Tnahsin Garg's Blog, page 2

Push That Button. Break Some Wind.

As the mainstream political news around Delhi elections turn into an epic, irresistible drama, yours truly can’t resist from breaking some wind on the matter:

AAP’s Fan: What is it with Kiran Bedi? Is she the new Rahul Gandhi?

BJP’s Cooler: Oye! She’s far better than pappu. And more civilized than your jhadu-man. That anarchist…

AAP’s Fan: Oh yes, yes. Of course. The peaceful Bedi will actually be the new Manmohan Singh, if she becomes the CM. She’s that civilized and obedient, no?

BJP’s Cooler: And your Kejriwal? What about his U-turns? Why forget all the anti-corruption agenda? Howcome he’s all pro-development this time? Is he trying to be the new Modi? Sorry, I mean Modi ji.  

AAP’s Fan: Kejriwal is still committed towards eradicating corruption. He has learned to compromise a little though. Anyway, AAP will deal with a wider spectrum of issues. You can kindly read it in our manifesto.

BJP’s Cooler: Who reads that bullshit? People want development. And hope, mostly.

AAP’s Fan: Whatever. Why are your party leaders always evading debates? We have been trying to get your people in for debates not roasting. Scared of a simple debate? What about that 56” chest? Has it got any muscle or just hot air?

BJP’s Cooler: Don’t provoke me. You know what that leads to.

AAP’s Fan: You’re all corrupt! 

BJP’s Cooler: Yeah, yeah sure. Everyone else is corrupt, except you my milk-bathed AAPian. Corruption reminds me, did you like our Hawala at Midnight move? That must have hurt. :P

AAP’s Fan: If those two crores were shady, why the hell would we make it public? And that too on our own website! You’re more stupid than I thought.

BJP’s Cooler: It’s not a question of who is more stupid. It’s a question of who’s more cunning. But the interesting thing for me was to know that you too have friends. Powerful friends. With decent money. Not just autowallahs.   

AAP’s Fan: Our donation totals mere 60 crores so far. You’ve got several thousand crores (3000?) from unknown sources. Of all the people in world, you, you haven’t got the right to point a finger.

BJP’s Cooler: True. But we also didn’t go about calling ourselves ‘Honest People’s Party’? Did we? First, you went to crazy depths doing dharnas and what not to teach these people that honesty and transparency are important. Now, these very same people, will go to any depth to judge you, and yes, only you with the values you yourself taught them. They’ll never question our ‘Indian People’s Party’ with the same strictness. Because our measure of success is Indianness not honesty. More development we provide, irrespective of how we provide, more we win. You see?

AAP’s Fan: (Insert long logical arguments, honesty, transparency, accountability here)

BJP’s Cooler: (Insert bhakti, business/economy fundas, Gujarat model here)

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AAP’s Fan: Thy shall lose next week. Thine grave is ready. People of Delhi will dig it. 

BJP’s Cooler: Talk all the fancy English you want. When it comes to politics, it’s all about blowing. And we both know that my wind is stronger.

Freedom of Expression: A Paradoxical Conversation

I happened to witness a conversation of two lunatics following the tragic events of the past week. Please ignore their ignorance.  

Vanilla: This is awful. Depressing. #CharlieHebdo 

Chocolate: It is. But it isn’t new either. Every expression leads to an impression. A positive or a negative impression likewise fuels proportional consequences.

Vanilla: Proportional? WTF? Gunning people down for drawing some cartoons? Disgusting. Barbaric. #JeSuisCharlie

Chocolate: Agreed. These acts were barbaric. For you. For me. For most of us. But for barbarians or the ones who did it, they must have been proper. Why else would they do it? 

Vanilla: Because they were extremists! Terrorists! Fanatic jihadis who took innocent lives in the name of religion. This is how they exert their power. Through violence and terror.

Chocolate: Well, ahem. Yes, right. Or, maybe, they were just a bit crazy and sentimental, you know? Think of it like this, they were human beings driven primarily by impulse and temperament. 

Vanilla: So? That doesn’t give them the right to kill. 

