A year on...

...not a lot has changed,” say people. The November 26 terror attacks of last year have been commemorated with plaques here and junctions being renamed there with a few installations being set up at the theatres of terror. People say the attacks should have served as a warning and yet, they add that nothing has changed. Everything is exactly the same, they say. The government/authorities are still bumbling about with Band-Aid® solutions to compound fracture situations with some unGodly sense of misplaced pride about these solutions.

A case in point is the city’s fire department, which admittedly found itself fighting fires amid a hailstorm of bullets and grenades in the 26/11 attacks. This is not a typical situation. It’s a damn anomaly and as such, should be acknowledged as that, one would imagine. Now, under this misguided idea that firemen will regularly have to deal with being shot at, bulletproof vests have been ordered and received by the department. Honestly, bulletproof vests. And yet, helmets fitted with oxygen masks are too much to ask for.

It’s like a concept in cricket captaincy called “ball chasing”. What happens here is that as a captain, you set a field for a particular bowler and if the batsman happens to pick a gap and hit the ball through a vacant part of the field, your first instinct is to plug that gap by picking up a fielder from somewhere else. Playing catch-up, basically. That is exactly what this bulletproof vest plan is. Some quarters also wanted firemen to receive military training. Thank heavens then for the chief fire official who put his foot down and said, “No! Law and order control is not the fire department’s job. Fighting fires is.”

Digression aside, people also believe that the attitude of the police hasn’t changed despite losing some of their best men in the attacks. They’re still the same callous and corrupt lot, people say. To serve and protect? Ha! “They’re serving themselves an extra helping of tax payer money to protect their well-fed belly” is a view one is more likely to come across.

The government hasn’t changed, the cops haven’t changed, the security of the Nation hasn’t changed, Pakistan’s refusal to take responsibility hasn’t changed. Nothing’s changed, people scream.

I beg to differ.

Something has changed and this change has been quite massive. Last year, I had written about the way people responded to tragedy, specifically, the terror attacks. (Feel free to have a look. I’ll wait.) The biggest change I’ve seen and I’m dead certain that I’m not alone, is that people have turned so incredibly stupid. Which, it must be said, is quite a feat, considering they were already pretty damn stupid to begin with.

First, there were the candles. Those infernal candles. You remember the candles? Then, there was the hysterical news reporting, all that shrieking and bellowing like someone had trapped the anchor’s testicles in a car door. Then came all that “We will not forget!” bull-honkey.

And now, this year, news channels had the same sort of retrospective news reports. “What happened on that day...” and junk like that. People brought their candles out. (I’m convinced that the city of Mumbai has some underhanded dealings with a major wax manufacturer. Everywhere I look, it’s those damn candles) Some people — like this one woman on a news channel who was crying, because all the people who lost their lives, made her feel like she had lost her son and husband — cried, postured, talked about the increased need for accountability etc. etc.

But wait... There were TWO elections held this year. One of them was on a National scale and one was on a state assembly scale. With all the effort these fools could put into making banners and keeping those Godforsaken candles burning in the wind, one would imagine they’d actually go and vote. Nope. No chance of that. Voter turnouts were among the lowest seen by the city. Logic dictates that if you want all these changes, you’d change your representative or at least put pressure on your representative to deliver. Not miss the whole damn election process altogether, as these geniuses did.

And they still see fit to start yelling and screaming about change. Sigh... Such stupid creatures... and getting stupider by the minute.

Chris Tucker said it best...

There’s a film known as Friday and it just so happens to be one of my very favourites. It isn’t especially demanding of the viewer, where brains are concerned anyway. But it’s a hell of a lot of fun. Anyway, so it stars Chris Tucker and one of the most iconic scenes in the film is when he stands over a knocked out Zeus “Tiny” Lister and yells, “You got knocked the fuck out!!”.

It isn’t all that profound a statement, but his delivery of “You got knocked the fuck out!!” still resonates in my head. More pertinently this week, because without flying Mr Tucker over to India to say it, the whole nation seemed to say it to one man... an ageing “tiger”, if you will.

Yes, yes, yes, I am talking about that hot topic. I am talking about Bal Thackeray (the octo-something-arian), that Marathi hriday-samraat (upholder of the pride of the Marathi man is what I think it means) whose acrimonious editorials in his party’s mouthpiece are the stuff of legend. This time around he messed with the one person no Indian would tolerate being so much as disturbed... Leave alone hassled, fined, taxed or worse yet, disciplined. (Mike Deness? Where are you?)

Anyway, India’s pride and glory Sachin Tendulkar told the press that he was an Indian before being a Maharashtrian (i.e. he was a citizen of the Nation, before being a citizen of the state... and why not?). Thackeray lays ridicule upon him telling him to stick to sports and not comment on what that ageing communal and linguistic fascist describes as politics.

In other words, that nearly extinguished shell of a man is allowed to talk trash about anyone and everyone in the vilest terms and when Sachin answers a question and perhaps (knowingly) aims to spread a message of national harmony, Thackeray feels the need to rebuke him. Interesting shit, non? Anyway, the whole of India got behind Sachin and told Thackeray to know his role and shut his mouth. After all, there are some holy cows you just don’t touch. Sachin, in this case.

A day later, Thackeray’s newspaper publishes a “clarification” and claims it to be “affectionate advice from an elder”. HA! Yeah right... Thackeray and your Shiv Sena, you just got knocked the fuck out!!

Of morons, animals and really, morons...

November 9 is a day that will forever live in infamy — in my head at least — for the sheer levels of stupidity and moronic behaviour scaled by people of my city. And this is just when I thought people couldn’t get any stupider — case in point, being people refusing to acknowledge the Nation’s National Song, as it impinged on their Islamic beliefs.

Never mind, today’s idiocy scaled even the mark set by those soaring levels of dumbness. A to-be-sworn-in member of the legislative assembly for Maharashtra wanted to take his oath in Hindi. It just so happens to be the National Language after all. Anyway, so as he’s about to do it, he’s attacked by these animals from the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) — a party of a few intellectuals and mostly thugs. They proceed to slap him for not taking the oath in Marathi, the state language and hit him with slippers, grab his microphone etc. The usual shit goons and thugs indulge in.

The latest is that four of these animals have been suspended for four years... Four years of their five-year term. If you thought for a second that they’d be upset, think again. They’ve received nothing but adulation from their party’s equally obnoxious and thuggish leader. Spare a thought for the voters from the constituencies of those four suspended members of the legislative assembly. What the hell did they vote for? For a candidate who’d be suspended for 80 per cent of the term?

The suspended people will meanwhile, live it up at home and get paid for doing nothing. Hopefully, people learn their lesson and never vote for such foul creatures again.

If on the other hand, you think I’m showing any sort of solidarity with the guy who took his oath in Hindi, you are mistaken. Far from being roundly regarded as a fairly corrupt fellow, I find it incredibly stupid that he would announce days in advance that he would not take his oath in the state’s language, but the National Language. Is it not folly to publicly come up with something like this, when one knows what sort of animals the MNS are and the currency they deal in. See adjoining picture for details of their currency and how lavishly they spend it.

Further, it was reported that at a city church, a crucifix was — believe it or not — crying! And working as I believed I did at a progressive publication that pushes the envelope, I would’ve imagined that running the photographs with a slightly skeptical caption would have been apt. But no. We don’t want to look like mocking their faith. We don’t want to call a shovel a shovel, a spade a spade and an obvious act of condensation as that. We’d rather term it a miracle and in the process, allow people to continue buying into superstition and standing in line with idol worship.

Methinks the two instances of stupidity in the day may not have been so far removed from each other...