List of people who ought to be killed

King Carlin once compiled a list of people who ‘ought to be killed’. This is one of the greatest acts of philanthropy in human history, for truly there are lots of people who ought to be killed so that the more deserving ones can live in peace. The list was comprehensive for its day, but sadly Carlin died before the internet age, which has spawned scores of other categories of people who ought to be killed. This young Padawan, who hates people as much as the Jedi master did, has taken on the mantle of carrying forward his much-needed work, so that someday it can come to fruition and make the world livable again.

Here’s a list of people who ought to be killed:

1.    Those who suffer from sapiosexuality, wanderlust, or bibliophilia: I don’t mean those who have these traits, but those who use these very words to describe their traits. I was first introduced to these words by tinder bios, so it’s only fitting that I leave a screenshot to explain things better.

I did hate myself a tad more after swiping right on her. She was really hot. I'm sorry.

2.    People who join tinder for ‘friendship’: How sad are their lives, that they need tinder to make friends? And somehow none of these friendship-seekers swipes right profiles of the same gender. 

      Sad and discriminatory – put ‘em down!
Again, live examples help. Yes, I am that bastard who collects screenshots of funny tinder profiles.

I didn't swipe right on her. But then she was ugly.

3.     Pouting mirror-selfie dudes and babes: Ah, I have a special place for them in my dark heart. Nothing would give me greater comfort than taking away their boundless joy when they pose in a mirror, contort their lips, tilt their head to one side, and click. These people need some good old torture leading to death - Scaphism, maybe?

The horrific tale of a Mumbai dance bar

Sometime last year I visited a dance bar in Mumbai. I’d gone in with two friends, with the largely platonic motive of experiencing firsthand the dying embers of a fire that once used to light up the Maximum City every night. I went in expecting nothing too different from a European strip club, maybe something only more tepid. Turns out it is arguably the only act I’ve committed that evokes the emotion of shame in me. It was traumatic, to say the least. The dance bar I visited, Ram Bhavan in Andheri, didn’t remotely pander to the dark, dingy stereotype created by Bollywood. It was far worse.

The description below was written in the immediate aftermath of my visit, and hence carries an emotional, first-person narrative. Of course, the passage of time allows me to restructure it into a more detached commentary, including bits on how bar dancers deserve and need far more respect and positive policy intervention than pity. I should also concede my hypocrisy in taking the moral high ground, but all that would not do justice to what I felt while I was in the midst of it. Read on.

I can never forget those eyes. If they gave off an aroma, I would know what lust smells like.

I tried mustering the courage to make eye-contact, but never could. She stood close enough to tempt, yet far enough to deter. Her gaze was captivating, inviting, and at the same time, puzzling, stupefying, and worst of all, intimidating. No female had looked at me that way before, not even in the most intimate of moments. Yet, I failed to capitalize on her lust. The best I could do, while she peered straight into my flinching eyes, was to watch her ring-laden fingers dance around her bare waist, the motions turning more suggestive as they moved towards the pierced navel, and slowly up to her cleavage-baring bosom. Yet again I tried following the movements of her fingers, hoping for them to lead my gaze right up to hers, almost failing when one of her fingers was juxtaposed with her cleavage, and finally giving up when the same finger brushed against her blood-red lips.

As if sensing my confusion and despair, a stout, bald, thickly-bearded man walked up to the table where I was seated with the two friends accompanying me, and stood right in front of me, blocking her gaze. For a second, I thanked him for taking the pressure off me. But the comfort was short-lived. Dressed in an immaculate dinner jacket, the man stood there silent and motionless, assuming such a wide-legged stance that our eye levels almost met. His aura was disconcertingly jaunty. His face carried a deep cut on the right cheek. It was clear he’d emerged victorious from a bloody battle. My heart skipped a beat as he slipped his hand inside the jacket, but luckily only to fetch a pen and a piece of paper. He sternly pointed to the shabby menu card on the table. Almost thanking him for sparing our lives, my friends and I wasted no time in ordering snacks. We were relieved that we saw him off quickly. His domineering presence had unsettled me deeply, even more than the stare of the dancing girl, which I somehow still craved. His departure gave me another chance to resume the battle between evolutionary instinct and decades of social conditioning.