Chocolate: True, true. Let me tell you something else. Think of different kinds of parents around the world. One set of parents, when their children misbehave, give their kids a sound thrashing with whatever comes handy: greasy palms or household footwear. While the other set of parents, on such occasions, stick to more sophisticated methods of punishment like cutting down the child’s TV/leisure time. 

Vanilla: So? 

Chocolate: You see both set of parents are expressing their anger. Both set of parents want their children to learn a lesson. The emotion is the same. The purpose is the same. Only the means of execution are different. 

Vanilla: I can’t believe you’re making this gross analogy. This is the 21st century. And in the Free World of Democracy, child abuse and violence is unacceptable. Raising kids in such an environment must be surely causing irrevocable damage on their vulnerable minds. The free world supports free speech!  #JeSuisCharlie

Chocolate: The same free world which tried to silence voices of Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and several others? What about their free speech? 

Vanilla: These individuals attacked a supreme authority and it was…anyway. The US has some restrictions on free speech when it becomes too political. But France is not like that. Europe is much better. Take Denmark for example, some Danish newspapers even republished the controversial cartoons.

Chocolate: Hah, it’s funny you bring up Denmark. You know a major Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, has shied away from republishing these cartoons in interest of safety of their employees. They were the ones behind the original controversial 2005 cartoons. But, I also heard -

Vanilla: There, you see! Violence works. It terrifies and hinders -

Chocolate: You didn’t let me finish. I also heard that the Danish police recently sent a arrest warrant to someone who apparently supported the Paris attack in a Facebook comment. What about that guy’s right to free speech? Isn’t that paradoxical?

Vanilla: Of course, if someone is publicly approving acts of terrorism they will be prosecuted. Moreover, who other than a sick, terrorist would support this kind of attack? Such expressions or Facebook comments will obviously hurt sentiments, and they need to be punishable by law. #JeSuisCharlie

Chocolate: Precisely, my point. We need to stop hurting human sentiments, especially of those who are quite sentimental to begin with. Btw, you keep saying that hashtag thing. Do you even know what it means?

Vanilla: Of course I do. Stop preaching.

Chocolate: No, no, I’m genuinely asking what does it mean when you say that? That “JeSuisCharlie”?

Vanilla: That translates to “I am Charlie” and that I stand with whatever Charlie Hebdo stood for. Free speech. Freedom of expression. My belief in the right to criticize any institution or person. 

Chocolate: Right. I see. And I presume, you’re a regular reader of the newspaper? You agree and stand by all the cartoons it has published? 

Vanilla: Well, umm, I’ve only seen a handful of these controversial cartoons. Not all of them are easily available. 

Chocolate: So with little pre-knowledge, you turned into a self-proclaimed Internet activist just because something was all over the news and trending a lot on twitter? I’ve heard that several media outlets have refused to republish the controversial cartoons, not just out of fear but out of decency and consideration towards others. 

Vanilla: The hell man! It’s a fucking cartoon at the end of day. How bad it could be? Never, ever can a speech or an expression of any nature justify such a heinous crime. 

Chocolate: True, I condemn the crime. But, you know, out of curiosity I dug the internet archives around a bit and found some old cartoons. Some of them are graphic, sadistic, overly racist and even pornographic. I condemn violence, I fully do. But why provoke people, especially that you know are sentimental? Why dig at things that you know are dear to them? There are other constructive things you could waste your life on. 

Vanilla: That’s why we draw a line right. Expression, art should be free. And violence, abuse should be banned. 

Chocolate: But where, my friend, where exactly do you draw the line? At what point, the freedom of expression becomes the freedom of oppression? In different places of the world, several phrases and racial names have been banned. They marginalize already suffering minority communities. 

Vanilla: But we got to question everything. We got to be able to point fingers. Without that freedom, how can we evolve? We’ll go back to totalitarian regimes, living in fear every day. 

