Wh*re of the Year

With year 2011 coming to an end it is good time to look back at the year and recognize people who achieved new lows across different facets of society. Since these are the people who redefined what nadir means, hence it would be an injustice to them if any word other "Wh*re of the year" is used to recognize their achievement. Without any delays I would start with the awards across different categories:-

Category 1: Politics
This category can have two winners, one would be critics choice, other would be popular choice:

Critics choice: A. Raja for his exemplary performance in 2G spectrum allocation
Close runners up: Suresh Kaldmadi - who made his mark at interntional stage through his stint in Common wealth games

However popular choice award will go to Mr. Kapil Sibbal - Nobody hogged more limelight then Mr.Sibbal who through his carefully crafted statements became the Wh*re of the year amongst politicians. This year number of jokes on Mr.Sibbal rivalled that of Santa/Banta and number of hate pages rivalled that of Ms. Rakhi Sawant, who incidently was disappointed for loosing her place of "most hated person" ,a feet achieved by featuring in multiple television shows.Mr. Sibbal surpassed her by only few of her statements, showing the caliber that he has.


Category 2: Sports
Category had many nominations from the pakistani cricket team, with Mohd. Asif leading the race for entire year, but last few weeks delt a big blow to Mr. Asif chances when out of nowhere Andrew Symonds swept everything away. Not only Symonds redefined what a new low for a cricketer can be but he also showed what a cricketer can be reduced to, if he fights with team management. Andrew Symonds not only played the role of Gabbar singh but also danced in artificial rain, on bollywood numbers in the show which is surely mother of all ridicules, Big Boss. Symonds surely has earned his position as Wh*re of the year in sports.

Category 3: Movies
In this category winner is King Khan, who achieved this feet while making his dream come true, dream being RA-One. Mr. Khan campaigned very hard all round the year and hence ensured through the promotion of Ra-One, that he is ridiculed in every household, across all ages (specially kids) and across all social classes. There has been rumours going round that Mr. Khan wants to retain his award for next year and hence is making a sequel to RA-One, which according to sources will reach new heights of agony. In his own words Mr.Khan claims that it will take indian cinema to another levels just like RA-One did this year.

Category 4: Business and Economics
Again the choice would unamious amongst everyone. Nobody did bigger harm to the position of IMF then Mr. Dominique Strauss Kahn (DSK). Who through his sexual advances on a maid of a New York hotel, showed that even Economists are capable of achieving lows in the field which is commonplace for public figures of all fields

There can be other categories as well and surely I would post them as and when they come to my mind.

Mother of all entertainments

Yesterday I was watching television and instantly came the thought, which show has been the biggest entertainer of Indian television. For answering this question I thought I should go genre by genre and identify the best in each class, and then make comparisons of the winners. So if I look at drama, then certainly the recognition will go to one of Ekta Kapoor production’s series, though I have never seen any of her masterpieces, but have read that Ms.Kapoor has the gift of creating tragedies and have perfected the art of elongating these creations.
I then moved to detective series, my personal favourite . Under this category, there was a tough call between Byomkesh bakshi and CID. While the former was Indian version of Sheralock holmes , solving cases by his brilliance, the latter had ACP Praduman solving every case literally by the swing of his fingers . Against my will I had to sideline with CID as it had been pulling out absurdity for years and hence should be the bigger entertainer .
Then came the third genre to my mind, mythological drama. If religion is opium of masses, then mythological series would be “opium joint”, as it was through these series only you get introduced to religion. The genre had a tough fight too, between Mahabharata and Ramayana, while the former was technically superior and had a more appealing script , thanks to Ved Vyas! But the latter was first of its kind and pioneering, and hence had its own charisma. Here I ruled in favour of my favourite Mahabharata.
While thinking all this, I was also swapping channels. During this surfing I stumbled upon the clear cut winner, to which none of the individual category winners could have competed on standalone basis. The biggest entertainer of Indian television is - Corruption of 2010-11, televised through Indian news channels.
News had always been the biggest entertainer, but presently the entertainment quotient has magnified, probably because for the first time, the recipe of each genre has been mixed into one and hence has produced the biggest episode, the Corruption 2010-11. It has every possible ingredient. If one is interested in emotions, we have Mr. Karunanidhi and one of his wives, publicly crying for their daughter Kanimozhi, who has allegedly been falsely imprisoned. The story is loosely influenced by Godfather, so we have an Italian leading the whole rig through a well established public face. Family emotions along with mafiaso and oppression is indeed a brilliant blend. However there is more. If one looks for excitement, then there exists the question of over 200 crs whose mystery is yet to be solved. There are brilliant investigators engaged in this case, along with multiple teams, led by Mr.Rajdeep Sardesai, Mr. Arnab Goswami Mr. Pravin Chourasiya etc . The whole bunch has repeatedly proven their acumen by raising issues which no one would have ever imagined, could be worth giving second thought.
If one is interested in court room and diplomatic drama, then we have the case of Mr. A Raja and guest appearance of our very own Denny Crane, Mr. Ram Jethmalani, who appears randomly on few television channels, calls everybody else stupid and pledges to support someone till the last drop of his blood. We also have Mr. Kapil Sibal who questions the legality of every issue raised by civil society. He also brings to the table the legal ploys. So signed affidavits to gain advantage in parleys along with few others tactics, were Mr. Sibal’s contributions to the whole entertainment package.
The only angle which was missing from the scene till last few weeks was spirituality, now thanks to Baba Ramdev, we have that too in place. He not only bought spirituality but also action and element of mayhem to the whole episode, thanks to his midnight run away from the shamiana in ramlila maidan and active cooperation from Delhi police . Motto of delhi police is , “in your service always”, they lived their reputation on Baba’s call and added the spice of action to the whole picture.
Since entertainment should not be discriminatory on sexual orientations, hence Baba Ramdev also introduced cross-dressing so that “differently” oriented too have something to look forward too. Thanks to him, now even Rohit Bal will have something to look in entire saga. But in the end how can any entertainment in India be complete without an item number. Feeling left out , this responsibility was taken by Ms. Sushma Swaraj, who gave a stunning performance at Jantar Mantar. Just as is the case with any other scintillating performance, it was mired with controversy. But in the end everybody silenced themselves, after all the act was done “for the team”.
The best thing about this whole package is, it is fast paced, has brilliant actors as actions are mostly live and is covered 24X7! Corruption 2010-11, indeed is the biggest entertainer of all times.

