it’s more so because a batch just got done with this thing called college. Talking about Game of Thrones, one can draw a few similarities between the two things. Both of them suck the life out of you, make you despise those in charge, teach you not to get attached too much and finally leave you with a feeling of “WHAT? THAT’S IT? THAT LASTED FOR LIKE 14 FEMTO SECONDS”.

If you thought I was this generic blogger who absolutely cannot find any inspiration whatsoever to write about fresh topics and explore new and exciting lanes, you were probably right. I’m going to waste valuable megabytes on the internet to post something about the end of my college days.

Moving to a new city is always hard, just like the incredibly bad actor from the Nokia smartphone advertisements had told you. Moving to a new city for college is even harder. You are programmed by your brain to hate the educational institute you study in for your entire stay. Having a town that adds to the list of these complaints is far from ideal. Thanjavur never failed to provide these woes. Besides imparting me with valuable information on where to use the word ‘femto’, college was no lesser than one crazy ride. Any respectably good blogger takes on a topic and paints a vivid imagery of the subject using his control and command over the English language to cast a spell over your mind. Since I am not even mildly any of those words, I am going to tell you just how I managed to not die in the past 4 years.

Pretty much every middle aged friend of your father will flock to you after your board exams are over and ask you what your plans for the future are. Your answer is about as important to them as the brand tag inside their underwear. Regardless of whether you want to become a Electronics and Communication Engineer or a PET Bottle Service Engineer, you will always have that ‘scope’ if your plan involves the word Engineering. Some wise old football manager somewhere once said that a football match starts 2 hours before the actual match and ends only 2 hours afterwards. I don’t know the deep underlying meaning behind that statement but I know that it applies to the engineering process as well. The engineering circuit starts from when you’re in 11^th or 12^th and isn’t really over until you finish your MS/MBA or get comprehensively fed up of your IT job.

I don’t have any clue about the other courses and how the colleges for them are in India, but when it comes to engineering, almost the entire process is the same. Sure, there would be a few tweaks depending upon the leniency of your college, but the experiences all are the same. You start out like an enthusiastic boy in a race and fall face first within 2 minutes. The rest of the race is just you crawling in the expectation of a divine reward after finishing it. Ironically, despite the uncanny similarities college shares with organized religion, college usually makes people lose faith in any kind of god.  It must take a deluded, downtrodden, defeated and mentally unstable person to say that they will miss life in an engineering college. Unfortunately, most of those adjectives describe the average engineering student perfectly.

Stuck in an aggressively orthodox Brahmin college, there are two ways you can get through. One way is to be a poster boy and dance to the whims of the other set of mentally unstable group of people who run the college and the alternate way is to just stay away from it. Like the BJP or any religious institution there is, you are branded as a threat to harmony if you choose against conforming to the way the administration wants to do things. This may also involve the mere act of wearing a black shirt to college because black is obviously the color of the devil and you are a devilish human being if you are wearing that shade to college. For those who choose against passionately caressing the rears of the professors, college basically turns into a tedious struggle to not get chucked out. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t particularly find the glamour associated with doing retarded things like organizing a techfest very appealing. This meant that my 4 years were just a drab routine of commuting back and forth from college and doing enough to keep my neck above the water.

Let’s look at this objectively. Would normal, sane, straight thinking, non architecture pursuing people want to bust their rears into drawing side views, top views and rear views of random shapes 2 times a week for 3 hours? Would anyone want to voluntarily sacrifice whatever of their social life remains in exchange for night outs for an exam they only have a 30% chance of passing? Would you want to sacrifice your life to an orthodox institution that stopped a pro night show because the performer was wearing a tank top? No? Thought so.

Given a choice, I would say no to every single one of those questions again but where’s the nostalgic spirit in that? So apart from all the irrationally stupid things a Brahmin guy running a college tries to shove down your throat, it’s the irrationally stupid things the other guys around you do that makes this worthwhile. However, things have an expiry date and you’re branded some sort of a Rahul Gandhi if you continue doing that long enough. College life may pretty much just signify the end of that. In light of the allowed stupidity quotient coming to a halt, the sub standard generic blogger expresses his nostalgia into moderately long words to seem culturally relevant.