Chocolate: Yes, yes, I agree but take this analogy for example. Consider someone who’s being bullied by a bully for a long time now. The bully through name-calling and judgmental phrases is merely utilizing the ‘freedom of expression’. The bullied person, one day is fed up, and fueled by years of mental damage seeks a revenge by inflicting physical damage on the bully. The bully ends up in an hospital, and the original victim ends up in a correction facility. The public sympathy inclines towards the former, of course -

Vanilla: I see what you’re driving at. But physical -

Chocolate: No, you don’t. Why is physical torture considered more horrific than mental torture? Just because the former is graphic and obvious? Like the way cartoons and images are more influential than written prose? Sometimes, your expressions do far more damage than your actions. 

Vanilla: Okay, so we stop expressing ourselves then? That’s the solution you’re offering I guess? We shouldn’t make movies that offend or criticize anything? We shouldn’t say anything at all? Art is a representation of nature. Nature has both evil and good. Everybody can’t be happy from a given artwork, somebody, somewhere will be pissed. So much self-censorship will eventually lead to a blank canvas. Let’s fire all critics?

Chocolate: No, no. Critics are important. Often, they keep in check various governmental and institutional policies. They give voice to concerns of afraid citizens. But there should be surely a difference between critical examination of truth and inconsiderate, sadistic mockery of everything one doesn’t like or understand?

Vanilla: You’re yourself confused. One one hand you don’t seem to support the freedom of expression and on the other you want critics and satirists to stay and function as they do. That is paradoxical. What do you exactly want?

Chocolate: I don’t want anything. I’m only trying to make some clever remarks. Freedom of expression is more driven by convenience and preferences of the audience the expression is expressed to. If you’re expressing yourself to an audience which you know may not be happy with your expression, expect repercussions. And don’t say that you expect only artistic replies in return. Life is not a game of chess. You hurl small stones at another person, you can’t force your enemy to only use similar sized stones in return. You wield a pen, they might wield a sword. Be prepared for that.

Vanilla: You guys take things so seriously. I can’t even begin to understand -

Chocolate: Yes, precisely. I do take non-serious things seriously. Preferences and priorities are different for each of us. What is dear and holy to one set of people may not be holy to another set, and vice verse. If one set of people hold their life dearly for their own sake, another set of people might sacrifice their life freely for some other sake. Nobody is wrong or right. Everybody has a system of values and beliefs. Perhaps that’s why there are geographical boundaries in the world, so people with same set of belief systems can stick together. Any attempts to “integrate” two strikingly different flavors often results in friction. And that’s what has been happening. 

Vanilla: I don’t know man. All I know is that the stuff that has been happening in the world isn’t right. Humanity is getting worse every day. 

Chocolate: Well, I’m sorry if I’ve been too loud. I get a bit sentimental, you know. But 99% of people on this planet want to be peaceful, they are peaceful. That’s how their DNA is coded. Life always wants to preserve. If it fights among itself, it does it only for evolutionary reasons. 

Vanilla: Hmm. So there’s hope?

Chocolate: Yes. It’s those 1% of people, on the extreme ends of the spectrum, the fanatic believers and the fanatic skeptics, that fight each other to death leaving us moderate spectators in the middle with things to chew upon. Bent and inconsiderate minds from on set of people attack another set of people, and then, the bent and inconsiderate minds of the attacked set of people, take revenge, in their own style. Vendetta, my friend, vendetta. That’s been driving the conflict through all these centuries. 

Vanilla: I think you’ve a point there. Some times my people get too skeptical of your people, leading to distrust. I too think majority of people are inherently peaceful. 

Chocolate: Most definitely, dude.  I can’t be exactly like you, because then I’d stop being me, right? But -

Vanilla: But we gotta respect each other.

Chocolate: Precisely! Respect and consideration towards each other. That is all. 

Vanilla: Right!

Chocolate: I’ve nothing against you or your people. You know that. I just look different. I just taste different. But I’m still ice cream. And I’ve heard you and I go well together.

Vanilla: Awwwwwww. 

Chocolate: (melts in love)

Vanilla: (melts too)

Being on Danish TV

So, apparently my alter-ego has been doing well. While I sit here pondering about declining book-sales and secretly dreaming of a illustrious career as a famous, critically-acclaimed author, he, my dear-antithetical-yet-inseparable friend, is slowly and steadily building and polishing his scientific career (it’s quite mediocre though, trust me). He recently made it to the Danish TV etc. (link)

Obviously, he’s quite excited and would like to take over the keyboard from the next paragraph of this post. If you get bored or something, don’t blame it on me. I assure you that I allow his emotional babble on this blog only occasionally. 

