And that's the way the cookie crumbled ... until now [2014]

Well, that was some Q1, wasn't it!

Arvind Kejriwal came in with a bang, and left at the same speed he came. He cried hoarse and we all sympathized with him.
So what if he isn't in power, his stock has only gone north since. Armchair campaigners everywhere are sitting up and googling him to their heart's content. They say he will be the best PM India can ever have. Sigh! Thousands said the same thing about our beleaguered Singh a few years ago.

In other familiar news, a 28 year old Mumbai girl was raped and left for dead by Pramod Upadhyaya, the night watchman at her own apartment complex.
A couple of clicks away, a homemaker in Mumbai was raped and filmed. What followed will shock your senses - The rapist's wife saw the video and went back and blackmailed the victim. The victim promptly killed herself.
And finally, a 17 year old girl escaped on the way to her 6th wedding in Hydrabad, to an Arab sheikh. I'll leave you to google the sh*t out of these 3 stories.
And I am pretty sure our government is sipping the good stuff right from the pond, in statistics that will either make you proud, or cringe in pain (depending who you are), India has the lowest non-partner sexual violence in the world.
But if you are a female (of any age) and would like to avoid getting raped, please listen to our beloved Asha Mirge of the National Women's Commission and 'Check your body language...'.
I'll now let you marinate in these nuggets of wisdom.

But not all was lost, the Shakti Mills dual rape set a precedent and the rapists got the noose. No, don't celebrate. Not yet.

In tragedies normal yet avoidable, an overcrowded ferry sunk off the coast of the idyllic islands of Andamans. 21 were killed. Many of them honeymooners. It is a sheer atrocity that we are citizens of a country let tragedies like this repeat.

So what if the government thinks a large percentage of us are dispensable resources, the SC did a second guess and ruled that gay sex is illegal.
But if you think you'll need acid anytime in the future, better buy them in bulk now before the deadline allowing sale of acids over the counter comes into force. News is that acid is literally flowing over the counters these days and the suppliers are laughing all the way to the acid factory.

Our western arch-rival cum estranged twin went to the headmaster and complained that we are getting more golden stars than him. Now, repeat after me - AWWWWWW

Our MPs might have lost the red beacons but they sure are flying in style in the land of maharajas. The Committee of Privileges (they even have a committee for that?!!) decried that all private airlines must allow MPs and their coterie the dignity of a maharaja. You think?!

And Microsoft launched the Chastity bra. Great! I just hope it doesn't hang (no pun intended) and give you the BSOD. 

Talking about Microsoft, Indians' came one step closer to world domination. We got our boy 'elected' as the king and CEO of MS. And we couldn't stop talking about how proud we were that we didn't give him (and thousands like him) the creative and academic nourishment here in India, so that he ended up having to go abroad. Brain drain, anyone?

In another case of brain drain, Americans got fed up with Beiber. Finally! They got 50,000 signatures asking Beiber to be deported. Epic!

Our shy and reticent Defense Minister, AK Antony came back from vacation, answered all his emails and got to work. And how!

The land of a billion, sent 3 athletes and 4 officials to the Winter Olympics at Sochi, Russia. Go figure.

Malya, the king of good times, surely knows how to give the tough run too. It appears that banks won't recover even a third of what they lend to the beleaguered airline. Gee, I so like it when one of my predictions come true.

Srini Saar got ICC but lost the BCCI. So folks of the Western World, this is how we are. We just can't let go!

And if you thought we only discriminate against Pakistanis, you are wrong. We cannibalize our own too. Nido Tania became the latest statistic of our hatred towards people who don't look like the rest of us. Delhi went into 'Kill the Chinky' mode. Chaos!

Li Na, one of the only top seeded Tennis player from Asia who actually wins tournaments and is easy on the eye(pun intended at you, Sania) won another tournament. Saina did us proud too! Girl Power!