Here’s to 4 years of cutting class for a sitting and sitting down for a cutting. To the advanced mathematical prowess exhibited in calculating my attendance lag. To the various times I’ve been ripped off in the name of Breakage Dues and Personality Development fees. Here’s to 4 years I’ll probably think twice about wanting back but never actually getting back. Here’s to leaving this place with a heavy heart and about 74 mildly abusive expletives.

Obligatory Nostalgia

As of today, I have 21 published blog posts and over 60-70 followers. I can most definitely call myself a blogger if I just make myself do intellectual stuff like attend literary festivals or read a book without crying at how few pictures it has. Couple a blogger with the fact that he was born between the 1990 and 2000 and you stumble upon the obligation he faces to write an article about how the 90s was the best time frame the universe had experienced and how nothing except the Swat Kats riding triples with Johnny Bravo on a flaming RX100 will ever hold a candle to it. Fortunately or unfortunately, I am not very big on politics or the BJP, so I don’t face the obligation of telling you incessantly how Modi is going to bring back the 90s. Although, if he fails bad enough, there may be a repeat of the 2000s. Here I am, doing what I do best and giving in to obligations set by society as I write an article about nostalgia.

Maybe just a handful of people have the luxury of saying that their childhood was amazing. I thankfully fall into the right category this once and can say that without a speck of doubt. A lot of that can be attributed to the fact that I was a child who’d get impressed by something as stupid as a leaf that looked like potato, but I shall continually insist that the 90’s was what did it for me. You know how people think the earth is positioned just at the right distance from the sun in order for life to exist on this huge swirling landmass? Being born in the 90s had that sort of effect. Had I been born in the 80s or something, I would have been a teenager by the time I made it to the invention of the computer. That means there would have been no google by the time I would have been in college, which in turn means that I would not have gotten any college degree at all. If the latter had happened, and I would have been a 2000’s kid, I would not have found time to rant over nostalgia because I’d have automatically been born into a house with a decent Wi-Fi speed and uTorrent.

As a 90s kid, I sometimes feel I have a sort of responsibility. I have a responsibility to sit down with my laptop and surf the internet, which is basically a database of all the information in the world, to visit social networking sites and construct carefully worded statuses about the 90s. While I hit random mechanical keys and light up pixels on this mystery box of technology I call a laptop, I must think about instances from my childhood which remind me that how world was much simpler without the onset of all these technological breakthroughs. About how the current generation is messed up and how they are spoilt by the luxuries they possess. I must not leave out any points when I tell you how unnecessary these things are. How you basically just need a stick and a cycle tire to have a blast. I am obligated to do all of those things. If only the Internet service provider mega company was competent enough to provide a fast broadband connection to every single person living in every corner of the country, I would have found the time to wax about how technology is ruining us.

A slight side effect of sarcasm is that, not everyone gets it. Every time I see anything even closely related to the 90s, the ‘average Buzzfeed article reader’ part of me shouts out the entirety of his her known vocabulary and goes “OMG THAT IS TOTALLY ME”. I wish I could promote myself to the level of providing you with meaningful journalism in the form of “43 GIF IMAGES THAT DEFINE YOUR CHILDHOOD” or “13 WAYS HOW YOUR SHIT PATTERN DESCRIBES YOUR PERSONALITY” but unfortunately, I am not as talented as the folks at that revolutionary organization. The problem is that, everything that can be said about the 90s, has already been said about 17,342 times. An additional problem is that all these 17,342 times have talked about the same thing. Because most of the articles I have read have been Indians spurting out GRE Essay inertia on the internet, I’m pretty sure nobody really understood what that poor animal was trying to convey. A teary eyed smiley face with a semi emotional quote took care of their obliviousness. So, in my quest to continually seem like a smart person, I shall again attempt to sound like a pretentious asshole with a socially different opinion on a famous topic.