I can’t really be thankful enough to Tnahsin for letting me use his very famous shitty blog with like 2000 20 followers. I don’t know if you’re interested in my current life-status but I’m nearing the end of my PhD, and the only thing that I’ve learned in all these years is that I know next to nothing. While I too, like Tnahsin, constantly feel the insignificance and mediocrity of my life, good days do show up once in a while.

Nearly a month ago, the local Danish TV channel approached my university to make a small series on “Foreign Researchers in Denmark”. Considering there are very few individuals in Denmark who are foreign and pursuing research, a coordinator from our department casually recommended me to show up in front of the camera. As much as I would have liked, this had nothing to do with me making a breakthrough or stumbling upon something extraordinary in my PhD. Nevertheless, this was quit an experience.

Spending three hours with a camerawoman and a professional journalist, talking on a number of social/cultural issues, just to make a three minute video was nothing less than thrilling. Likewise, not noticing the camera, acting perfectly-natural-and-relaxed, and trying my best to not appear/sound stupid were one of the most difficult things. No matter how much I thought about what I would say in case I was asked this or that, the stuff that I ended up blurting out was unexpected, unrehearsed, and all done without any retakes! It was a news piece after all and not a short film. 

An hour ago the snippet came on the local TV channel during their prime time news hour. Probably, someone at the channel liked the snippet enough to post it as a separate mini news too! A few minutes ago, my supervisor texted me saying “…it is very good,” fully aware of the little joke I made about friendly bosses. Little hierarchy, low income-wage gap, and high gender-equality are central pillars of Danish society. No wonder happiness comes naturally to the citizens. 

I remember the day after the shooting, I was exceptionally joyous and beaming about like a little humming bird. And then that joy faded. Now, after a month, as I get to see the final product and hear the wavering, hopeful voice of my past self, part of the original excitement has returned.

Tomorrow, this feeling too will fade. I and my alter-ego (Tnahsin, with his delusions of grandeur) will probably end up leading insignificant lives. Such is our destiny. But these occasional sparks of joy? No wall of fate can stop them from seeping in. There will always be a crack or two in the ever-enclosing, gloomy walls around us. And no matter what life does to you, happiness will find its way. 

An interview with the local Danish TV channel capturing the...

An interview with the local Danish TV channel capturing the foreign perspective on Denmark. Some thoughts behind this video are posted on Being on Danish TV.

Interstellar: A spectacular, self-indulgent drama

Last Saturday afternoon at 2 PM, as I walked out of the theater after nearly three hours of an interstellar experience, the broad daylight of the town was quite contradicting to the otherwise dark and dusty reality I had just witnessed. Okay, who am I kidding? There was no broad daylight outside. It was just the standard dim twilight that you find during a typical Danish November. And things haven’t gotten better in the past week, the sun has been largely missing, and the end of the world (read winter) is coming. 

Nevertheless, as I began to return home, only one question haunted me: “Did I like the movie?” I hadn’t quite settled on that one immediately, probably because of the notion that “I should like the movie, it is from Nolan after all.” And then I remembered, how his last, The Dark Knight Rises was a big disappointment. Finally, it hit me. If I am asking myself whether I liked something or not, and if I have to evaluate such a basic feeling, then probably I didn’t like it and am just finding reasons to like/appreciate what others have already endorsed. 

Interstellar, then I figured, was a long, weary, and ambitious drama that tried to hit me at so many levels that it succeeded at none. It wanted to grasp and then explain so much of everything that in that pursuit it lost its basic coherence. 

Major spoilers ahead. Read only if you’re a semi-lunatic. 

The Good

I can’t praise enough of the aesthetics and the overall spectacle that Nolan managed to create with every object he chose to portray.

#1 The spaceships, the worm hole, the black hole, the space colony, the tesseract - everything was fine-tuned to scientific precision and artistic awe. That the rendering of the black hole for a few minutes worth of footage led to novel scientific knowledge shows how Nolan essentially is a perfectionist and visionary.

