1) The much awaited and eagerly hyped marriage has indeed come to an end. No, I am not talking of the Indo-China bhai-bhai pact or the India-Pak Aman ki Asha initiative coming to fruition. The talk of the town has indeed been the Shoaib Malik-Sania Mirza nikah. The media as usual went ga-ga over a nikah which had controversy written all over it with glee. Some commentators, of course, astutely questioned whether Sania Mirza should play for India or Pakistan? (considering the way she’s playing currently, do you really care?). And then came the news of Ayesha Siddiqui and the Pati, Patni aur Woh angle which made Ekta Kapoor’s mega-serials look childish. The media lapped it up with relish and played it more times than the Mahabharat repeat on Doordarshan. Subsequently, news emerged that Shoaib-Sania marriage ‘may be’ postponed. By now, everyone and their great grandfather had stopped caring about an event that hardly concerned them. Everything was going fine and no one was really bothered until the keeper of our national conscience, Arnab Goswami and Times Now, told us to GET ANGRY at the baseless allegations of Ayesha Siddiqui and rumors of the nikah being postponed. Various anchors at CNN-IBN were so damn loud that one could hear them even after muting the volume. The Mirzas and the Maliks could take it no more and pre-poned their nikah with Shoaib divorcing Ayesha Siddiqui first and marrying Sania almost immediately (In one of those moments off work when I was thinking about Shoaib, Sania, Ayesha and their future, I was struck with an epiphany. Shoaib divorced Ayesha, whom he denied marrying earlier. Then he marries Sania. That dude is brilliant!  His net marriage count is still zero. And according to Quran, he can technically marry 4 more!). Of course, you would not believe that there is a recession going on in the world today, if you looked at the food menu and the Mehr amount involved in their marriage. Anyhoo, let’s get to the Lahore part of the wedding quickly, shall we? Last but not the least, Times of India, in its infinite wisdom gave a peek into their elegant, yet insightful news ticker -  ‘Aman ki asha: Are Indo-Pak marriages the first step?’ Why didn’t we ever think of this before? (V had warned me against squeezing this topic further because of my extensive comments on it on Facebook. I think it was more like STFU. So yeah, this rant will be the end of this topic unless of course something incredible comes up in Lahore).

2) The other big news of the week was CRPF jawans getting slaughtered in a Maoist attack. Of course, keeping in line with existing media standards, I will not, WILL NOT devote much space and analysis on some event like this compared to the exiquisite and eye-ball grabbing news of Shoaib-Sania. However, being a responsible blogger, I have to reluctantly point you to some news which will obviously lead to incredible happiness among us, the taxpayer junta in India.

Sample this very well written report for instance.

In summary, once the remaining few jawans who were alive at the scene were rushed to the hospital,

“No chief minister, no state home minister, no other minister, no member of Parliament, no MLA, no director-general of police (Vishwa Ranjan, a man popular with journalists in all seasons), no chief secretary, no home secretary, no inspector-general (TJ Longkumer, who Chidambaram later told journalists had planned the dead men’s fatal foray into the forests), no district magistrate (frenzied a few hours later as reporters surged at Chidambaram’s press conference because he didn’t want anyone to throw a shoe at the Union home minister), no superintendent of police, not one high-ranking officer of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), to which 75 of the dead belonged, were here; just the very angry CRPF sub-inspector.”

“Typically, the survivors mattered less than the dead. Head Constable Raj Bahadur and Constables Pramod Kumar Singh and Baljeet Singh are lucky to survive the carnage, having taken bullets everywhere but in the guts. A hundred paces from the mortuary, they lie writhing in pain on dirty hospital linen stained from previous occupants’ dried blood. Only one has a mosquito net. There are no doctors or nurses. Two constables who’ve come on their own watch over their wounded mates. The ward is a hovel; the toilet is a stinking blocked drain.”

There is much more. The article is a must-read for such issues which cause immense delight and mirth.

So, in summary,

We had a surprise attack by Maoists.

The Policemen didn’t have proper equipment to fight them.

