The Year 2020 has been hilarious

The whole year 2020 has been hilarious, you know in a pandemic, natural disasters, deaths, riots, wildfire, terrorist attacks, near world war, plane crashes, world economy tanking kind of way. However, I specifically want to focus upon how this made the third world countries feel like the first world and vice versa. So as a third world country citizen living in the first world, here I go, in no particular order –

How the first world felt like the third world :

1.       They came to understand what a travel ban was. India has still banned flights from Spain and US passport became equivalent to Uruguay.

2.       Third world countries had evacuation flights from US and Europe.

3.       People in IT started arguing with their managers to send them back from Onsite.

4.       Supermarkets ran empty and people got to know the real meaning of food and essential items shortages.

5.       People from other countries called worried and asked if they could leave.

6.       After spending years jeering at the Muslim countries, their government made it mandatory to wear something in public.

7.       Nighttime curfews became a thing.

8.       Hospitals were over capacity and people were sent back because there were no available beds.

9.       Citizens of countries having the strictest immigration laws, wanted to flee their capitals due to a bad situation. Army had to be called in Madrid, Paris etc. to block the borders.

10.   Bill gates foundation had to worry about anti vaccine people in a totally different continent.

How the third world felt like the first world :

1.       People looked at US police brutality videos and riots and felt pity for them.

2.       People wanted to save the democracy of the US.

3.       WHO praised Dharavi and South Korea’s pandemic response.

4.       They got to watch natural disasters unfolding in a different country on the TV.

5.       Having a horde of endemic diseases actually helped them fight the pandemic

6.       They had to read travel advisories before travelling to the west.

7.       They were disgusted about people not following rules and not maintaining hygiene in a totally different continent.

8.       The 5G – Corona linkers and Corona deniers made them laugh at people who just don’t get science.

The idiot's guide to be a feminist

 

Feminism is THE Fad right now, just like patriotism was in the 1999. Whatever you want to sell; be it cooking oil, deodorant or yourself, this is THE bandwagon you want to jump on.
So do you generally like females and want to put this liking into a moneymaker? Or you like boys instead but since the women have never harmed you, you want to help them out? Or since your friends are already against animal cruelty, gun violence, genetically modified crops and Hitler, you want to have your own topic where you can passionately berate the whole world for? Or you just an attention commercial sex worker (we do not use the word ‘whore’ now)? Then read right on because even if you thought till now that the glass ceiling is just the roof of a Greenhouse this blog will make you the uber feminist who can run circles around Angelina Jolie.

See the first thing you need is a Tumblr account for a blog, not Wordpress or Blogpost but Tumblr. It is the holy ground where all Feminists congregate, the last bastion of the pure world which is not polluted by misogynistic pigs with their catcalls, rape threats and acid attacks. Then you need a name for it, a name has to be something powerful which screams out that you will not take the oppression of the patriarchy anymore, in fact you will take the very thing they shamed you with and wear it proudly like a gilded armor. That is where the names like Menstruating Minstrel or Voluble Vulva come in. Or you can go with something panglossian like ‘Girl Boss’ or ‘Women on top of the whole wide world while everyone else is like way down’ as well. Of course something masculinist of this type would be totally absurd, for example Penis Soliloquy can only be an adult cartoon strip and a name like Speaking Scrotum would be just plain offensive.

Now that you have decided upon the name you need something to talk about. It has to be something everyone can relate to, so keep it an everyday topic and explain how it is actually a conspiracy of evil men. Something like: How using the word Friendzone propagates rape culture or how older relatives wanting hugs is equal to rape. Ok maybe not those two, since they are already taken. But there are plenty of topics out there, like how the name ball point pens is sexist and how feminists will call them ovary point pens henceforth. Or how the iOS development is funded by men because it only has Silent mode but no PMS mode. Or how the umbrella is made phallus like by men and a gender neutral umbrella would be perfectly horizontal when open. Perhaps you can quote specific instances of your life, for example the last time you saw a shitfaced girl in a bar and all her male friends asked her not to drive and take a taxi, which is incredibly patriarchal of them, to assume she will not be able to drive at night.