#2 Bordering on the edge of fantasy, the film managed to pull off quite a number of neat tricks extrapolating on layperson’s current understanding of the exotic physics of space, time, and gravity.

#3 Then there were few exciting scenes which allowed me to jump happily on my chair: like when Cooper saves the drifting, rotating Endurance, the final explanation of the books falling from the book-racks and the crazy locomotion of the robots, running and all. 

The Bad

What bugged me, though, was the loose plot and shady storytelling stitched together with vague characters. Characters who were less interesting than the TARS robot itself. Most of the time, when the actors weren’t busy quipping cheesy dialogues, trying to teach physics to an invisible audience (or reciting Dylan Thomas), their voices were conveniently subdued by the burgeoning background score. 

#1 Interstellar tends to convey that “love” transcends all dimensions. It’s really “Guilt” and “Desperation” that transcends, it seems. Cooper is guilty of leaving his kids alone and Amelia is desperate to see this other stranded space guy. 

#2 No sooner that Cooper hops onto the ship he plans to drive like his truck, he’s already keen on returning back to his kids. Confused priorities, I guess. And meanwhile, Amelia (who is supposed to be very smart and all, daughter of this crazy scientist who runs NASA alone) is secretly inclining to risk everything just so that she can have her romance. And yet, these bunch of emotional fools represent the “best” of humanity. 

#3 What was wrong with this Dr. Mann. I have not seen anyone more stupid than him in the entire movie. Every action he took, was stupid. Think about it. And he too, was the best of the best. Oh, well. 

#4 And Romilly? Why was he there in the movie? Okay I get it. For diversity. I see. Then there’s no need to develop his character. Right. He served as a nice prop to show the passage of years. Just for the sake of diversity, you could have thrown an Asian guy in the crew too. No, no, wait, that’s too much diversity. It’s kind of an American movie, you see. The point is to show how Americans have been pioneers, etc and how much they love baseball, etc. 

#5 The ending is the worst part. All this time, the movie builds on this emotional drama of a father returning back to his daughter on time and when daddy finally returns back home, the daughter is, very anti-climatically, too old to pass for anybody’s daughter. While this nicely explains the side effects of space/time travel, it fails to draw a nice ending. And on top of that, Cooper looks at her for a few seconds, and suddenly, he is now drenched of all the fatherly emotion which has been driving him crazy all the time. Instead, his manly passions overpower him, and feeling happy that he has gotten rid of his parental duties (by simply evading them), he’s immediately reminded that he, a pitiable, widowed husband, hasn’t slept with a woman in like 100 years (technically), and now must seek out the only hot woman in the universe he has been craving for all along. Lo, and behold, he jumps on another spaceship in a cowboy style (very American, you see), hunting for his lady love. “Desperation”, not love, truly transcends all dimensions. 

#6 But the movie doesn’t end here, the worried audience is pacified by the information that Amelia is indeed single and ready to mingle (her lover is sort of dead). This makes for a happy ending, in which a father who initially set out to square things with her daughter, ends up abandoning her completely while running after a woman he may not get. I’m sure they’ll get together fine in the sequel just like newly married couples do on a lonely planet, although Cooper must be ready to change a hell lot of diapers every day for the army of children that’ll be waiting for him. Kids, you see, they never let you have fun. That’s the overall message. 

Okay, I’ll stop here. Maybe I’m being too harsh. But then, this is Nolan, we’re talking about here. From the guy who made excellent films like The Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, we certainly expect more. It’s not uncommon for a genius to occasionally make blunders under the limelight and burden of corporate investors (look what happened to Peter Jackson and the hobbit series). So, as all geniuses must, at some point in their lives, Nolan too needs to reinvent himself - for the better. 

An Evolving Perspective on Deepavali

As far back as I can remember, the Diwali holidays used to be the most awaited break of the year (after summer holidays, of course). My obsession with hoarding whatever crackers I could lay my hands on and then bursting them one by one in a miserly fashion, afraid that I might run out of them too soon, often left me wanting for more. Only if Diwali lasted forever! That’s what I used to pray. And so great was my affinity for this festival in early childhood, that even on the morning following the eve of Diwali, me and my friend would scavenge the neighborhood for unused candles and failed crackers so that we may fire up another dull night with the recycled ammunition. 