The Policemen didn’t have proper training to fight them.

The Policemen who fought valiantly and got injured were neither treated nor cared for.

Now, why have I heard this before? Anyone remembers 26/11? (and in this case, no prominent guy arrived at the scene till much later!)

Of course. We are Indians. We don’t learn from our mistakes. We are like that only.

Surprisingly, no relief packages have yet been announced. It’s a real shame that some politicians can’t get richer with this relief money. What has our country come to? Time for another useless bill? Certainly.

3) Not that this news is worth linking to, but then again again, how else do we document and understand our Indian PM’s calmness and calculated moves to assert global and moral superiority in the world?

First, our Un-Man-mohan Singh requests (and maybe grovel) Obama to put pressure on Pak.

In line with keeping relations harmonious, President Obama urges Pakistan to bring the 26/11 perpetrators to justice. (Of course, you might ask, what exactly does ‘bringing to justice’ mean? Silly you. Justice means different things to different people. For you and me, justice is behind bars and rigorous punishment. For people like Hafeez Sayed, it is a palace-lifestyle with Muttom biryani everyday!)

If that is not embarrassing, news is leaked that Obama pressed Pak on terror at India’s insistence. What I do not understand is why should someone leak this? Even Arjun Rampal would have seen through it like a transparent polythene paper.

And the brilliant Gilani wants more evidence against Lashkar. I have no comment. Just Respect.

I am just seething with happiness at us being called a global economic superpower, but with softer principles, nay, Gandhian principles. I think the time has come for us to slap on our own cheek and apologize to the perpetrator. The circle would be complete. As Miley Cyrus told me one day during our yoga class with Deepak Chopra, Karma it seems, is a bitch.

KING CONG,

are a few of the sobriquets and one-liners that are being used to describe the electoral victory of the Congress. A literal sweep, am sure, most of the Congressmen would be surprised with. In the face of electing such an elite party, it is but natural for some of the members of parliament to spout pearls of wisdom for the great nation, a secular, socialist republic – whatever that phrase means.

First up, the losers.

LK Advani: The people of India have given their verdict. We accept it.

Hmm, really? Very surprising. Let’s lift some iron at the ‘Gym for Older Men’ while we are accepting the loser’s speech, shall we? Let’s position a supposed-hardliner in public perception, Narendra Modi as your successor or even better, the RSS chief to completely destroy BJP’s image at a national level, shall we? And yes, let’s do all that and still hope to win the elections. Brilliant strategy.

Moving on to the winners.

Sonia Gandhi: The people of India know what is good for them and they have made the right choice.

Yes. People of India in their infinite wisdom have elected the right party, candidate and the party’s dictator. We are just too intelligent for as simple an issue as a vote. We do understand that having extremely corrupted ministers in your cabinet rank is right for the country. We also understand that letting of good friends like Mr. Quattrochi is a symbolic gesture through which you would want to communicate the value the party attaches to Friendship. We understand that National Security is not much of an issue as long as you keep winning elections. We also understand that having all the newsmen in your pockets would serve you extremely well in your negative propaganda of the other party. Yes, we have made the right choice.

Manmohan Singh: People of India have spoken and have spoken with great clarity, I will persuade Rahul Gandhi to be a member of the Union Cabinet

Dazzling leadership skills, ain’t it? He is actually going to persuade (beg?) the descent from the royal family to be a member of Union Cabinet. It’s a proud moment for him – am sure he would be patted on his back and given a day’s holiday just for making that statement. I look forward to be governed by this dynamic and energetic leader with extremely competent subservient skills. British Raj, remember? This time around, only the country is different. It’s called Italy.

The day of reckoning had arrived and is now past us. Circa 2014, unless BJP comes up with a leader who is more of Vajpayee and less of Advani (Jaswant Singh, maybe?), I am not sure that the result would be anything different from 2009, especially with Rahul Gandhi’s juggernaut rolling in 2014. Hopefully the next 5 yrs would be infinite times more productive than the extremely sluggish last 5 – that way atleast, I would be rooting for the Cong in 2014.