I am proud to be a 90s kind in the same way I’m proud to be an Indian. I had nothing to do with that procedure and I find it extremely hard to be proud of probability. I would say that I am extremely lucky to be a part of that magical time. I’m pretty sure that I would have turned out to be a completely different person had I been born in any other period. Clearly, that isn’t such a safe bet if you consider the fact that I could have lost out on the sarcasm and self-proclaimed wit while being stuck with the same appearance.

Being a 90s kid didn’t simply give you perks like good music and the negligence to your fashion related crimes, it also held up all the awesome things for when you were of an optimum age group to enjoy it. I have witnessed most of the peak years of Sachin Tendulkar and AR Rahman, the rise and fall of the CD, Floppy, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Okay I didn’t actually watch the rise and fall of Vajpayee but I did watch jokes about him during the time I saw the brief rise and fall of a certain comic called Shekhar Suman.

A lot is romanticized about the 90s. The simpler times and how it was not very easy to screw up colossally. How it was almost ritualistic to play cricket all day despite summers which could give an Australian a heat stroke. How tight my schedules would be, despite not having 74 tuition classes for the 4^th standard mock preliminary primary examination that counted for 0.34% of your final marks at the end of the 32^th hexamester.  How birthdays and get-togethers maintained this awkward balance of being formal and generic with the cake cutting/return gifts while being informal and batshit insane in a different way every single time. How festivals meant a jolly family get together after months of being away.  All these romanticized parts of the 90s fail to explain how much of a high-octane struggle these petty things actually were.

Forget the Malaysian flights, do you have even the slightest clue what you would have done if you lost your kid in the 90s? Forget the United Nations peace council; do you even know how to keep relations stable when you get a Charizard card in your pokemon pack while your friend gets 6 Energy cards? Don’t even talk to me about wars on terrorism man. Do you know how one had to strategize their way through cricket matches all without losing 75-100% of their friends? Bro, if you have stayed calm and composed during your birthday without opening any of the gifts until the party is over, you need to put that shit in your resume. Forget acid attacks for a minute here and focus on how you would get mortally wounded and whiplashed by your teacher in school while still trying to control your tears because of the girls around. Don’t even talk about dilemma if you haven’t had to hurriedly sort your priorities tediously everyday at 5pm because of the cavalcade of amazing shows that were on multiple channels then. Domestic violence can take a back seat my friend. Have you ever been the youngest sibling amongst your cousins? If the answer is no, I’ll just say that you do not have physical scars that need recovery. The 90s are way too romanticized and someone needs to tell these people the truth.

All said and done, I was a pathetic example in braving through these struggles in the 90s. I’ve gotten lost at a park; I’ve been chased around and beaten up by my teachers while my tears left a snail stain along the path I took; I’ve been the shameless kid at a party who shakes his gifts and immediately claws into them when I receive it and much more. If any kid now were to do either one of these things, he’d be branded as a bad influence and sent to a corrective facility somewhere in Slovakia. Besides all the amazing tv shows, endless cricket and the cycle races, I am most grateful for the fact that I didn’t experience the prime years of my childhood in a corrective facility. That, for me remains the real magic of the 90s. Now, excuse me while I check out 17 ways how my rolly chair is actually trying to kill me.

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.

The Art film Apocalypse.

There is just a stipulated amount of eloquent waxing you can carry out on the issues plaguing the society before you’re called a psychopath with no understanding of the society or an RSS activist. I have around 20-30 more years until I am restricted to disease and politics related talks at weddings, so I thought I’d give this society and culture bashing a rest and write about something that doesn’t involve matters having violent repercussions. Let’s go to the other end of the stupid spectrum and review some movies that I absolutely despised. Let me get done with this review quickly before Kannan Gill comes and takes this away from me.

Off late, a lot of stuff passes for quality cinema in the Indian film industry. Most of which, I do not really understand. India clearly takes its cinema very seriously and that is the reason you find hardcore and borderline insane fans of any actor. My taste in cinema is completely warped because of this and it results in me enjoying certain films just because of the atmosphere it creates. I am now at the point where I’d probably watch any movie and say it was watchable just because of one attempted comic scene where the 14^th sidekick unknowingly burps in an awkward situation. There are however, some movies I could barely sit through and this is just one of them. If at gunpoint, I was made to sit through any of these movies again, I would willingly take the gun and shoot myself in between the eyes because that would prove to be a faster death. One of these movies has to be Mariyaan, the epic desert romantic action thriller psychopath coming-of-age Dhanush movie directed by renowned artistic film maker, Barathbala.