And then time slid by, year by year, adolescence gradually took away the childish fascination with thrills and bangs of crackers as I increasingly began to discard the mandatory puja and the lighting of diyas as trivial pursuits. A further detachment from Diwali began with the onset of adulthood as I left the comforts of home to become an engineer. Then it was just a great excuse to be back home with family where the plentiful and exotic sweets received my admiration even though the arduous tasks of cleaning, praying, and tolerating the smoke filled streets became increasing difficult.

Four years ago, after finishing up my bachelors in engineering, through a strange combination of luck and aspiration, I was transported abroad and was so far away from home that at once I was afraid that I might actually be missing out quite a bit of the festive life that existed in India. But strangely, none of that happened and Diwali lost its entire meaning the moment the whirlwind of graduate studies and US culture engulfed me. I stayed out of whatever modest Diwali celebrations the local desi community organized. Having maintained a careful distance from everyone around me, I began to revel in my life as a recluse. Diwali? How trivial. I must have said that at some point.

The perspective didn’t advance much as I relocated to Denmark two years ago. Diwali, like any other day of the year, be it Christmas or my birthday, began and dissolved into nothingness without much spectacle. Many festivals and celebrations tend to lose their meaning if one removes their social aspect. 

But there was something different about this Diwali of 2014. This time there was an air of nostalgia about me. I didn’t know the cause. It could be that the woman I love has finally managed to reconnect me with the roots that I had so unflinchingly severed off. Or, it could also be a side effect of joining Facebook earlier this year (which has been a fascinating social experiment by the way, but that’s another story) that led me to forcibly peer into the self-portrayed personal and social lives of several individuals - most of whom happily and unknowingly reminded me of this great occasion. It could be neither or both. 

Whatever may be the cause, I can not allow myself to discard this festival as trivial anymore. Yes. Not anymore. But if it’s significance has to grow, my optimism must beat my skepticism. There are several issues that bother my current self and I must record them here now or risk losing them due to an evolving perspective. (And mostly, since I’ve nothing significant to do or engage in this Diwali, I better write something up to calm myself down.)

One of the things that bothers me about Diwali is the idea that it is a celebration of the return of Lord Rama from battle and exile. Lord Rama, who is adored much for his virtues and righteousness, appears to adopt a patriarchal attitude towards his noble wife Sita, especially post-war, sending her off to hermitage and forcing her through a bunch of crazy tests to test her “purity”. And that’s just because she’s been with another man (Ravana, who can either be a villian or a hero, depending on who you ask). In the current society, if gender equality and feminism are to mean anything, perhaps Lord Rama isn’t so ideal anymore. And if we ignore that story, symbolically, it’s a festival that shows the triumph of good over evil, light over darkness, and so on. While these contrasts are very inspiring, they are at best abstract, unrealistic concepts and at worst, they are strong doses of optimism for an impressionable, young soul. In reality, the morality of good and evil are merely a matter of perspective. Often, labels of good and evil are assigned whimsically to the strong and the weak, the fortunate and the unfortunate, the oppressor and the oppressed and sometimes vice-verse. 

Then there is this matter of keeping one’s house clean and lighting many candles and diyas so that the goddess Laxmi may find her way into our homes as well as bank accounts. Surprisingly, an immortal goddess, wife of Lord Vishnu, too is as much biased towards sources of light as her annual worshipers are. This can be explained if we consider that humans fabricated gods and goddesses for their convenience and not the other way around. 

But. Having said all that, if heavy symbolism blended with fascinating literature and mythology can encourage people to collectively clean their homes and surroundings once in an year (at least), invoke a festive mood in a society that is otherwise troubled with a plethora of fundamental problems, and most of all, offer them a moment of celebration with their loved ones where they can indulge in the fleeting joys of sweets and crackers - then, perhaps, Diwali is too grandiose a phenomenon to be questioned as irreverently as I may have done in the preceding paragraphs. 