I salute both of them. Firstly, I thought terrorists create terror only in deserted lands and on the Moon. Secondly, Lashkar, Pakistan and the ISI would be frantically discussing among themselves as to how to deal with this strong condemnation, leading to eternal damnation.

2. Our beloved PM, Sri Sri Sri Un+Man+mohan Singh declared in his rabble-rousing, deeply inspiring that would have put the terrorists inside the Taj to sleep “The well-planned and well-orchestrated attacks, probably with external linkages, were intended to create a sense of panic, by choosing high profile targets and indiscriminately killing foreigners”. That was very insightful, wasn’t it? I mean ‘high profile targets’ (who would care about the common folk), ‘indiscriminately killing foreigners’ (I think you should teach them the ‘Theory of Discrimination’ from your Economics 101).

3. And then, R R Patil comes in and says “small incidents like this do happen in big cities”. Well, firstly, Karan Johar should sue him for stealing his line (bade bade sheroh mein aisi choti choti baatein hoti rehti hai). Secondly, the NSG should have shot him and called it ‘terrorist fire’…no, wait. That would have resulted in Bharat Ratna for R R Patil. They should have just shot him and said ‘Oops!!’

4. I wonder where the Thackerays were in all this drama. I mean, this was their moment to sweep the polls. Hold a rally near the Taj and call the terrorists ‘Marathi Manoos’, which would have probably scared them away (calling the NSG commandos Marathi Manooses would have resulted in ‘Oops!!’ again). Raj, Udhav and the Big Bal (no pun intended) didn’t even come out with as much as a courageous statement as our ‘respected’ President like ‘strongly condemning the attacks’. I wonder why?!

5. The media was sharp, wasn’t it? I mean, 24×7 updates for 3 days. TRP ratings of all news channels would have gone through the roof. I think these guys would pay the terrorists to perform such activities once in a while – you know, just to push up TRP ratings and bring you ‘exclusive coverage’ from all 234 news channels. Then there was Barkha Dutt - flailing her arms more than a circus clown telling the whole world about her fantastic investigation skills which included how many NSG commandos had come in, where were they taking their positions etc. The terrorists wouldn’t dare watch the television, right? And then, there was our man of the moment, Rajdeep Sardesai asking some of the rescued hostages questions like ‘did you in your wildest dreams think you would face a terrorist?’ and ‘will you ever forget this experience, how does it feel?’. Well, insightful questions demand deeply philosophical answers. The answer to both the questions is ‘eff you’ (and show him the middle finger of both hands please!, just for clarity purposes).

6. The worst of the lot were the NSG commandos and the police. I mean what were they doing – they were  doing their mundane job of rescuing hostages and killing those terrorists without any gas masks, nor night-vision goggles nor proper intelligence, which somehow, somehow in all the political melee and fund distribution, the politicians forgot to buy. Heard of a term called ‘shopping disaster’. Could you guys be more moronic?

Now, for some straight talk.

Politicians – You either deliver on some measures or don’t give us trash talk. Tell the citizens that you are not capable of doing it. We will try out another bunch of jokers who we think they can.

Media – Ethics and Morality are out of the window for you guys, for no fault of yours really. I mean, with numerous 24×7 channels, some time back, you sensationalized two monkeys getting married in a remote village of Bihar. This attack was ‘your moment’.  The only way, I think is for the Government to draft some policy to limit the coverage in case of such events. Please, for god’s sake, don’t then cry for ‘Freedom of Press’.

NSG and Police – The nation salutes you for your brave and fantastic efforts. We only heard of the brave deeds you guys do in Kashmir and other insurgent places. Last week, we watched them live. There is nothing we can give that would justify your supreme sacrifice. I hope you guys do get gas masks and night-vision goggles to kick ass – in a better fashion and without loss of lives on our side.

Terrorists – Get the eff out of my country and keep off my favorite city. We will not break come what may. You guys can go to hell where there are 72 aliens looking to rape you guys in the worst way possible.

My earlier post when similar terrorist activity occurred in Hyderabad and Jaipur – little more analytical.