Dhanush has risen to glory by playing the role of a psychopath in most of his movies and that has mainly been his thing for some time now. Mariyaan aggressively pushes the boundaries and the patience of the average film watching crowd by making you sit through 2 and a half hours of A.R. Rahman trying to save a drowning boat with music. This movie is apparently about the struggles of a fisherman named mariyaan and how he tries to escape from an African mafia gang who have held him hostage. The movie received a lot of critical acclaim, which is just fancy talk for – only enjoyable if you’re paid to write reviews. Apart from obvious unrealistic scenarios like dhanush beating up people, the story also goes on to expect you to believe Dhanush escapes. Look at him. Does he look like someone who would survive 3 days without food? A normal person would expect him to collapse and get a hunger induced coma if he skipped tea in the evening. He also walks the entire length of the desert and makes it to the exit in one A.R Rahman song. That is a lot of walking for someone whose body looks like it can accommodate a maximum of 40 calories. Then again, you must never underestimate the power of a song in a tamil movie.

Dhanush being caught by the mafia and escaping is just scratching the surface of this complex plot. He experiences various conflicts in his hometown as well (obviously girl related). Just when you would think the plot is getting increasingly stupid, there comes a scene in which dhanush picks up a fight with the local villain in his village because he exhibits a liking for his catch ( I mean his girlfriend, not his actual aquatic catch. Spare me, militant feminists). Normal movies would depict this liking in the form of casual flirting or harassing but this is an artistic film, so obviously the reason must be exponentially stupid. Dhanush spots his arch nemesis running his feet through his lovers’ footwear while she is at church. Intense stuff, see for yourself

Ah feet. Sweet sweet feet.

There was a lot of hype for these few scenes wherein Dhanush experiences some weird hallucinations. The first one of these is when he’s trapped in a cellar with his kidnapped buddy. They were food deprived, obviously since they were kidnapped in a country that cannot provide food for their normal citizens, let alone the ones they kidnap. In dire circumstances like these, Dhanush and his friend go crazy and start eating and drinking air. Couple this with some A.R Rahman melody in the background and the director succeeds in making you think that it was masterpiece film making. Another scene that made my friend compel me to not leave the theater hall during the interval was this cheetah scene. I was ready to save the remainder of my neurons and go back halfway through the movie when my friend stopped me and suggested I stay for the second half because there are some amazing scenes. So I waited around 45 minutes through the second half for this Oscar worthy scene, and it can be said that I was disappointed thoroughly and wholly. The entire scene comprises of Dhanush sitting under a tree while imagining cheetahs around him. He does this for around 10 minutes and then Kollywood Kony finds and locks him up again.

There are just some films whose ending you can predict right away. This is one of them. You can actually listen to the music from the album 2 weeks before the movie releases and know that he escapes in the end. This is the basic structure of any artsy film in India. I’ve had enough of these art films from here and I cannot muster the courage to watch the ones made abroad. It is ironic how films are made under the entertainment banner and the critics only appreciate those that entertain us the least. Parallel cinema usually meant a new kind of cinema where the director sways off the general path and creates a different experience. It does not mean random bouts of silence and background music while some actor tries to cry, laugh and sing at the same time, all for a critical accolade.

Release any movie in Tamil Nadu and the general reception varies as such. I’m talking about the reception by the general audience, not the crazy fanboys, by the way.

Week of Release: Wow! What a movie! Such a strong social message embedded by such a ballsy film maker! Kudos to the entire team for undertaking such an overwhelming project. Let’s all join hands and eradicate this social evil!

