Ram Ram!

Freedom of choice can be a bit of a bloody nuisance for others. I have been trying not to follow the whole Sri Ram Sene/ Pramod Mutalik drama but there is some thing in it that just doesn't allow me to look the other way. This man used to be a RSS trained swaymasevak, who later joined the Bajrang Dal, and topped it off with a little time in the Shiv Sena before floating this Shri Ram Sene. If someone thought that Abrahim Lincoln was ugly and perhaps a beard might swing the ballot in his favor should take one look at Pramod Mutalik. The only thing uglier than the man is his idea of a utopian world.

In a country like India it's only the rich and the powerful and the cricketers who are truly above the law. It's the idea of getting away with just about everything, which is so deeply ingrained in the likes of such, that gives them absolution. People like Mutalik want to be that. They can't stand anything. It’s not that they don’t like the idea of people being equal. They want people to be equal like cows. No one really likes the idea of being equal to the next person. But what separates us from them is that we might take no for an answer every now and then. We don’t go around bashing women up just because they were sipping some cocktail.

What right does the law of the land give Mutalik to get away with such a thing? You try bashing someone chances are you might be coughing up some hard earned money to your lawyer friend to bail ya out. Mutalik was so way out that even the Bajrang Dal washed it's hands off, the BJP disassociated themselves with the freak and Shiv Sena, well…two of three ain't bad. The guy came on TV and said that perhaps his boys went a little too far and he was sorry but he ain't stopping what he thinks is the drive to save our culture and more importantly our mothers and sisters and daughters. Whoever has his goat please return! While that might take some time, the English news media could get its act together. Someone please tell Sagarika Ghosh to stop shouting her lungs out and stop asking stupid questions like 'People call you a goon..how do you feel about that..?' to Mutalik on live TV! This is so NDTV let it go Ms. Ghosh. Also Mutalik can't hear reason so no point shouting.

I've tried to think about this joker. I have reasoned in my mind and I have given up. There is no trying to understand freaks like Mutalik. Maybe he isn't the person we are angry with. Maybe it's the so called intelligent people of this nation that are pissing us off. Why is that the baba log of politics Rahul Gandhi, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot, Naveen Jindal and the likes not doing anything about Muthalik like creatures? Ok they don't have a say in front of Mummy Sonia so doing might be rules out but at least they can say something? Why isn't the media cornering these people and asking them to comment? Or for that matter what is Vijay Mallya afraid of? He is a powerful man and an MP yet he won't comment of this issue...why can't he say that responsible drinking isn't wrong? The fat slob will be OK if women don't go pubbing and men drink their guts out. Of course all the women who he knows can join him on his yacht and partyyyy!

BS Yediyurappa joins the chorus and says that he won't allow pub culture. Thanks for accepting a lame thing like pubbing a culture. Thanks for equating a few pints with a cultural superpower like India. This just shows how nuts these people are. Ashok Gehlot won't mind gracing some function in Jaipur that will showcase Krishna-Radha raasleela but would not like the idea of boy and girl going out together. What are we some people from Central Schools in the 1980's where girls and boys will be treated separately as cattle!

Why no human chain this time?

Why no lighting candles this time?

What's the difference between cross border sponsored terrorism and such hooliganism?

Aren't these women important?

Or they didn't order your kind of drink so you don't 'feel' the pain? This will happen again. The next target Bangaluroooo or whatever the hell they call it, then it will be Hyderabad, then Chennai, and then maybe it will become a 'problem'.

My fear isn't that Mutalik will take over; he is too small a thing to worry about now. My fear is that the powers be will let him be and he might become a big pest like Bajrang Dal in ten years. And this could very well happen...you know why? We will be busy trying to get Chandrayan on moon, meeting a 9. something economic growth, questioning weather Saurav Ganguly was forced into retirement by the selectors, if Mr. Bachchan has lost his mind, isn't Rahul Gandhi the same age as his pa when he became the PM, Sunil Bharti Mittal trying to ask Narendra Modi about his charm, shouldn't LK Advani now give up, wasn't it a great thing to make Chidambaram the Home Minister, isn't Woody Woodpecker better than Bugs Bunny, what download speed do you get...

It is done.

The Talibanisation of India is finally taking shape. Could you have asked for more? Even Muthalik, rhymes precariously well with Mutawakel, the erstwhile Taliban's Foreign Minister!

Breaking News

While flipping through our news channels you’d either hit upon an advertisement selling underwear or pens or catch the anchors begging people to SMS Yes or No in response to some no-brainer of a question. The other day Times Now updated me about the love blossoming between Yuvraj Singh and Deepika Padukone, as if I need to know that. The newscaster actually said, ‘the prince of Indian cricket and the IT (information Technology) girl’ instead of reading the copy as the ‘it’ gal considering Ms. Padukone is a hot favorite of everyone and their aunts!

The other usual suspects weren’t far off. CNN-IBN and it's Face The Nation, featuring an uber-hyper Sagarika Ghosh, actually had an entire show dedicated to Sachin Tendulkar and why shouldn't he be awarded the Bharat Ratna!!!??

What?

Why?!

Well some consider him the greatest cricketer ever and he has done India proud for 17 years and oh yeah he has finally managed to break the ‘jinx’ of getting out on 90 seven times? And this is a guy who refuses to pay taxes for a luxury car that he was gifted. This is the biggest thing a national news channel can come up with for a prime time show? Why can’t the editors exercise some discretion when it comes to deciding topics of discussion? Perhaps these guys are yet to recover from the shock that Narenda Modi actually won the Gujarat elections!

Don’t even ask about the Hindi news channels for they are a class apart. According to Star News nothing worthwhile happens in the world during the one hour they have a hideous show called Hasoge To Phasoge wherein some really strange looking people in the grab of stand-up comedy crack jokes. India TV has a mean Shani Baba resembling some photograph, infused with life, stolen from the most wanted board from your neighborhood police station. Aaj Tak (actually its English cousin, which is as bad if not worse) has one Mandeep Beivi who presents an hour-long take on showbiz called Entertainment News and only Salman Khan or her poodle can understand her accent. How do I know she has a poodle- one look at her hairstyle and you might mistake her for poodle!

There so many things that a news channel can change and it’s not as if they haven’t done their fair bit but is a little maturity too much to ask? I was watching BBC and got to know that by mid 2008 an Air Car, that’d use compressed air as fuel will soon hit the markets, Indian as well. The car will run at a top speed of 109 kms/hour and will run almost 200 kms on a single recharge. Though the price of the car isn’t confirmed refueling will cost less than 100 rupees!

I don’t recall any Indian news channel reporting this ever. Why am I talking about this? For one the car’s engineer, Guy Negre, has been researching for almost a decade now and had almost given up on the idea when someone bailed them out and funded the research. It was our own Tata Motors!

Why am I so angry? After all isn’t it that they sell what sells and perhaps we get what we want for if it wasn’t wanted why’d they sell it?

Yeah right!

I think we all love non-sense. As a matter of fact most of the times we go the extra mile to ensure we get non-sense. Where else can so much non-sense amalgamate? Flip through channels and you'd see the point I'm trying to make here.