Sorry!

Some of you have written to ask where I have disappeared to. Well, I am busy all day chasing carpenters, plumbers, masons and maids. Have just shifted into a new home and am neck deep under rubble.

So do bear with my vanishing act for a bit more, and trust me when I do get back with a vengeance, you'll miss not having me around.

Till then...

The PLU Flu

There you go, yet another proof that we are a majorly hypocritical urban society. The media has been going emotionally ballistic over the tragedy of an NRI techie who suffered a car accident in the US, got struck with paralysis, and is now lying lost and forlorn in a Dilli hospital. And egged on by a tearful newspaper, help (financial and otherwise) is pouring in for the dude from across India’s urban cities.

Good for him, and hope he recovers soon. However what baffles the mind is this: why are we so concerned about this particular chap’s well-being (he did not exactly get his injuries fighting across the Indo-Pak LOC), when we give a rat’s arse for millions of other Indians who face similar predicaments? Like the maimed soldier? Or the poor sods who lose lives and limbs at the hands of drunk city drivers? Or the servants and construction workers who slip out of high rise apartments? Or the beggars on the streets whose bodies lie unclaimed on the road dividers? Or brides who get beaten inside their homes for lack of dowry scooters and refrigerators? Or the farmer in Vidharba who is about to throttle his own fragile neck? I could go on.

The answer lies in the built-in hypocrisy in our middle class genes. We care only about People Like Us… unless he/she is ‘apna aadmi’, we give dog shit. This is the same reason the electronic media shed collective croc tears for the injustice meted out to Jessica Lal, but snootily looked the other way when one Priyanka Bhootmange (who the fuck is she, did you ask?) suffered the worst imaginable torture. It’s a disease that afflicts all of us big city livers, and I cannot for the life of me understand where the virus came from.

Let me wrap up by saying that I have nothing against the techie being offered assistance. But I have a serious problem that we would have simply moved on if his resume had said, dhobi, bikhari, kisan or jawaan.

Daft, daft, daft

If we ever needed proof that news channels in India have gone to the dogs, especially the Hindi ones, then it’s arrived with the arrival of the victorious cricket team.

While one isn’t trying to belittle the team’s success, and they do deserve some cheering from us fans, truth is, it’s nothing but a one-day series win abroad (we lost the bigger Test series), and we have been there and done that before. It’s not like the team returned with the World Cup (in which they performed memorably miserably last year, and were kicked out of the first round itself).

But the way the TV editors have been going about with the street tamasha, one would think the heroes have returned after a fierce war with the neighbour, and with POK as part of their prize kit. Mind-effing songs have been composed, trainee reporters are running from pillar to post to find if Ishant Sharma likes his rajma chawal tepid or piping hot, one channel has turned into a matrimonial site for the monkeying Harbhajan. And they are trying to outdo each other in this fight of madness. The recent controversial budget is already history, and no one gives a rat’s arse for the dying farmers anyway. All these idiots will manage to do with this nautanki is to mess these young minds beyond repair.

I swear I will never switch to a Hindi news channel again from this day. I am jobless right now, and cannot afford to buy a new television set.