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I have been reading the countless delates and discussions regarding Varun Gandhi and his recent “hate speech”, the hoopla surrounding his Bollywood-style arrest and the usage of the phrase “Varun Gandhi’s supporters” which none of us would have heard before this incident. My main point being thus :
You can debate and argue till eternity, but he got what he set out to do. He has a national presence, he has a following, he is a known face and name. The same would hold true for a Raj Thackarey or Pramod Muthalik. We could have blog posts, campaigns and mass ridiculing sessions; the fact remains that all of them have won right under our watchful eyes.
If incidents like the Varun Gandhi’s one are done with the sole aim of garnering support base, I really have no problem. The only risk is if they follow their ideologies given power.
As much as this would be a surprise for many, one of the best young leaders in this country at this moment is Raj Thackeray. Minus the current and only ideology of his, he is everything we need in a leader today. The only problem we could have is with the ideology as with a Pramod Muthalik or Varun Gandhi, but the fact shall remain that they got a lot more than what they set out to achieve.
So while the media prides itself in being a watchdog, it might just be aiding them in achieving the exact opposite.
P.S. : I should be back to regular blogging in a day or two (blogging is irregular currently if you didn’t realise it already) about the usual politics and happenings in the news. I hope to continue my infatuation with graphical stuff too and use the blog as a platform to profess it.
Okay this is the last time I am taking the easy way out by posting GraphJam creations. I shall be back to usual posting very soon.
Unfortunately, this post might not be understood in its entirety by everyone. It is very closely related to two very popular inter-collegiate theater competitions organized in Pune viz. Firodiya and Purushottam Karandak. If you have ever participated in them, this post is dedicated to you. For others, apologies.
Disclaimer : I have used some stereotypes but it isn’t meant to be offensive to anyone. Kindly take it all in good humour.
P.S. : Do let me know if you liked it. Feel free to suggest more stuff or create more of your own.
The number of readers went up by 14.28% after the previous graphical atyachaar. Hence, presenting some more.
The tool I use is GraphJam. Feel free to send in any graphs you create; I’d be happy to post them here.
I tried my hand at GraphJam and got hooked onto it. I quite liked the interface and hope to post some good stuff someday. Please bear with these creations for now.
Edit : Before I hurt readers’ sentiments, the above graph just shows that I have no freakin’ idea what people find funny.
PFC -> www.passionforcinema.com
P.S. : Some letters in the last picture are cut off due to my clumsy work. Apologies.
Inspired by this post by Krish Ashok.
PTI reports about a Swiss couple who are on a world tour for a peace mission to spread awareness about peaceful co-existence of people and to promote a violence-free world. So much for the talk, turns out they are stuck at the Indo-Pak checkpost at Attari for over two months now owing to lack of documents for their ponies and dog :
A Swiss couple Matthias and Celina, who are on a tour around the globe to promote peace, are struck at the Indo-Pak Joint Check Post here for the last two months, owing to a lack of documents for two ponies.
Singh said the Customs department assured the couple that their animals would be released the moment they got done all the required formalities. The couple recently procured the quarantine certificate from Delhi and are now in the process to get the required permission from Directorate General Foreign Trade, which they hope to get soon.
Yeah, I am sure they will get it soon.
I also demand that the Jules Verne’s classic “Around the World in 80 days” be re-written for the present day India with all the red-tapism and babus.
So Phileas Fogg starts off his historic journey of going around the world in 80 days relying on the cross country rail in India just like the novel. Trouble brews as soon as he lands in Mumbai without a valid visa and proper documents for his laptop. He has to deal with the cops who after some torture and the customary lie-detector tests conclude that he is good to go but looking at his fair skin, demand a bribe that is inversely proportional to the amount of melanin in his skin. He finally gets off and is eager to board to train the Calcutta; but alas, the train is cancelled because of riots owing to the death of a bigshot leader.
Meanwhile, his soulmate Aouda has already perished as a sati and Mr. Fix, the detective following him, has procured a warrant for his arrest. He is back behind bars, and another round of lie-detector and melanin tests later, he is freed. By now he is stripped off all his cash, has already lost the bet and just wants to go home. A good natured taxi driver agrees to drop him off at Kolkata, but as we can guess, he is drugged and dumped in the middle of a jungle.
By now the publisher fires the author Jules Verne for exceeding the limit on the size of the book and the book never sees the light of the day.
Amit V. writes about a bizzare case where a 30-year old educated woman working as a manager in a software firm was “swindled” of 2.95 lakh by a tantrik Farid Shah who claimed he would fly to UP and sacrifice a rhino which in turn would get her married within a week (original article here).