Yuvi sold himself for a prince's ransom - at Rs 14 crores, he is Bangalore's newest blue eyed boy in IPL 7. Who said Malya doesn't have money? In your face, Kingfisher staffers, In your face!

Bloodbath at IBM! So was at Thomson Reuters, and a dozen other companies that wanted to shed those extra calories.

Penguin stripped The Hindu. No, not in Gotham. The pen was traded for the greenbacks and the fanatics. Being the pacifist people that we writers are, the most we will do is - take a hike.

Selfies became all the rage. And poor Leonardo Di Caprio didn't even get himself into the most famous selfie. He is as jinxed as Sreeshanth!

So we know that India is a land of glorious opportunities. Who you know is what matters.
Let me present to you the story of 2 princes -
Tarun Tejpal, convicted of rape and packed off to jail.
Shashi Tharoor, thrice married and probably the luckiest widower alive! Wife #3 dies in mysterious circumstances. Autopsy revealed several injuries and a couple that proved fatal. The man has neither been jailed on circumstances nor being investigated. The staffer that discovered the body quit her job and has been unreachable. Is it just me or does this stink of a coverup? Whatever it is, Aarushi's parents would've loved to use the Shashi Tharoor privilege card.

In Europe, Crimea burned. Russia took back its prodigal son and turned the dial back 20 years.
And Facebook got Whatsapp. So now Zuckerberg is responsible for the 50% of the time we waste every day.
Saharashree Subrata ran out of his 'Get out of jail Free' cards and was thrown into jail. He now plans to ask his 'faithful-as-a-dog' employees to raise his bail money. Where do you get people like this?

And its election fever - every political scumbag worth their black money wants to become the next Prime Minister.

Malaysia Air, the airline that boasts of being the finest in Asia, lost one of its planes and all on-board. And if that wasn't bad enough, the Malaysian PM declared that the aircraft crashed with no survivors, offering no proof of the crash. WOW!
But wait, this just gets better. The authorities want the crisis to settle down so that it won't affect the Grand Prix. Malaysia is Truly Asia!
Back home in India, our $133 million C130 crashed. That's coming straight out of our pockets.

And a local bus was lost, and found. Because, we are that amazing?

The chief minister of Karnataka woke up from his slumber and declared that he would commission the world's tallest statue here in Bangalore. Great! The government may not have money to pay its civic agencies but has plenty to pour in a pissing match with Modi.
Both of you, take a page from these slum girls. They raised thousands of dollars to fund a free library of books for underprivileged children from the Dharavi slum. Take a bow, scumbags. Take a bow.

In other news, Blade Runner Pistorius is in sh*t deeper than his prosthetic can hold him up from.
The makers of RayBan will soon manufacture Google Glass.
Sunny Leone did some justice to Bollywood and did what she does best, In Ragini MMS 2. Cheers to Horrex!

Khushwant Singh (99) passed away. His humor will live longer..
Muthalik was in and out of BJP faster than his disciples could say Attack! No regrets, eh Old Man?!
Egypt sentences over 530 to death. There goes another democracy!
And if you are a girl studying in a school in UK, feel free to pick up a condom before you head home and a morning-after pill when you get back in the morning. The story of our times, eh?

Finally, we truly are a nation of people who are always thinking of saving money. Listen to this - an American boy of Indian origin has proposed to the American government to change the fonts on their documents and save $400 million. So this means they can now save more of the money they don't have.

So this is how the cookie crumbled this year. We had a pretty strong start to another glorious year. With the FIFA World Cup and the IPL round the corner, I could continue to keep you entertained.

See you all soon!

Out of Charge [258/365]

Only team picture worth remembering... Source: cityhyd.info

So the buffet is over. The guests have had their fill, burped in approval and the confetti has been packed up to be reused next year.
Time to pay the dancers and the stage actors. Out comes the empty wallets.