Religious Customs: Possible thinking behind them

Religion, the opium of masses isn't more potent in any other place then in India. The country might be second most populated, but certainly boasts the highest population of Gods. In-fact I can safely say that each of the Upnishads (one of the religious scripture of Hinduism) will have mention of more gods then all the gods that Greeks could have thought of. (Greeks would be the second most populous deity community). Ubiquity of God is what every religion preaches, but influential mid-century Indian followers went a step ahead and created ubiquity of places of worship. They were thinkers of tomorrow, so they could see that in future there would be chronic shortage of land hence the people per unit place of worship might not be sustainable, so they came up with new ideas. Associate certain trees with a God, so if you do not have a temple around, you can have your god equivalent banyan tree, or maybe catch a snake and feed him, and God would reciprocate with blessings. If you have river or mountain around, they are worth worshipping, so save flat areas for housing construction and make temples in same caves of mountains.
The “custom” creators had also foreseen the food shortage, and hence devised a method to cut down upon consumption through ingenious concept of “fasting”. Some would say that it works well for the digestive system etc., but for medical effectiveness of fasts it should be done once every month and a recovery regime have to be followed after it. Certainly fasting twice a year or for 3 days in an auspicious week or only during daytimes in a month, would do no good particularly when it is followed by hefty food. If you think that PETA is something that originated in modern times than you are duped by a gimmick. There was an earlier avatar of PETA which was more secretive then priory of Scion, and infiltrated in the team which was designing the religious customs every time. Though unlike present PETA movement, these ancient infiltrated had some personal penchants for certain animals, so someone who loved Cows, made it a holy animal and got all future generation of cow protected from a large chunk of masses while someone else made some other animal listed as "dirty" and hence got it protected from even larger chunk of humans. These people could not be regarded as true originators of PETA rather the person who first thought about holistic animal welfare and fought hard to protect them by strongest mode, religion should be the deserving founder. Since he/she didn't had a very strong influence so could get the clause of “eating animals” as forbidden, for only certain communities. He/She might have been successful for getting it for entire follower section had it been any other day as the day of discussion was the day when the “Rajinder dhaba” equivalent of that times had started their centre and had made their inagural delivery as free to these guys. Tasting the delicacy they thought that it would be utterly immoral if they keep entire future population aloof of such great experience hence complete ban was ruled out. But still post this event, Neanderthal man who ate raw animals, had offspring who would categorize touching a well spiced meat, as sin. The PETA lobbyists were strong, so they could not seek a complete ban on eating of animals through "custom" changes, but they did include some confusing clauses. These clauses made many present day humans to be totally unclear on the correct custom and they end up being “purely human” by not eating animals, on a particular day of a week just to be safe. So by and large the objective of those earliest PETA activists was partially successful. Rejection of complete ban had fallout as well. Few of these early PETA lobbyists defected from the mainstream religion and helped in establishing new religions, which had “no-killing” as guiding principle. However they could not get much people to switch loyalties from the older religions as by the time these lobbyist had become totally active, Rajinder express equivalent had infiltrated in much larger parts and addiction to well cooked chicken/meat was difficult to get out of.
Whatever might the present state of customs and following be, one thing is clear that there were far sighted and thinking individuals who conspired to create customs and thereby have contributed in lessening the vagaries.

