2009 – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Here's a list of events that shaped the year that was (categorized according to the title of the post – the G, B and the U)

Annus Mirabilis

Jai Ho became a national pseudo-anthem with the advent of Slumdog Millionaire. Everyone in the film fraternity was raving about the fabulous work Danny Boyle had done, before they were reminded that the movie officially released on January 23rd and they should hold their tongues for a few weeks. Meanwhile, A R Rehman reached the same league as Yanni, Kenny G and Steven Vai.

James Cameron showed the world how mankind was responsible for destroying the planet and humans were completely at war with Mother Nature. However, we were totally bedazzled by the breathtaking visuals of Pandora created using cutting edge technology and too awestruck to take notice of the implied message.

Valentine's Day passed smoothly without any of our culture brigades putting up a show. What we had instead, were ladies from all walks of life contributing their rose colored undergarments to the collection of a certain leader of a Bangalore based Sena.

The Indian government suddenly turned brave in front of our red oppressors. First, it was UPA kicking the Left Front in the butt. Then it was the Chinese. The Chinese said they did not like Manmohan Singh roaming about in disputed territory. Instead of meekly apologizing like he was used to, the PM told the Chinese to get their eyes checked and the territory was Arunachal Pradesh – an integral part of the Republic of India (Take that, chinis). Basking in the glory of two red victories, the government turned its attention to the enemy within – The Maoists/Naxals – the toughest enemy among the red brigade.

Nano finally hit the Indian roads. Tata is making the people's car at a loss but as Ratan Tata said – Its not about the market forces. Its about the promise he had made to the average Indian.

Dan Brown released “The Lost Symbol”. Although the book created history of sorts with with record-breaking opening sales, it really was no match for certain angst-ridden teenage vampire romances that emerged in a new avatar on the silver screen.

Microsoft launched Windows 7. Hackers around the world rejoiced. All viruses they had written for Vista required hardly two lines of code to become Windows 7 compatible. All thanks to Microsoft!

Kaminey taught uf that lifping waf and ftill if Cool.

Even after fifty years, one small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against invaders. And life's not easy for the Roman legionaries that garrison the fortified camps of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium.

The new-age ministers in the UPA government turned the bureaucracy on its head. Shashi Tharoor was tweeting away to glory and connecting to the cattle class while Kapil Sibal tried to massacre our age-old rote based education system.

Chetan Bhagat finally learnt how to write. 'Two States' actually brought out the best in him. And depicted the truth when it said the only Tamil word that North Indians understand is ille.

Rahul Gandhi turned out to be great strategist and politician. He showed what he meant by connecting with the people – he was traveling in a Metro, eating dinner at a Dalit's home, journeying economy class by train and generally being nice to everyone around him. As a bonus, the antics of his sycophants took the news to the humor section as well. (One had dinner at a Dalit's home but not without a special order from a 5 Star hotel, napkins and mineral water)

The divide between politicians, celebrities, film stars and the common man blurred within 140 characters or less. Barack Obama, Shashi Tharoor, Priyanka Chopra, Mallika Sherawat, Gul Panag, MTV India and even Anurag Saxena – everyone who was anyone was sharing with everyone what they had for breakfast.


Annus Horribilis

In sync with the American military antics of 'shock and awe', 'preemptive attack' and the like, the Nobel Committee went for a 'preemptive strike' of its own – awarding Barack Obama a Peace prize.

Recession officially arrived in India with major IT companies like TCS going for corporate restructuring (for non-management types, read layoffs)

We always had corrupt politicians. But it was Madhu Koda who upped the ante. Rs 40,000,000,000 – estimated amount of money he siphoned off. Unfortunately, they say he is just a scapegoat.

BJP turned on itself. The whole country watched in amazement as the party entered “Self-destruct” mode. Jaswant Singh, a founding member, was expelled without so much as a show-cause notice. Advani's bid to become PM forced him to make unnecessary sacrifices and he ended up without friends. And now, we are faced with the threat of Narendra Modi, a genocidal CM, becoming BJP's nominee for the post of Prime Minister of this country.

Some of us really entertained the possibility of going to war with the Red people of the Yellow river. We had cultural exchanges along our borders – they showed us how to intimidate neighbors by painting graffiti on rocks and we showed them how to get intimidated by harmless graffiti.

The King of Pop finally became confined to the pages of HIStory. He may or may not have been a lover of children, but Billie Jean was not his girl. The smooth criminal beat it before his grand tour kicked off. His unbreakable memory would remain in our hearts and we all would definitely remember the time.

I no longer wonder why we still haven't attacked Pakistan yet. Its because we don't need to. Pakistan's already crumbling under the weight of the unholy nexus between Taliban, Mujahideens, ISI, its Army and the US troops. And now everyone's gunning for the head of this toxic alliance - Asif Ali Zardari.

It was with deep regret that we were informed of the demise of “Hamara Bajaj”. And with it, two of the greatest marvels of automobile industry – Maruti 800 and Bajaj Chetak, faded away into the history books.

Anyone with cable TV at home was bombarded with reality shows left, right and center. We had a music channel that stopped airing songs (Guess who!), a channel with dropping TRPs that resorted to showing shower scenes in a jungle during prime-time television, a channel that tried its hand at philanthropy by marrying off Rakhi Sawant to a Canadian (but tragically failed, kudos for trying) and is now trying its hand at public service again by tying Rahul Mahajan into wedlock.