Week 2 after Release: OTHA SHAMELESS BEHAVIOR BY THE FILM MAKERS IN RIPPING OFF THIS ENTIRE STORY FROM AN ANGLO-INDIAN-THAI-LEBANESE SHORT FILM ONCE AIRED IN A PUBLIC SCHOOL DURING REPORT CARD DAY. SONGS ARE ALSO COPIED FROM VARIOUS SOURCES. THIS CHORD THAT HE PLAYS IN THIS SONG HAS ALREADY BEEN PLAYED IN ALMOST ALL THE SONGS EVER. COPYCATS!

Within a week, the entire social message conveyed is forgotten and the people from the human rights bandwagon jump onto the anti plagiarism one. This is what provokes a director to take up some topic that has never been done before.  Since we live in a country infested with over 5000 different kinds of cinema, you would understand how hard a topic that is to find. Hence we are faced with watching movies about a blind photographer searching for meaning in the nuances of life or a woman with cerebral palsy wading through the hurdles of adulthood. Soon enough, we’re going to run out of movies to make and will end up with something incredibly retarded. Like the touching story of a retarded-paraplegic-terminally ill-speech impaired cricketer who fights his battles using emotional support from his girlfriend, with whom he speaks only through messenger doves carrying lunchboxes across Richie street while selling electronics to support himself financially. I can already see the 58 star ratings along with olive branches around text describing the movie as the best movie that can possibly ever be made ever. Everyday, Indian cinema makes great progress in achieving this distant dream of winning another Oscar for a massively over rated film. Movies like Anjaan and Humshakals must stand testimony to this fact. What an exciting time to be alive!

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

 

 

My Favorite Things

 

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

Having the Indians being stripped of their wings

These are a few of my favorite things.

 

Times Now and NDTV covering Sanjay Dutt’s routine

Ignoring gruesome rapes of girls aged fifteen

Media censorship rights just hanging by weak strings

These are a few of my favorite things.

 

Nation in debt sanctioning statues for crores

Raja and Kalmadi and Kanimozhi still wanting some more.

CBSE describing Rahul Gandhi like he’s some king

This is definitely my most favorite thing.

 

China and Pakistan taking turns on Kashmir

Starving at one end, while the other feasts paneer

India still thinking there’s a brain in Digvijay Singh

These are a few of my favorite things.

 

Shooting down people like they’re some worthless pigeon

Culture fanatics and this shit called religion.

Sarcasm and satire flying over the head

Those are the favorite things I highlight in red

 

Brain deads with Tilaks going and beating women

Humiliated and raped and still called the villain.

Dowry is right but jeans give a sting

These are a few of everyone’s favorite things

 

Murderers, embezzlers and frauds all run free

Portraying themselves as just makers of tea

Anu Malik judging people on how they can sing

These are a few of my favorite things

 

Playing the dogma card and conforming to society

Belief in some god in whole and in entirety

Faith is just lost but stupidity is maintained

The favorites list just cannot be constrained.

 

Commercializing and ruining sportive traditions

Having your marriage date dictated by petitions

Honor killing, child marriage and section three seventy seven

So many favorite things here, I’m sure this is heaven. 

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 Final Lap

There comes a time when everything you’ve done in life stares back at you. Like individuals peeping into your soul. You see every achievement of yours, personified into a human being. This human being stares at you in the eye and questions your every move from that juncture. This is the time you come to a realization. A revelation, on what those past 21 years of your life have actually summed up to. Then you feel about as inconsequential as physics in South Indian movies. For normal people this turbulent period may manifest as an impromptu mid life crisis. For the engineering crowd, this boils down to a carefully planned procedure known as the Campus Placements.

As I write this post, I embrace the possibility of this being that one blog post that would decide how I fare amongst the myriad of the other fish in the ocean. However, that does not necessarily have to change the way I go about the post. I have a plethora of other posts (which were written way before the selection criteria came out) to otherwise incriminate me as a potential bad influence due to my borderline offensiveness. To put it poetically, LOL Screwed.

