Mayank's Blog

Much sewage has flown under the Yamuna bridge since Modi announced the demonetization of 500 and 1000 rupee notes. After the announcement, people thronged to banks and ATMs as if a new Sunny Leone movie had been released. People experienced things which they had never experienced before - like withdrawing cash using cheque and getting beaten up by the family members of their estranged lover . Wonderful times. This demonetization has also left the country deeply divided. On one hand there are Modi Bhakts for whom Modi is a reincarnation of Lord Vishnu and on other there are AAPtards for whom everything is a scam. There is nothing in between these two extreme positions. Even the media is going berserk. If you watch Zee News, you would believe that Ram Rajya has been established in India while NDTV will tell you that situation is equivalent to Mad Max:Fury Road. As Immortan Joe said in Mad Max, so is Modi telling us "Do not, my friends, become addicted to water   cash . It will...

Legends and WikiLeaks have it that the supposedly future Prime Minister of India will discuss about the greatest dangers facing the country with the US ambassador. He did and made the observation that “Hindu terror“ is the biggest threat to this country. Not Lashkar-e-Toiba, not Jamat-ul-Dawa, not even Naxalites, but Hindu terror. The perpetrators of 26/11 attacks are bewildered and are crying foul. They had spent so much time, energy and money in devising and implementing this whole plan and now entire credit is being taken away from them. Not fair. Rahul Gandhi, the Baba of Indian politics (about whom some crazy people say that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth), had earlier equated SIMI with RSS . Its only fair to equate SIMI, which has engaged in mindless violence and is now banned by the government, with RSS, which fought for India’s independence and has produced leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L. K. Advani. That this equation might be an attack at the base of only...

I never thought that I would be writing on this topic. Its a no-brainer why governments across the world are pissed at WikiLeaks. And I naively assumed that every ordinary citizen would automatically see the potential benefits of WikiLeaks. My belief was cemented by the presence of 600,000+ fans of WikiLeaks on Facebook.  But I have come across people and watched shows on TV which basically debate whether WikiLeaks has done a good thing  by leaking the embassy cables or whether they are essentially an anarchist. Some people have argued that it leads to an erosion of privacy as the cables are private conversations between two individuals. The leaks are nothing but voyeurism on WikiLeaks part which may even lead to deaths of human rights activists across the world. Another argument that is put forth is that WikiLeaks is specifically targeting United States as all the cables are US embassy cables and not of any other country. While all these are good arguments, I will try to show...

China, China... Yes, Google. Hacking our servers? No, Google. Telling a lie? No, Google. Show us logs of the Golden Shield Project . Ha! Ha! Ha! (If you are reading this, you are most probably not in China.) When I first read the news of Google taking a new approach to China , I was full of cynicism. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China. It seemed like a PR strategy from Google. When Google decided to enter China , was it in a Rip Van Winkle's dream? Suddenly after 4 years it woke up and realised oh no, its not Switzerland, its China! But my doubts were "filtered" away when I researched it; through Google of course.

While going through the e-paper of TOI today, I came across an article about another Indian death in Australia. I promptly opened up the TOI website  for more information. Instead I was greeted by an ad for Tata's new car. It kept telling me about the car's "amazing" features. Finally after 10 odd seconds, fed up with my lack of interest, it took me to the news site. There a headline screamed, " Australian Deputy PM justifies the attacks on Indians ". Enraged, I dragged my mouse cursor on to the headline in the hope that I would click it. Instead an ad came up, asking me to "Do the new", whatever that is supposed to mean. After wasting another 5 seconds and thoroughly irritated by the TOI people, I was able to click on the link. And what lay beneath was surprising to say the least. What the Australian Deputy PM had said was,

(This article borrows heavily from Harry Potter series of novels) In a dark room of his Bombay (oops! Sorry, Mumbai) castle, Mr. Raj Thackeray was awakened from his sleep by the hooting of an owl. This owl was from his secretary who had sent him his schedule for today. He removed the scroll from the owl’s leg and looked at its contents. 10 AM – 12 PM – Give inflammatory speeches about how migrants are destroying Maharashtra to the poor and the uneducated. 12 PM – 1.30 PM – Lunch followed by attacks on hapless auto/taxi drivers. 1.30 PM – 3 PM – Encourage his dementors to attack media houses and claim it as spontaneous. 3 PM – 5 PM – Intimidate the reporter who dared question his methods in the course of an interview. 5 PM – 7 PM – Meet and threaten the director of the film who used the word Bombay in his movie.

India-Sri Lanka 5th ODI cricket match happening in Ferozshah Kotla grounds in New Delhi was about to be cancelled due to the poor quality of pitch, after nearly 25 overs of play. Players, umpires, match refree, and other officials were having a conference in the middle of the ground. Among them was a man clad in white kurta-pajama , complete with a Gandhi topi and a pot belly. If you haven't guessed it already, he was a neta . He did not have a clue about what was going on but was there just for cheap publicity. I was revulsed at the sight of him; not quite sure what irritated me more - the game being cancelled or his presence. However, on hindsight I pondered whether politicians deserve the hatred that they get?

For the past few days I am suffering from what is famously described as the " Writer's Block ". Wikipedia defines it as "a condition, associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work". I am not able to decide what to write about, not due to dearth of ideas, but because there are too many ideas floating around my head. Should I write about how I saw a small kid climb into his school bus with a Harry Potter like broom in hand and wonder how the good old Chandamama has gone out of fashion and circulation? Should I write about Sachin Tendulkar completing 20 years in international cricket? Should I write another movie review? Should I write another article about the idiosyncrasies of women around the world? Should I write about how I too have started using these heavy-weight words, generally reserved for MBA students? Should I write about the problems faced by overworked IT professionals? Should I write about h...