Happy Diwali everyone.

Maa on Mars (MOM)

Deepika Padukone’s assets are beginning to loose their charm (temporarily) as the great Indian media circus has shifted their focus from objectification to personification. Mangalyaan, personified as the modern Indian Maa (Mom, in english), has successfully entered into the Martian orbit resulting in an technological feat touted as both highly efficient and economic. National pride levels experienced a singular peak this morning amid a noisy sinusoidal baseline; the country is all set to rise a few spots on the happiness index. 

Your correspondent’s head has been bursting with following voices waiting to be heard:

Western Media: First rule of journalism relating to India and other third world countries is: “Draw a wide contrast.” When reporting on the success of such an interplanetary mission, it’s important to end the article with an irrelevant-yet-poignant note mentioning that 1/3 of Indians don’t have electricity or 1/2 don’t have access to toilets. 

The Patriotic Indian Replies: Screw you and your documentaries of slums in India. Do NOT underestimate us. Indians are the BEST. There are 1.2 billion of us. We will out-breed you. Just wait and watch. 

Gupta Uncle: Arrey Bhagwan! Listening to me? I’ve decided. Chunu will stay with us. And Munu will go to Mars. 

Mrs. Gupta Replies: Okay-okay. Mars-vars, we’ll see. Right now send him to market. We’re running out of milk. 

The Skeptical Indian: Hmm. So they can build a spaceship that flies around another planet. I’ll only allow myself to express happiness when they build their own arms, cars, and electronics. 

The Literary Snob: Mom? Seriously? That’s what you call it? Mom? Bharat Mata ki Jay. 

The Smug NRI: The plan is to travel the whole world and then tire myself (and others) to death by those FB “check-ins”. Afterwards, my well-educated kids will essentially do the same. But now since even these poor Indians are running deep space projects, my kids should at least “check-in” at Low Earth Orbit for a start. 

SpaceX Replies: Mmm. Yeah. We and others commercial companies will only be taking a few, rich people initially. So. Better start saving now. Good luck! :) 

Bollywood: We should make a first of its kind Indian space movie. Look how much money Gravity made, and then this Nolan’s Interstellar will make countless crores. But we need two things for such a movie: 1) Money 2) Balls Skill. Karan Johar can provide the former, but where shall we get the latter? Anurag Kashyap, maybe? 

Doordarshan Replies: Been there, done that. For inspiration refer to our highly famous “Captain Vyom” and highly expensive “Aryamaan: Brahmaand ka Yodha” (starring Shaktimaan). 

Aam Aadmi Party: It will be very stupid of us if we found any fault with this event. Also, as per our new policy we’ve slowly started to appreciate life more often. Congrats ISRO! Modi ji, even though you or BJP had nothing to do with this, we secretly think you are quite awesome. There. We said it. 

The Qualified Indian: (Thinks deeply. Goes to www.isro.org. Squints at the flashing GIFs on the decade old website. Clicks on “Job Opportunities.”)

Book Review: The Inheritance of Loss

Five years ago my father casually handed me a copy of this book. The cover looked decayed and the pages were unattractive. A gloomy, complex title accompanied by an Indian author’s name had immediately earned my distrust. I chose to ignore the book in my effort then to only read fancy, foreign authors. 

Now, as I’ve set myself to the task of digging up good Indian writing in English fueled by a desire to understand my own roots better, Desai’s book is nothing less than a jewel. Someone who has traveled abroad or ever felt a sense of detachment from the great mess of religions and cultures we collectively call ‘India’, will find the plot quite touching. And to those who can’t relate to it, the book still renders the classic theme of identity loss under the backdrop of the Gorkhaland movement in a post-colonial India. 

But it’s not the plot or the historical setting that glued me to this book, it was the magnificent prose that is brimming with vivid imagery and metaphor. This is the kind of book which you can fully appreciate as you read along rather than a work which evokes praise only when it has delivered a justifiable end. The characters are chiseled to perfection and it left me in awe every time I saw the truth of the story being told as rightly and truly as possible. No vague, false speculations. Just hard, cold truth. 