Everyone knows about campus placements. You may think you’re a naïve commoner because you’ve just watched 3 idiots and feel that a movie’s portrayal of an event is irrelevant to real life scenario (Which is totally the normal reaction of the Indian film watching audience). But then again, since there weren’t massive protests and widespread chaotic movements held by corporate officials on the blasphemous depiction of this process, we assume it wasn’t that wrong. You walk in, head in hand and take a seat in front of a few stern looking officials. They ask you why you have been giving consistently dismal performances throughout your college life. You stare them in the eye and eloquently wax about some life changing event in a speech that would make Al Pacino tear up, which would subsequently melt their cold stern hearts.Obviously then, the officials take their glasses off (Of course they have glasses on, they’re stern people remember?) and say something like “In my <random number> years of staring at people judgmentally, I have never come across someone like you. Come, take my companies’ funds”. You go out, pupils dilated and shirt stained with tears and sweat to see your closest friends waiting for you and you take off your pants and say this one dia.. ok too far.

You most likely saw this coming but, everything I just magnificently described right now iss a lie. Campus placements are the least filmy things you will ever encounter in your life. I haven’t actually experienced them yet, but I’ve based these observations on common sense and things seniors have told me. First of all, you don’t randomly waltz into your college in formals and say – “Hmm. I guess I’ll sit for the company behind door number 2”. If it were that easy, IT jobs would be the only profession in the galaxy. Akin to mostly every movie ever made, bollywood had chosen to highlight the cheesiest part of this process and added estrogen and music to make it seem like the glamorous procedure you think it is. Placements are war. Placements are agony. Placements are the stressful equivalent of Shoaib Akhtar hurling flaming cork balls at you when you’re not even playing cricket with him.

The college starts you off pretty early with these placement preparations. Notably, the only time an engineering student starts preparing early for a test. And that’s basically because there’s money involved and well, it’s your life in question here. Like dangling a carrot in front of a donkey, all the colleges will most likely exercise their superiority during this turbulent time.

Professor: You have only 78.85424% attendance form last sem. You actually need around 78.8543% Bring me tea and biscuits and then I will take care.

Student: Sir, but I thought 75% was the required attenda-..

Professor: Want to sit for placement or no?

Student: … Good day or Milk Bikis?

This is also the period during which everyone’s programming finesse reaches its ultimate zenith. C and C++ take over as the primary conversant language and also become the most important thing in the universe. To make sure that they actually do become your primary language, the college also prepares you in these fields; keeping extra classes during the holidays whilst dangling the very same carrot. Much to your surprise, this is not even the last part of this rigorous process. <Enter: Resume preparation>

The preparation of your Resume depends on only one factor. No, I’m not going to candidly say it depends upon your blood, sweat and tears. The content of your resume depends upon the company you’re going to send this resume to. Company prefers someone with a blog? Hello WordPress/ Blogspot! Company wants someone with a background in marketing? Hello, participation certificate I got in school for an event hosted by a company which carries out slight marketing work maybe on Tuesdays! Company is offering only 3 lakhs per annum? Uh yeah I was actually thinking of doing an MS/MBA.

All said and done, these campus placements apply a fitting finish to the end of a rollercoaster ride that is, engineering. Nothing good ever comes easy, especially when you are on this particular roller coaster. We have lived through the insults, the all nighters, attendance shortages, arrears, extra classes, the public humiliation associated with studying at a college that cannot spell ‘certificate’ correctly on their main campus banner, and much more. If all these chronicles of torture haven’t broken our spirit, I’m pretty sure a few interviews wouldn’t do us any harm. Now comes the part where I mitigate the damage my image would have sustained due to my overly enthusiastic views. I would say everything a company official would want to hear and showcase my innate diplomacy, a feature that will be lauded in the company. I would tell you how I did not mean whatever I said and that it was all in good taste. I would express my apology in the floweriest form of English known to man, using the thesaurus that is so easily available online. I would do all that and more, but the keyword here being ‘would’. Anything beyond this point now would turn into the cliché bollywood interview dialogue, so let’s end it before I take that path.

All the best to everyone sitting for the placements! I may or may not see you there, depending upon several factors like the reception of this post and so on. Having said that, I shall now go back to finding participation certificates and boosting the contents of my resume. Not like this line is read or anything but, Like/ Comment and subscribe to this blog so that these magnificent strings of random words reach you directly on your email ID.  

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.