Five years after it first started, the honeymoon is truly over.
Lalit Modi has exiled himself in 'our motherland' (England) and no one remembers Shashi Tharoor anymore.
As team franchisees wake up from their drunken stupors one after the other, they realize that they have just been bamboozled by a diminutive man in impeccable suit.

But then how can we blame businessmen who only wanted to entertain us? We were told not the judge them on the basis of the obscene amounts of money they were supposed to make. They were after-all business(wo)men and not philanthropists.

IPL was packaged and sold as recession-proof business assets that could give its owners rich returns in a third world economy. Everyone drooled.
5 years down, the Kochi Taskers are extinct, Kings XI Punjab and Rajasthan Royals are neighter kings not royals, Delhi Daredevils are frightened of their own shadow, the owners of Bangalore's RoyalChallengers in deep shit and Sahara's Pune Warriors is looking at a divorce. Chances are none of these teams will ever find a suitor considering how nonviable the venture is.

The greatest sleight of hand, the Indian Premier League, was never a self-sustaining business model. The revenues of the team depended on the fortunes of the owners. While no one can deny that all the owners had seemingly bottomless wallets and the glamor to boot, no one really saw the recession coming when they signed up for multi-billion dollar 10 year contracts.

Today, as BCCI has terminated Deccan Chargers for violations of various codes, DCHL has dragged the BCCI to court in a start of what could be a marathon trial. DCHL had previously announced the sale of its team through newspapers, to be sold in an auction. They then rejected the only bid (for a whooping Rs 900 crores) they received from PVP Ventures because they could not accept the terms of the offer.

With six teams down, the IPL is an excellent example of what happens when sound business logic becomes a casualty.

Games Men Play [136/365]

Men need crutches. Men need religion.
In India, Cricket makes for a lousy crutch.
In a sport that is played by a dozen countries, it would seem easy to excel. It should be easy to resist the lure to cheat. Sigh!
Indian cricket has always been mediocre. Driven by corporate greed and short shelf-life, players who break into the big league find it hard to resist the lure of million dollar betting scams.
And just in time. A day after a national television sting on a bunch of players in the IPL, Indian cricket's governing body BCCI seems to be reading statements from it's time-tested book of PR responses.

Predictably, there will be an inquiry commission. Suspects will be framed, arrested and released. Allegations will fly. Denials will follow and the whole scam will have a shorter public memory than that of a housefly.
And until the next scam all the players will go back living a life less ordinary.
This is the mystery of our religion. We know our gods are less than perfect. Yet, we'd rather let them be than regret worshiping them.

The Poster boy of Indian betting Source: AFP

Among the many things that ail our public conscience our endorsement of sports-persons who sully the spirit of sport is what makes us look bad. We know what

needs to be done to punish temptation. It's been done before, but the fact that we have newbies indulging in this sin is a dangerous trend. In the corporate

world, when freshers who start a career indulge in unethical behavior, the employee is terminated and made an example of.
In public life, however, there will be an inquiry and an acquittal.
No matter what.

Dude, what's with the cheerleaders [99/365]

What could've been

Cheerleaders are not Indian.
So is Subway, McD's and Plasma LED's.

But when Lalit Modi got PYTs in STDs (Short Tight Dresses, to the uninitiated) to gyrate infront of millions of cricket crazy viewers, we sat up and smiled. The kinky bastard managed to bring glamor into an otherwise dreary game.

For Shiv Sena and like scum in desperate need of some news, the sight of so much skin (outside a Bollywood movie) was scandalous. Their minions were ready with the cricket bats (ironically) and stones. Chaos.
Yet we tolerated all that because cricket without the peppy girls in their tweens was boring. We had to have them.

Fast forward to IPL 2012.
It looks like the cheerleaders have lost their mojo. Aging goras in atrocious attire and  unpracticed moves will embarrass even the most puritan viewer.
I could start with the disaster called Team Kolkata. Better known as Kolkata Knight Riders.
If loosing games were not enough, now their cheerleaders are dressed so badly, that you'd want to drown yourself in whatever they are drinking. This is the first time I've seen cheerleaders wearing traditional attire gyrating themselves.

