Pandemic paranoia

I think we Indians are the only species in this planet that are still growing in number, that too despite being attacked by a myriad of killer forces like terrorists, viruses, goons, rapists, police etc constantly. This is primarily because we can adapt quickly to any environmental changes unlike other species that are more conservative when comes to change. For example, a polar bear will die within hours if we move it to a new environment like a room having TV news running, whereas we Indians can live in any such hostile environments for days together without any problem, look at our railway stations and airports with hundreds of TV screens, we can wait any long in these places for our perpetually late trains and planes without dying.

The biggest reason that I see why we Indians will survive dreaded pandemics like H1N1 is also the same - we are ready for any changes our experts are advising us to make these days. People who never wanted to become surgeons or nurses only because they hated wearing surgical masks are now wearing them as if they are just some new type of lipstick. I’m sure designer masks will be introduced soon and we will see India Mask Fashion Week where models take up catwalks wearing transparent masks, pink masks, glossy masks, minimalistic masks and at times even without masks.

Also luckily for us Indians, we don’t have to depend only on what allopathic doctors are advising for protecting us from the attack of H1N1 virus - or any virus for that matter - we got yoga and ayurvedic experts as well to seek advice from, which I think will increase our chance of survival twice compared to people in other parts of the world. Being a conservative society, our frequency of kissing and embracing is also less compared to other more liberal countries; hence we need not worry about the virus being spread through the said activities as well.

The only thing that we need to be cautious about the virus in our country currently is the media hype about it. Every day hundreds of people die in our country in road accidents and even thousands die due to seasonal flu etc, but our media make all of it look nothing compared to the few deaths that happen due to H1N1. For them each H1N1 death is equivalent to a hundred deaths due to other reasons. The only way I see how this media virus can be stopped from spreading is by deviating media’s attention from H1N1, one good strategy for achieving this is make more from our Bollywood Khan-daan to travel to the United States so that the media will also go behind, hoping to get frisked.

Strategic thinking

If somebody ask me what is the one Chinese product that we should not buy anymore, my answer will be – Strategy. Here is why – A Chinese ‘strategist’ says China should break up India into 20-30 states . This strategy is an expired product because long before the Chinese strategist cooked it up, Sardar Patel has already created the said 20 – 30 states out of India, with the help of three other capable people - VP Menon, Mother Nature and Lady Luck.

Swayamvara Parva

Now that history has been made over the last weekend, you can relax and go back to deal with your mundane, routine, unimportant things like your work, family matters, terror attacks, price hikes etc. No, I’m not talking about the release of the 1 millionth love story in Bollywood, I’m talking about the successful completion of first high-profile swayamvar of our times, and by our times I mean Kaliyug; that too done in a way that fully justify the ideologies of the owner of the era – as a TV reality show ‘item’. Now it’s just a matter of time that this new age episode also turns into an epic.

We had many famous swayamvars in the past if you recollect, with Sita’s swayamvar of Treta Yug and Panchali’s in Dvapara Yug etc. But I would say none of them had this uniqueness of being watched by the entire aryavart because in the past only those with divyadhristi could watch them remotely from the safety of their drawing rooms. For the common men and women, the only option was to travel to the venue, which had its own risks as well. They could be eaten by wild animals on their way or they could get hurt by flying metal pieces coming out of the breaking bows or fast moving arrows used to test the aspirants’ skills. Barring the spiritual aspects and the charisma of the brides and grooms, I would say the modern day swayamvar was far ahead of the ones in the past, in terms of glamour, publicity stunts, suspense, item numbers, popularity, drama etc. In future if somebody ask me to describe it in one word, I would say – “stup-endous”(hyphen unintentional).

Couple of factors I see played key roles in making this truly kaliyugaic swayamvar a success, though on the face of it propaganda and ‘items’ looked the reason. Firstly because this time around gods where contractually forbidden from interfering because that’s the agreement between them and Kali. So the producers of the show could go to any extend they wanted to provide maximum voyeuristic pleasures to its viewers. Secondly, to deal with any mere mortals who attempted stopping it by raising such legal issues, the produces have appointed enough lawyers(again an advantage other yugas didn’t enjoy) to deal with them.

Next to some of the consequences of this highly successful swayamvar. If you look at history, all such high profile swayamvars of the past had their own special reasons to happen and all of them later lead to the defeat of the evils that affected mankind as per the expectations of the owners of the respective yugas. That means this current one also will sure lead to incidents that will help Kali achieve his goals I’m sure. One of the things that I see happening is by having more and more of such reality swayamvars, more and more of our young men will get addicted to them and will get their very manhood questioned episode after episode and finally become unproductive to nourish their family trees any further.

And for all of you who have not watched the climax(so far) of the swayamvar over the weekend, I would say it’s the second such once in a lifetime spectacle you are missing after you missed the eclipse couple of weeks back. In that sense I would even question the worthiness of you living any further, but I would not recommend anything here because persuading somebody to commit suicide is still criminal offense.