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 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 Gentleman’s Game.

I may have covered a wide variety of topics up until now but there is one highly controversial topic I have left out on. You may have guessed what it would be. I’m going to talk about the most corrupt bunch of clerical egomaniacs to have ever lived. No, I already did politics last time, I’m talking about cricket now. As the IPL just headed to its curtain call, let’s honor the game of the gentleman. Of course, I use the term gentleman in a highly broad sense. So broad that gentleman actually translates to a shameless and shrewd illiterate. I understand that shrewd and illiterate do not go in the same sentence, but neither do Gentleman and cricket. At least not since when Rahul Dravid retired.

They say that sports bring out the character of a person. If that’s the case, the entirety of the Indian cricket following crowd is headed for a certain doom. Well, so is Pakistan, but I’m sure that’s not only because of this. Cricket was a sport resonant amongst everyone while I grew up. Hence it formed a generation of cricket fanatics of which, I was once a proud member of. I used to leave home at around 10 in the morning with nothing but a cricket bat and return home by around 6. I don’t know what part of this routine made a mould of a general class of ignorant hypocrites, but I seem to have escaped that part. Lucky for me, the 2004 Euros happened and I got out of this cricket loop before it turned ugly. I have come home from school to see my brother watch a re-run of some stupid test match between two third world countries for the second time. Things cannot possibly get any uglier than that. It wasn’t long before he too got out of this loop, but lets address the community that still watches test match re-runs.

Hypocrisy and stupidity walk a thin line that often merges. Not with cricket fans. With cricket fans, Hypocrisy and stupidity share an apartment. As there exist some smart fans for every 10 stupid fans in any sport, the trend is continued in cricket as well. If there are 100 stupid fans in cricket, only around 4 of them would be unbiased fanatics. Call me old school but I grew up watching cricket at a time when the advertisements and the commentary were mutually exclusive. I didn’t have to sit through the torture of people like Sanjay Manjrekar and Shoaib Akhtar being pundits. The sad part is how, people like watching these minutes of mental Guantanamo Bay. Fans are people who admire a game for its beauty and history. Fanatics are those who ardently follow every single detail of it with utmost interest. Lunatics are Indians who watch cricket and make snarky remarks to wage imaginary wars. Let’s take a few case studies on the overall hypocrite behavior of the Indian Cricket watching audience.

So, the ICC T20 world cup took place in Bangladesh a while ago. This was imperative for two main reasons. One being the fact that, the influx polarity was reversed when the Bangladeshis in India snuck back to Bangladesh for this tournament and the other being that, India and Sri Lanka were to meet each other in the finals. I know many of you would have gotten bored of India and Sri Lanka cricket finals, but this holds some importance as this encounter between the two countries did not lead to any civil wars or assassinations. Small steps guys, small steps. Evident by the fact that Star Sports isn’t still showing re runs of the match and in depth analysis of every blade of grass on the field, we lost the finals. In India, we don’t simply lose a game because we are outplayed. We lose a game only because someone obviously screwed up. Ignoring the exemplary death bowling by the Sri Lankans, we chose to point and blame a certain Yuvraj Singh for costing us the finals. He apparently slowed down the pace of the entire team and was subsequently the cause for our downfall. Lucky for him, there are just a handful of understanding cricket fans in the country. The rest are just people who run pages like ”Troll Cricket” on facebook. I’m okay with banter but when it goes to a point where there are death threats and stoning, it just speaks about the overall stupid Jatt nature of people. I am pretty certain I saw some status on my feed saying “Yuvraj singh should have just died of cancer; that way at least Suresh Raina would have batted up the order and won us the game.” I’m pretty sure the same person would have put up a status like “Wow Yuvraj Singh is back to form in the IPL! I always believed in his ability.”

Hypocrisy aside, cricket has always been the attention seeking teenager of all the other sports. It has taken all the selling points of the other games in the world and has tried to create its own corrupt version of the same. Take the various cricket leagues in the world for example. Cricket has taken the idea of a system that promotes young talent from the country on a stage set by the competition between teams from each district (English Premier League) and made it into a reality drama show called the IPL.  It has taken the challenge system from Tennis and the Free Hit/Bowl Out (now shelved) concept from football. It has gotten the Exxtrraaaa Innings concept from the Match Day in football and has murdered it. You can see in Tennis or Football how the commentators use complex idioms and phrases to frame a sentence to pump more adrenaline into the already tense situation. They will bombard you with mind blowing facts about the history of the clubs and what had happened when those two had met earlier. Then you have cricket. Commentary in cricket sounds like a Roadie trying to read a question in his English arrear exam. Of course, you have the exceptions in the form of Harsha Bhogle who actually do justice to the sport but for every Harsha Bhogle, you have 800 Ramiz Rajas. This leads to a vast difference between commentary lines where Indian commentary is just like “Ohhh what a DLF maximum through the Tata Nano covers into the Pepsi VIP box. This is surely a Star sports Kanna keep calm moment in the Pepsi IPL 2014. Micromax micromax nokia reebok srini mama, haha what do you think mate?”

Ear cancer.

Apart from those abhorrent pieces of sound you are subjected to, there are also certain aspects that make you wonder if there is a thing called negative IQ. Apparent from the fact that Arvind Kejriwal made it to the CM post in the national capital, we know that Engineers will somehow find their way into every field. There was a time when the entire statistics involved in a game gave you just the strike rate of the batsman, the economy of the bowler and the run rate achieved and required. It was then, that computer graphics and mathematics came together in the same ugly fashion as English did with Pakistani players. There are now around 50134 graphical representations of minor useless details like how many times the particular player has scored something between 10 and 30 while playing in that turf while wearing his favorite jockey underwear as compared to when he hasn’t. These systems also glitch sometimes and these glitches provide us with some funny moments like these :

 

All said and done, cricket will continue to get commercialized and boring. There will be more Sanjay Manjrekars and Ramiz Rajas. There will emerge another 500 brands who will fling crores at each other to get advertisement time. There will be more scams, more fixing, more corruption and more of everything. There however, will also be that one moment of magic. That one magical over or one magical spell in a match that will be worth watching. That one player who would make others look like toddlers in a ground. That one Sachin Tendulkar or Don Bradman who will inspire a generation to watch cricket no matter how bad it gets. That one performance that will make you shell out a standing ovation at home. Until these moments of unadulterated adrenaline continue, so will the cricket craze in India. We may even forget how cricket functions, but we will not let go of our innate Indianism when it comes to cricket and that is commendable, to say the least.