However just these opinions and point of views will not last a long time. So you have to support causes, causes can be anything related to women. One favorite cause of a group of feminists was to support Hillary Clinton, and she was to be supported because she was a woman. Anybody who objected to the point that supporting her just because she is a woman is actually sexism was straightway termed misogynist, anti-feminist and a woman enslaver. That was a fun group, more power to them! Then there causes like giving higher stars to Sushmita Sen movies on IMDB because she is a strong independent woman and needs encouragement. Or asking for equal representations in colleges and workforce and protesting every institution which does not have 50% women. However care has to be taken so as not be grouped with people asking for OBC reservation in colleges or SC/ST reservations in private jobs, because those people are stupid, casteist and do not understand that these positions should be filled with merit as they currently are. You can also twist innocent statements into anti-women messages: Movie star thanked his father in the award speech? Why? He doesn’t love his mother more who gave him birth? Must be anti-woman. On asking for opinion a guy says that his girlfriend’s hair is too short? Round up the posse and get that girl to break up from that guy at once, because he is a control freak who is body shaming his girlfriend and taking away her control over her own body. You can go on and on like that

And then you have your basic outrage, the meat and potatoes of every true feminist. Feminists are supposed to vociferous about any crime committed against women. All rapists, child molesters, abusive husbands and boyfriends, dowry harassers should be skinned alive, their genitals cut and fried in a pan, then torn limb to limb and their insides left to rot in the open. Because these people do not belong to a civilized society like ours and have no humanity in them. Lesser crimes than these against women should at least carry the death penalty to act as a deterrent to men and push them to commit more benign crimes like murder. Spend some time on smaller outrages as well, like sharing photo of guys on social media accused of catcalling or molesting without any fact checking. Applauding women who beat the men who were harassing them because violence from women on men is totally ok and not double standards at all. Another good example is sharing photos with the message “This man/woman was seen carrying this baby but the baby does not look like his/hers”, don’t worry about the moral implication, judging someone based on their looks or clothes is totally ok till it the look is without makeup and the clothes are not fashionable. Brand anyone asking questions about a woman’s allegation as performing moral policing or victim blaming. The list is long but you’ll soon get the hang of it.

Finally it is the positivity messages and a show of how proud you are to be a woman, which is nothing like being proud of something else you are just born with. So you gotta post all your photos on with captions like ‘Girl power’, ‘Woman on top’, ‘Girl boss’ or ‘Proud to be a mother/sister/daughter’. And keep a lookout for those groups of guys having ‘Cool Boys’ stickers on their cars or stuff like that, because those men were not raised right by their parents.

Keep going like that and soon you’ll be a feminist with a capital F, a celebrity and a well respected member of the society, life of every party and envy of all your friends. Your Tumblr hits and reblogs will be in millions, people will queue outside your door to know your opinion about what to do with armpit hair, what movies to see, which words to use and how to raise their kids right. All by just following the above easy five points! You are welcome!
 

P.S. – As the above text suggest I am not a feminist. However I am also not a sexist. I believe in equal opportunities for everyone and in everything. Feminism must be about equal opportunities and not woman first, keep it sensible. And watch out for fakers.

Growing up is funny business

Growing up is funny business. For example the whole idea of wearing ties to work is a funny thing, it is laughable to even think that we need even more ties at and to work. The work to-do list has even replaced the singing in the shower. But what is even funnier is the sight of kids playing cricket in a small open area and our hope that they will maybe hit the ball towards you today, so you can throw it back and feel like that you are also a part of their game. Like you are not playing enough games as it is. One game at work, blaming your co-workers in office in front of the boss so that ask for a better rating and appreciating the same people to their face so that you can ask for favours. The game of drinking enough coffee to stay awake through the day and enough whisky to stay asleep through the night. The impossible game of saving enough money to keep the parents happy and spending enough to keep the wife and kids happy. At this time we must remind ourselves that we are not boys anymore.

