Throw the R away in FrEE
Long queues, hurried footfalls, urgent changes in plans, snap-snap, snatch-snatch, adrenalin rush, and all survival techniques put to use are invariably found to co-habit wherever and whenever the word FREE comes into force. Just whisper the word ‘free’ and any place gets transformed into a war-zone. This is a global phenomenon created by brands to...
Life is cool in Delhi, Mr Modi
Newspaper reports live in their own world of make-belief but once in a while they tend to hit upon some conclusion that stays steady from one decade to another, from one generation to the other… and one such conclusion that most renowned editors have never divorced is that the top leadership in the country has...
The story of Chinky, Thulla, and Tambi
What is more offensive and derogatory – a name that is spoken with some affection though sometimes with ignorance wrapped around, or the Shiv Sena asking Biharis, workers from UP and Gujarati businessmen to leave their ‘amchi Mumbai’? Or people in J&K, the NE, and a few other regions calling you ‘Indian’ when you go...
It’s time for B-team to command
To BE is to be in the B-team today. So it is right if a politician stings like a bee and leaves the A-team to join the B-team because BEEing there is to BE in the middle of everything. Yes, this is a time when even ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ has decided to have some...
Between credibility and chaos
All around today I see moments floating between credibility and chaos… and somewhere between credibility and chaos are the dangerous mutant strands of corruption. So whichever way one moves, the possibility of getting afflicted with corruption is rather high. From politicians to the bureaucrats, from the common man to connected man, and from one end...
The revolution has not devoured itself
So they lasted for 49 days. But what are 49 days of unconventional governance compared to 66 years of entrenched corruption? And yet the social media, I find, is full of intelligent urban population proving themselves not just uninformed but also naïve and rather arrogantly stupid. Why else would they call Arvind Kejriwal the ‘item...
The ploy
‘How can he reduce tariffs?’ said the opposition. The bureaucrats too muttered some such inanity that appeared to agree with the politicians. The people were confused. Debates happened on almost all TV channels, every nukkad, and every office lunch-break. Some called it foolhardy while others just said, ‘What’s the harm if we’re getting a benefit.’...
anarKEY
‘There is a spelling error there,’ some will point out hurriedly. So yes, this is a different spelling, buddy… and you’re not accustomed to seeing or using it. But the wonderful thing is that this spelling has a ‘key’ attached to it and you, I know, are someone who is surrounded by locked doors. ‘Locked...
Size matters!
In both politics and pornography, size matters. We have just seen a pulsating example of this titillating fact when Delhi was saved from going to the polls again. But if you think size in politics is simply getting the right numbers, you’re really entering the house of real fiction. Yes, numbers and the mathematics of...
Life is so b/w without you
Life is so like an old b/w movie without my friends. Well, you’d generally ask: ‘What’s wrong with old movies?’ And I’d have no alternative but to answer: ‘Life is so like any movie on a small junked b/w television without my friends! So if this is fine, will you now let me get on...
Of Indians, idiots, and this idiocy called corruption!
“I say ninety percent of Indians are idiots. You people don’t have brains in your heads… it is so easy to take you for a ride,” said Justice Markandey Katju in December 2012. No, Justice Katju, only 10 percent of Indians are idiots, the rest are smart and corrupt. Obviously, Katju doesn’t get up at...
“Till now the people didn’t have a choice. They now have a choice.” An interview with Arvind Kejriwal
I sometimes wonder what I would be had I been born on 16 June 1968 in Sivani in Hissar. Would I too have gone on to complete my BTech from IIT, Kharagpur? Would I too have subsequently joined the IRS and then left it to get the Government of India get serious about the...
