The Week That Was : Edition 2
5 min readMay 7, 2019
- Dox The Fox : Old age brings a mind set which has been cemented strong over the years. So any effort towards changing it is generally futile. I mean just walk up to your parents and tell them that god isn’t real and watch them explode like the Chernobyl.
Recently an elderly lady was in the news for passing a comment on the attire of one of the girls in a mall. I understand we Indians are closeted fashion critics, but this lady took it to a whole new level by labelling her attire as “a call for rapists to come have a meal with her”. Of course this triggered the young crop of ladies who showed us how to handle a difficult situation like this. They shrieked their way into a potential harassment case, broke some privacy laws, body shamed her ( I mean atleast be hot! Come on!!) and elegantly wrapped it up by asking her to come out of the store so they could rape her. Yup the irony!
The “Social Media - Instant Justice” crusaders came in strong and hard, they got hold of her and her husbands facebook profile, scooped up content for their memes and like educated elephants left spiteful comments on their photos one of which called their son a future rapists. They were doxxed. While I agree the lady was at wrong, the fall out she and her family had to face was much worse. Instead of blaming and questioning her sanity, womanhood etc, I think there should have been a more serious debate on the status of sex education in the country and the stigma around rape. But no let us sit down and take a deep dive into how a Bengali lady dished out comments without holding her cup of tea or cigarette #stereotypingbengalis ! - Campaign for Modi, Vote for Trudeau : It took an election for Mr Canada Kumar to come out clarify the status of his citizenship. As an audience we can overlook the fact that he continues to ride the nationalist wave but to come out and mention that he has never lied about his citizenship is plain bullshittery. Twitter laid out clips where our actor played out patriotism by claiming to be a proud Indian on multiple instances. I mean if movies weren’t enough to show his patriotism, he goes on to say that he pays his taxes in a country where he earns his money.I mean what else can a man do to showcase his patriotism especially after knowing the fact that he pays TAXES ?
See Mr Kumar, the thing is we personally do not give a shit where you belong from or if you are an OCI or a honorary citizen of XYZ. We hate the fact, that you had to wait this long to address it, made truck loads of money in the name of nationalism and let this fiasco snowball into a debate topic.
It’s clear, all these movie choices of his nothing more than a business decision and as it turns out a very smart one too.. He saw the opportunity and grabbed it. But it’s the dollop of hypocrisy that he has added with it that is causing the havoc. This very hypocrisy is one of the reasons I haven’t watched his movies in years and will continue to not give a damn about his work in the future too!
But if there is something that he should have actually been called out for, is the shit he laid out for us and called it an interview. It was a cringe fest with our supreme leader who added huge portions of awkwardness to it. I mean this is surely a strong enough reason to have him deported to his retirement home. Too Soon ? - Fani : Orissa is one of the poorest states in the country, so when they were staring down at a storm of this magnitude, things were looking very bleak. But 2.6 million text messages, 43,000 volunteers, 1,000 emergency workers, 100s of buses, public address systems blaring messages of the storm ensured that everyone was aware of the impending storm and was ready for immediate evacuation.. While the casualty count has started tricking in, the death toll so far has been low. This is a huge collective win for so many agencies given how high the death tolls from natural calamities are.
The promptness and diligence from different agencies like ISRO to IMD, from the disaster relief team to the local volunteers showcases how we can tackle an impending natural calamity and come out stronger from it. Kudos ! - Met Gala : Though Mrs Piggy got trolled the hardest, she clearly won over the critics unlike Deepika. The theme for this year’s “Met” was Camp Fashion and no it has nothing to do with camping or fashion!
Anyway, few years ago I got to watch this documentary on the Met and have ever since been in awe of it. If you have the time, do give this documentary your attention : First Monday in May. Worth it.
- May The Fourth Be With You: Star Wars came back to cinemas to celebrate it’s 25th year anniversary in India. Brother and myself were little, but yet father had decided that we were old enough to be shown a world which would later become an obsession for us. I remember vividly the three of us heading to a cinema hall called Galaxy (RIP), one of Bangalore City’s iconic cinema halls for the screening. The original trilogy came through the months and inspite of the excitement we managed to miss the 3rd one : Return of the Jedi, because of exams. I still get excited reading the yellow text as it scrolls by telling us what the galaxy was dealing with. Years later the fascination died with Disney taking over and exploiting it by carrying forward an universe which I think the fans did not deserve. The coming winter seems to be the final straw in the chapter of Star Wars and I hope it gets the closure it deserves. RIP Chewbacca.
- Do What You Can’t : Inspired from one of my favorite videos by my favorite You Tuber : Casey Neistat, I decided to get myself inked. Might get you cringed since I’ll be speaking about myself, but in a very odd way I have always been made a conscious decision of putting myself through experiences which I never previously imagined myself in. For ex :I jumped out of a window of plane at 15000ft, cliff jumped from a height which would be an equivalent of a 5 floor building, swam with the largest fish, ran a half marathon, swam around a ship wreck below the ocean and did my share of para gliding and para sailing. Of course my dream is to one day hit the Base Camp Trek and this tattoo will serve as a reminder ..