There is maybe one thing equally droll, which is browsing an electronics shop or shopping website looking for ACs and toasters when an offer on some good speakers catches your eye and you train of thought goes towards all the things your younger self wanted to buy like 350 CC bikes, iPods, gaming consoles and bean bags. It almost feels like they are desires from other life. Because this life has FDs and real estate to take all your savings, and then some more. Who the hell would actually want a guitar? And where is the time and solitude to listen to the songs you wanted to listen anyways, right? It is hilarious why we even wished those things, equally hilarious that tug on the heart still when we think of those things. Quickly now before it gets any worse - we are not boys anymore.

There are other desires as well, most of them half forgotten, fully planned and never realized. All of them are so ridiculous that they border on the farcical. Desires of bike trips, treks in Leh and going to New Zealand for bungee jumping. Side-splitting to think of all these things now, when even meeting friends for a dinner requires juggling work timings, location in the city near to everyone, deciding on which restaurant to go to, promises made to wife etc etc. Promises made to selves have been forgotten long ago though, promises that I will never ask my parents for money anymore, promise to be able to buy the clothes that you really wanted to buy, promise that we will always keep in touch with our friends, promise that one day I will spend an entire week in Goa and do whatever the fuck I wanted. But then we are not boys anymore.

Now when I think of Goa I can think of one thing even more hysterical than the last one; that is planning vacations. The thing that is supposed to make you relaxed is so stressful that I am surprised that all travel portals do not sell medication to lower blood pressure along with their usual stuff. First you have to decide a place where you and your wife want to go, then think of whether your kids will have something to do there, then whether anybody would want to go with you will the dates suit them, whether you will be able to convince your boss to grant you leaves for the vacation, whether the hotel will be good but not too expensive, are you buying the tickets for the right dates and so on and so forth. Then most of us will anyway sleep through it, apart from the time that you are on call with office people or fretting how much over budget this trip is getting on and lastly; an occasional throwback to the time where vacations were a bunch of impromptu plans, fifteen friends coming together on a whim, five minutes of packing, cheap booze and cheap hotel, a night full of antics and hilarious stories. But who would those kind of vacations now, right? I mean we are not boys anymore.

Equally amusing is the constant struggle of us aged people to try to look older and fretting about how we are looking older. We start growing moustaches and beards so as to look older, wardrobe starts seeing addition of only greys, blacks and pastels. Then there are the replacements of bikes with cars, dress watches with sports, polos with round necks and so on. That carefully rehearsed list of hobbies such as reading business magazines, watching Oscar winning movies and taking trips to culturally significant places. Even though we prefer reading Buzzfeed over Business India, David Dhawan over David Lynch and watching Big Boss over visiting Bodh Gaya.  All that is done on the passive mode. Actively we search of white hairs to be clipped from head and beards. Look for gym memberships and affairs with 20 something women. We can’t help chuckling when we think about when once age was a number we had to only calculate while filling in entrance examination forms. But we can’t afford that now, we are not boys anymore.

But the thing which is the most crazy, comical and capricious about this whole thing is the thinking of the reason we even did grow up in the first place. From the point of wanting to get away from home and be free to the point where the thought that you can’t call your dad to fix everything keeps you awake on some nights. The dream of having your own car, your own house is just that, a dream. The house will never will be yours, not at least for another 25 years, and the car is not your getaway machine, it is another thing that require money, maintenance and a constant struggle to keep up with Joneses. Or that odd realization in a lonely hotel room that why you were keeping score of how much you got you forgot to realize that what you actually wanted was something else. The whole thought that the world forced you to grow up and moulded into the thing that you made fun of as a boy is so funny that it hurts while laughing. Or the dawning of the fact that getting older consists not of Hugo Boss suits and mansions but EMIs, long commutes, tuition fees and regret of roads not taken. It is a ‘Killing Joke’. With the infusion of such hilarity in our life I am sure we all ecstatic that we are not boys anymore, right guys?

Guys?

Anyone?