This is exactly the kind of novel that one wants to read to be convinced of the less-believed fact that there are great Indian writers out there. The prose on various pages often rises to a crescendo, almost transforming into poetry. 

Final Verdict: If heavy description blended with poignant metaphor, social-historical commentary, and a dose of depressing pessimism can turn you on - this is the book you’ve been wanting all along.

5/5

Happy, Independence, and Day

In other breaking news, the great critics of India have failed to find any major flaws in Mr. Modi’s speech today. Meanwhile, bhaktjans were left teary-eyed and exceptionally patriotic, although they continue to hope that the PM has saved his magic wand for some other occasion. The highly-opinionated-but-otherwise-useless citizens did have some comments:

The Pseudo Patriot: What independence, independence? From whom? Angrez? Firangi? We still depend on outsiders. From arms to electronics, everything is imported. And the worst thing is, we secretly mistrust and even despise anything that’s made in India, branding it as the inferior desi.  

The Gloating NRI: Huh. Huh. The day I left this shitty country behind - that’s the day I celebrate as the Independence Day. You see, one has no freedom in these third-world countries. In the western world, one can do whatever one likes without worrying! I call that Independence. 

NSA Replies: Oh really? :)

The Literary Snob: Tired of seeing the phrase “Happy Independence Day” spammed everywhere. Someone could try saying “Happy Independence” for a change. Makes more impact. 

Aam Aadmi: Yay! Long weekend. I’ll sleep a lot. Or I’ll run away from work. 

The Guy-who’s-forced-to-work-24x7: O hullo Aam Aadmi! You’re not passionate about your work. You should be working on the weekend too, that’s how the economy will improve. Look at me, I love my work. And it’s not because I’m scared of my boss. 

The Pretentious Bastard: Oye hard-working-guy, stop pestering the poor aam aadmi. His party lost badly anyway. There’s nothing wrong with taking a holiday - in fact that is the best way to celebrate independence. Of course, great individuals (like me) are doomed to work all the time. Imagine Batman saying he needs a day off. 

Batman: Well, umm, as a matter of fact, I do yearn for a holiday now and then. Especially since I retired and got married, the only work I do is housework. Shocked, yeah? See the end of The Dark Knight Rises. Nolan fixed me up with this dismal chick. Damn you, Nolan. (Clears throat) Is there a fix for sore threat btw? Oops, gotta go, my wife needs my help in the kitchen. I was happier when I was gay. (Sighs) I definitely need some independence.

Half Brain

Meanwhile, India’s biggest literary sensation, Chetan Bhagat, has announced the title of his upcoming epic novel of love and lust. Touted as a turning point of the decade in the entertainment industry, the work titled as ‘Half Girlfriend’ has garnered heaps of praise from the highly-opinionated-but-otherwise-useless citizens. 

Arvind Kejriwal: Bhai, where’s the other half? The Aam Aadmi of this country was promised a full girlfriend. Are these Acche Din? Mr. Bhagat is corrupt.

UPSC Aspirant: Can they kindly use the comprehension passages from Chetan Sir’s books? I think I can manage the CSAT English then only. 

Grammar Nazi: Only if he could hyphenate the title so that it was more like ‘half-girlfriend’ and not ‘half girlfriend’- that would have been more correct and definitive. Oh but wait, isn’t the protagonist from Bihar - the state where his readership is? 

Literary Snob: This title invokes a tingling remembrance of friends with benefits, and surely the half-moral nature of the horny-woman will be central to the titillating plot; it must have been difficult for him to choose a better (dumber?) title. Still, phrasing it as ‘The Half-Girlfriend’ might have been a better way to do it. Maybe I too should dumb down the title of my rejected, unpublished prose and try again with those sensible publishers? 

Twitterati: We’ve made smart-ass, condescending tweets in an attempt to humiliate and defile CB. Unfortunately, this has led to further publicity of the same. 

Pretentious Bastard: All you guys making fun of the new book of this nice, hard-working writer, please calm down. Half of you must not have twitched an eye while playing half-life or reading about half-bloods.

I: …

(shoots himself in the head)

(dies in a corner)

(nobody cares)