Shah said that sacrificing a rhino would remove all obstacles and within a week’s time I’d get married. I paid Rs 2.95 lakh to perform the puja. He told me that he would book air tickets to go to UP to catch a Rhino and will return after completing the puja.
What puzzles me with this case, as with any other case pertaining to tantriks and babas fooling innocent victims, is what exactly was the crime here ?
If it is sweet-talking a victim into parting with cash, then every advertisement, sales and marketing gimmick does exactly that.
If it was giving false promises without any logical reasoning, then every puja that is done has no guarantee anyway. Also I am sure no husband fulfills all the vows taken during Saptapadi in a wedding. Is that equivalent ?
If it is the fact that she did not get married after doing this, then there would be more than billion cases against gods and goddesses in India; and a few millions against self-proclaimed godmen and sadhus.
If it is the fact that he killed a rhino, then it looks like he didn’t take the pains to go to UP and kill a rhino after all. So he comes clean on that account.
If the amount of Rs. 2.95 lakhs is the issue, then is Rs. 100 okay ? Rs. 1000 ? Rs. 100000 ? What is the cutoff before it is booked under IPC section 420 ?
All I feel is that the law shouldn’t be a cushion for human stupidity; and if this tantrik is a criminal under the law, so are all the above people.
Something tells me the last post hasn’t quite made sense or has been terribly misinterpreted; in which case I shall claim I have been misquoted.
As any reasonable person would do, I was expecting the number of readers to increase in the Feedburner stats; but as you can see the readers are now down from 9 to 7 which is a 22.22% decrease due to just one post ! That in itself must be some record and I am taking due credit for my excellent writing skills.
P.S. : Please let me know if the instructions were ambiguous.
If you haven’t noticed, there are a few changes around the blog. Most importantly, I have enabled RSS feeds for the blog via Feedburner; the URL being http://feeds2.feedburner.com/NewsYouCantUse.
If you like the blog, I suggest and encourage readers to subscribe to the RSS feeds or e-mail subscription. RSS feeds are less annoying to me personally. Just click on “Full RSS feeds” and follow the couple of instructions.
Readers who have already subscribed to the content, you would be using the default WordPress RSS feed URL which is http://iyerdeepak.wordpress.com/feed/. I strongly recommend you use the Feedburner URL as you would be abstracted from any domain/web-hosting change this blog undergoes; which is planned sometime in the near future. Please click on the “Full RSS feeds” to the right and choose your RSS reader. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of seconds for the switch.
Among minor changes, the live traffic feed is now updated using a different service, viz. Feedjit and you can now also see the dismal readership this blog has.
What do you do when you read about such a Guiness record :
A world record in the length of a queue to a toilet was set Sunday when 756 people lined up to a latrine in central Brussels to raise awareness for the need for clean water on World Water Day. ”The latrine was of the same design as we use in third world countries — a dry latrine — and we formed the longest queue this morning,” UNICEF spokesman Benoit Melebeck said.
“The Guinness Book of Records told us we needed to get at least 500 people in the queue to get the record,” he said.
While I must admit it makes Abhishek Bachchan’s record attempt seem sacrosanct, the veracity of their claim looks non-judgeable. How could one confirm that each one of the 756 people actually used it ? Or were they in the line just for the record ? Or did they even know what the line was for considering the noise level in information transfer between humans ? It is almost sure that the 756th person did not attend the exact same call of nature for which he queued up unless he has infinite control or a burst bladder; then should only those people be accounted for who attended the same call of nature they intended to ?
I can just go on and on so I better stop. I could annoint them “Dudes of this week” but that would just be glorifying their non-achievement.
Vetti buggers, as a friend would say. [Vetti - Tamil for vella/jobless].
Joining the list of useless PILs is this one :
Shruti Singh, a lawyer of the Patna High Court, filed a case against Tata in the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s court here Monday as, according to her, the launch could influence poll results and therefore was tantamount to violating the model code of conduct during elections. She has sought an injunction against the commercial launch of the Nano.
“I filed the case against Ratan Tata to expose his attempt to help Modi in the elections by commercially launching Nano to send (the) message that it was possible thanks to Modi,” Singh told IANS.
This is so silly that it is not even funny. For one, the Nano was planned well in advance and if not for Miss Mamta, it would have rolled well in advance, from a different state, ruled by a different party, crediting a different Chief Minister in the process; which discredits her logic in the first place. By filing the PIL, I believe she is trying to influence the poll results too; hence, someone can file a case against her. I really hope there are stricter laws against attention seekers and silly PIL filers. Also, notice the case being filed against Ratan Tata, which makes as much sense as the PIL itself. Well, atleast she is consistent I must say.
Soon I am going to file a PIL against PILs. And then a PIL against that PIL against PILs. And then a PIL against that. Then I will be famous one day. And I shall write a post on myself.