P.S: I would be dishonest if I would say that I deny existence of God. Neither I am well read in religious scriptures, so many assertions might be ignorant opinions. I have better knowledge of one religion (the one to which I belong) so could cite more examples from that only

Flight of Imagination

For the past one year I had the opportunity or to put it in proper sense, the misery of travelling alone quite a number of times. Although invariably all such journeys ended up offering nothing which could be called good, but still you always hope to have something ,every time you are about to travel. The expectations are same whether you travel by train or flight and just like any other expectations, they are not devoid of build-ups.

If you are about to travel by air, there is a significant time of yours which goes in praying to God to make you sit next to an interesting (read hot) co-passenger. There are few things which are considered worth praying even by the atheists, and this tops the list. So you spend some time praying to god for such beautiful coincidence at the same time parallelly imagining things that would happen once God accepts your most cherished wish. The moment you reach the respective airline counter ,you start looking around, searching for the possible "gift" sent straight away by the master above, whom you had not bothered with any requests since your last travel. Presence of god’s gift would not fulfil your wish rather you have to work out a way to ensure that you get the gift. So you observe the gift’s movement and ensure that you stand behind her while she is getting her boarding pass processed. You have to keep your ear lobes fully functioning to hear out and if required (which will be in most cases) your eyes, to look for the most important numbers printed on her boarding pass. So when the airline executive asks for your seat preferences , you confidently mention your choice and quiet clearly- well my lucky number is 17 so I would prefer the row of same number and since my name has "E" in it (somewhere) so I would want to sit on the seat which has the same letter, so 17E would be good. The flummoxed executive would think that this guy is out of his mind, but on face he would pass a smile and will say, “Sure sir”; after all, these are the moments where their training of hypocritical hospitality is tested.

So finally you think it is your lucky day, god has colluded with you and finally you got what you had been dreaming of since the moment you left your home for the airport if not longer. From the moment you have secured a boarding pass to the moment boarding is announced, you start creating dummy conversations,that you would start with your cherished neighbour. Your imagination, charged with the power of positive thinking, would create numerous topics in your mind incidentally all of which would appear to be insanely interesting to the neighbour. You do not want to be disturbed in this critical exercise of scenario projections and hence would switch off your cell phone and cut yourself from every other distraction except the one for which you are planning. As in dreams of inception, you would have had endless conversations each lasting more than 2 hrs, multiple times for many scenarios, squeezed in a small time frame of 30 minutes, flat. If somehow IQ was measured at this time, you would have beaten Einstein by a margin which would have made him look like a lunatic. So finally boarding is announced, your moment of glory, the time when you would test all those hard worked scenario to put in place, has come. You would have butterflies in your stomach, nervousness which would be same as what Sir Edward Lutyen would have had when he would have laid down the foundation of Viceroy's house in New Delhi. You think that your scenarios are perfect but as always there is some scope of screw-up but today the person with the blue umbrella sitting above has been helping you a lot; so while you are standing in the line to board the aircraft, you start praying for each of your scenarios to go as they went in your projections.
You enter the aircraft, manically rush to reach your lucky seat 17E , only to find your neighbour totally turned towards the window and looking outside. You sit next to her and now start revising all the opening sentences, as by divine help you have got some extra time to prepare your master act, act which would be as important as the opening presidential debate of Mr. Obama. You keep rehearsing, meanwhile the flight has taken off, and she is still looking outside, totally ignoring your presence. You start getting impatient but can't do anything other than wait. Suddenly she turns and starts searching for something in her bag, you think that you would offer her your help for whatever she might be searching but then she finds it. It is the sleeping eye mask. She wore it and slept and with it your flight of the dreams, crashes. You console yourself by ogling at the airhostess, who would unfailingly pass fake smiles, which they would have learned at Frankfinn. So with it ends your journey which remains etched in your memory as it is amongst the only cases where you would have hated the situation when a hot girl slept next to you!