Talking about traditional attire, what is it with the cheerleaders at Pune Warriors? I can almost hear Rakhi Sawant gasp 'O my Jejus'.
And don't even get me started on the girls in Deccan Chargers and Rajasthan Royals. My eight year old niece can dance better than all of them combined.

What the hell were the costume designers if any drinking the night before they decided on these outfits?

Where's the moral brigade when you need one? Can't they see how the goras are destroying Indian culture?

But if you haven't scratched your eyes off already, it's time you asked 'Dude, where is my shot?'

What it turned out to be

The Wall [68/365]

Today, The Wall retired from Tests and domestic cricket.

As is customary, cricket crazy Indians and lunatics rushed to convince him to stay and when that failed, bid Rahul Dravid farewell.
Good Riddance, many would've thought.

Being a cricket neutral person myself, I am neither disheartened nor excited.
Having seen him play for the 15 years that I've been in India, I can say I liked the guy. I've never seen him burst in unruly emotions and I've always thought of him as one of those cricketers who can be called gentlemen playing a game that was gentlemanly. A dying breed of sportsmen who always measured his words before he spoke, he is like that good team player who works with you for many years, never complaining, never playing to the gallery, always well mannered, well intentioned and a good performer too. And when that person puts his papers down, you have that massive rush of emotions surging within you. You want to hug him, beg him not to leave but wish him the best and plead that he keeps in touch. Within you, you know that you'll miss him like crazy and that the team will never be the same without him. You may never have spoken much while he was still there but you suddenly feel a kindred spirit.

That's what I felt.
The lunatics would have cursed him when he didn't score a run, get a wicket or field that ball. They would have branded him a traitor and called him a Son of a B*&%#@ for not winning the game, but today, they were all hugging him and telling him how they are going to miss him.

Even though I am not a buff, I can still say that what he did was right. Maybe a little delayed even.
Hockey, our national game, isn't much to write home about. Cricket is destined to go that way if the seniors and the powers that be don't cultivate a breed of young players that will play better cricket and lesser commercials.

With the state of Indian cricket the way it is today, we risk another threat from Ms PP

Born naked. Living Horny

Making her Parents mighty proud!

Two Weeks ago, a nondescript model googled herself (like many other self obsessed nincompoops do) only to find that she is not what she thought she was- Famous.

That's when in a bolt of creative (or absolutely mundane) thought inspired her to announce to India and the world about her plans to strip for the Indian Cricket team if they win the World Cup.

Well, Poonam Pandey, Bravo! Well done. How inspiring! How original! How so Indian!

Well, the Indian team may have had women who would've been a guzillion times hotter, smarter strip and do other favors for them (in private) a thousand times already.

So they could have clearly not fallen for this. But a billion other men in India and some thousands around the world would have salivated at the tantalizing thought! They may have already made plans to watch it in YouTube and Torrents!

However, as fate would have it India did win the World Cup. Not for the country but for Sachin. But nonetheless, we won. Fair and square.

'Where the hell is Poonam Pandey?' The day after, FB was ablaze. All those elaborate plans to watch the smuggled clips of a naked lady gone down the drain. If there ever was a dampener to all the excitement, her no show was it.

You got your 15 minutes or more, of fame. But few pivotal questions, Ms Pandey.

How did you imagine our Cricket team needed a certain B grade Calender girl like you to strip to perform?
If Cricket was your passion, why didn't you strip in the last World Cups?
And finally, any reason why you chose Cricket and not Tennis? Where incidentally, Leander and Mahesh did win their Doubles and is placed World number 1. Well, they played for India and not for themselves or each other.

In a country where Cricket and Bollywood unite people in a way where religion and a million plus gods couldn't, you, Ms Pandey said the right thing. Or like the locals would say; "Ekdum first class choice"

But little did you know we would win and you'd have to make lame ass excuses to why you wouldn't want to strip. Smart move.