Hollywood, looking at the global meltdown and Wall Street collapse, went into a state of depression. As a result, disaster/doomsday/zombie/conspiracy movies were churned out by the dozen. We had 2012, Zombieland, Knowing, Watchmen, Transformers 2, G-Force and around 50 other zombie movies among many more that had mankind's destruction as the main theme.


Annus Catastrophicus

Representatives of almost all countries gathered in Copenhagen to pen down a concord to stop global warming. Jairam Ramesh forgot whether our country is a developing or a developed nation. The Chinese did what they do best – whatever that may be, but it had something to do with escaping from the Summit without any strict regulations to follow. Finally, the Summit ended with only one resolution – where to meet for next year's summit.

A certain Rao showed us the power of human will. He showed us how to get our own state under the sovereign secular republic of India by suppressing the need to feed. We now have demands for Gorkhaland, Bundelkhand, Telangana and numerous others gaining momentum just because P Chidambram couldn't handle a person starving. Hopefully, maybe he'll listen to the demands of the BPL next.

Mayawati is still the CM of Uttar Pradesh.

Another Indian made it on the Forbes list for the first and probably the last time – Ramalinga Raju was in Forbes top list of world's worst CEOs. But he must be on the top of the “People who would never have been caught if they had not confessed” list.

The feline entrance test to the Meccas of Management went completely online. It would have been great, if only there weren't any virus attacks, if only all papers were of the same level, if only the papers had not contained questions from old papers, if only all examinees had been able to complete the test with their tests not ending prematurely, if only...

Finally, after spending four years in a madhouse called MMEC, I was finally declared fit to rejoin civilization as just another harmless software engineer. Infy, beware!

New Divide

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions. - Albert Einstein

Remember the time when Slumdog Millionaire was criticized for showing India in a poor light? Or when some idiot asked Aravind Adiga to apologize for writing White Tiger? Chances are high that you do not.

I remember the exact date when I saw Slumdog. It was December 29th and we all were huddled in a friend's room in the hostel, watching the movie late into the night. For the uninitiated, Slumdog Millionaire was released in India on January 23rd (almost a month AFTER I had seen it). But this post is not about piracy. This post is about India.

White Tiger (Aravind Adiga's Booker Prize winning novel) talks of two India(s) - India of Light and India of Darkness. He talks mostly about the India of Darkness where corruption is rampant, poverty forces children out of schools, the rich get away with murder, politicians fill their pockets with the common man's hard-earned money and the government remains indifferent. Somehow this India seems familiar to me.

Frankly, I saw nothing wrong with the book. People who claimed that the book showed India in a poor light should...well... go out often. It is true that Art imitates Life. They said that the author focused on only the bad aspects of living in India. Well, he IS a writer of fiction. He drew everyone's attention to the deplorable condition of the masses. He brought forward issues like Casteism that are often brushed under the carpet, irrespective of the fact that they are more rampant than ever. Reservation on the basis of caste, whether for higher or lower classes, is casteism nonetheless. Such efforts need to be lauded, not discouraged.

Slumdog was the story of rags-to-riches. From Hindu-Muslim riots to the gangsters residing in Mumbai's underbelly, the movie tried to show some of the things that were wrong with the country. However, the scene involving Amitabh Bachchan was wrongly glorified. Instead of saying things like "That was disgusting!" Big B should have questioned whether the human excrete Jamaal dived into was fake or not. After all, human rights of the child were involved.

The reason why some people found Slumdog atrocious was due to the stereotypes generated by the silver screen and the idiot-box. The poor working class hero of any YashRaj or Karan Johar film wears Gucci/Armani to work...everyday. The never-ending Saas-Bahu sagas feature divorces in which the poor hero has to give Rs 250 Crore as alimony to his ex-wife. No wonder people have trouble digesting the fact that nearly one-third of the population is not able to arrange for one square meal a day.

There is an interesting fact about ostriches. Whenever an ostrich feels that it is under attack, it buries its head in the ground assuming that if it cannot see the enemy, the enemy cannot see it. Ostrich hunters have whale of a time shooting such sitting ducks (did you notice the alliteration?). The people who believe that movies like Slumdog Millionaire or books like White Tiger are bad because they depict the truth are just like ostriches. Such morons have the notion that if they do not talk about a problem, it will go away. This notion is true if applied to attention-mongers like Rakhi Sawant (if you do NOT watch Rakhi Ka Swayamvar, chances are that you won't have to watch Rakhi Ka Divorce, or even Rakhi Ka Swayamvar Season Two), but not in case of problems that have plagued our country for years (Reservation, corruption, religious discrimination etc)

To summarize, there are issues which are more important than Rakhi marrying that bald Canadian guy. Issues that have been put aside for too long. Issues that need to be resolved before they divide the country even further.

My Favourite Movies

List of movies I watched ..& enjoyed:

Hindi:
Andaz Apna Apna
Dil Chahta Hai
Bluffmaster
Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge
Sholay
Rang De Basanti
Munnabhai MBBS
Tare Zameen Par

English:
Memento
Serendipity
The Bourne Trilogy
Transformers
Cry Wolf
The Terminal
Batman Begins
If Only
Beauty and the Beast(yep..Disney's)
Finding Nemo
Big Fish
She's All That
Top Gun
K-pax
Forrest Gump
Shrek 1,2
Ice Age
The Game
Spy Game
Matrix Trilogy
LOTR trilogy
& ......