Well, it is easy to bet against a team when the team has been performing badly for decades. She never knew India would win, after all they hadn't won in decades. PP didn't expect India to win either.

We won! And in the first few hours after we won, none of us thought of you. None of us even remembered you. It was our victory and our moment in glory. We partied, we danced and we savored our win.
While you went into hiding and wished you could've turned back time.
But you've earned a nation's contempt and a million dollars worth of PR for free.

2 weeks on, you are still giving us reasons why you said you'll strip and (indirectly) how it is your birth right. So you were born nude. So you've made the men (with the exception of a few) of an entire nation drool and the women cringe in pity at your PR stunt. But you'll forever go down in history as the first (probably not the last) bimbo who promised to strip and never showed up.

Nudity is not vulgarity, says Ms PeePee.
Thats only if you're shedding it for your husband/boyfriend or in your case, a Producer/Director.

Bring It On.

My 15 minutes of fame/infamy/WTF

When I read the latest scandal/uproar that a quasi Celebrity, 'once' Booker prize winner and current tree Hugger: Ms Arundhati Roy proudly raised. My favorite pair of scissors went snip snip.
I love the Children of Controversies.
And India does not disappoint.

I stopped following her ages ago when she released a 10000 word essay on nuclear disarmament on Outlook.
I've always thought her 'God of Small Things' was like a Tata Safari: Over Rated, Over hyped! Thank God she didn't win a Nobel, or she would have nominated herself for the Presidency.
I guess she just makes it a point to wake up every morning, scan the news and does a google search for her name, to find out in how many ways she can ruffle feathers to be in the news while still being safe.
A friend of mine wondered why she was being charged with seduction?

I guess with Kashmir being as much a national past-time in India as Car chases are in the US of A, and with media not getting any more juicy stuff about CWG, it was time to move on.
Talking about the CWG, did India knock the socks off all our collective feet, huh?
It was pretty inspiring to watch Indian athletes compete in such diverse range of sports besides politics and cricket!

And oh which reminds me, Cricket's favorite Scapegoat and former Mascot; Lalit Modi must be muttering nasty nothings to himself. And to think it all began with a simple tweet.
Ahh, technology! Ignorance is bliss, my dear Modi.
Indians will forget this controversy as well, as they have successfully done for every other atrocity that grappled humanity.

The paradox of being an Indian is that even though you just one in a billion (quite literally), it is possible for you to get reams of news rolls. Its a brand that matters.
Any publicity is good publicity.

But what gets my goat is why make a mockery of our society?

3 frogs who got their 15 minutes of fame

Why do we have self appointed activists and leaders of our society holding us to ransom. Sure, Ms Roy might have to live in exile in some Western European country for the rest of her life, enjoying the royalties from her one book. Surely, she will talk fondly about India when she is there, while still enjoying all luxuries of life. Surely, she will live a life that will be much better than what she was 'fighting for' for her defendents.
This is good planning. I can almost see her doing a Salman Rushdie. A victim of her 'Patriotism'.

Perhaps the best way to treat these distractions would be to ignore them completely.
It worked for a former colleague of mine. A nasty fellow who would crack such tasteless jokes that even Rakhi Sawant would puke, all for the sake of some laughs. Ignored him. He quit.

Fed by constant controversies, our genes are conditioned to scandals, scams and corruption. Not to mention the almost involuntary drool when we hear about certain Bollywood actress and pornstars.
This year like any other year, has been a juicy good year with plenty of blockbusters already.


We've had every possible glitch except the terrorist variety so far.
Pakistan, are you listening? And no, exporting Sania does not count.
But wait, they are having all sorts of problems themselves. Funny that we don't have any terrorism when Pakistan is busy with its crippled self. Like a dog that is trying to rid itself of a flea does not bother to bite.

Wonder whats going to be the next big scandal of this year?