The rot in Indian media: My (terrible) experiences as a freelancer

Note: I have desisted from naming any individual or organisation in this post, not because I respect them or want their identity to be protected, but because as a freelancer I am a talentless coward with little options but to go back to those very people and organisations whom I’ve criticized in this post.

I quit my first job with a media organisation last year in October. I published my first article as a freelancer in December, and more than 10 since. My profile is quite diverse, both in terms of the topics I’ve written on and the outlets that have run my stories. My experiences below are based on only those outlets that I’ve published with as a freelancer.

Lay readers who suspect Indian media’s standards to be low are wrong - the standards are non-existent. As a freelancer, one can fabricate data, claims, and even quotes (this is most likely true for journalists employed by those organisations as well, but I can only speculate). In the most shocking incidence so far, a piece of mine carried several quotes which can easily be termed sensational, none of which was on record. I was worried about getting the piece past editors at any outlet because I did not have recordings to back up those quotes. To my utter disbelief, the outlet which finally published it did not bother to raise a single query about any of the quotes. “Jesus fuck” - the response of a senior journalist friend when I informed him about this - tells the tale succinctly. This essentially means that one can get away with concocting fake quotes attributed to fake identities. The only problem with that would be when an alert reader decides to do a background check on the fake identity. But you and I know that’s unlikely to happen. In any case, the media outlet won’t bother to play the role of the alert reader.

The problem with Indian media is not restricted to hopeless editorial standards. They’re downright unprofessional in the way they treat freelancers. Big outlets don’t ever bother to respond unless the author’s reputed, or has contacts high up. The smaller, new media ones do so with disdain. Repeated requests might just elicit a response if one’s lucky. If they agree to publish, they will almost always do it at times when the readership is at its lowest ebb - sunday afternoon, and 10 PM on a weekday. Some outlets have horrible social media strategy, they can’t even compose one proper tweet or Facebook update and post it at the right time. Some editors are so callous that they won’t even post a readymade tweet mailed to them by the author.

Going Buzzfeed-y and Scoopwhoop-y on Zakir Naik

It's ban season in India, again. After beef, books, movies, and alcohol, we're contemplating a ban on Zakir Naik, a Mumbai-based Islamic preacher who is barred from holding public lectures in UK, Canada, and even Malaysia, a predominantly Muslims country.

Naik came into the spotlight after some of the Dhaka restaurant attackers claimed they were inspired by his speeches. Naik runs a channel called Peace TV, which is nothing but a mouthpiece for Salafi/Wahabi ideology. He is deeply linked to the Arabic community, and has been awarded several prizes by Saudi. He frequently rubs shoulders with the likes of Shahrukh Khan, and several other bollywood idiots.

Despite all these issues, I really don't think he should be banned. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll let that do the talking first.

Skull cap with suit. Cho chweet, no?

And now for the words. Reasons why I think he shouldn't be banned:

1.   He is the clown we don’t deserve but direly need: Look at him. The dude is so stupid that he’s caricature-proof, and yet one can’t stop laughing looking at him or listening to his words. We need him to bring some mirth into our lives. I say we coronate him as the “National Clown of India”. I have a theory: Jyllands Posten made his cartoon, and not Prophet’s. Do compare the photos. I dare not put them here.

2.  It’s the people, stupid: Let’s not kid ourselves. If some 18+ year old dude believes the trash Naik dishes out, he is radicalized (and incredibly stupid) anyway, and is only looking for a final excuse to commit his deed. If his followers were remotely sane people they’d look for a second opinion. They don’t. It’s plain confirmation bias. Few would know that Anders Breivik, Norway's mass murderer, was deeply inspired by BJP and RSS. Should we ban both now? Blaming Naik for radicalizing people is akin to blaming McDonald’s for encouraging gluttony - fatties gonna hog anyway, McDonald’s just happens to be cheap and accessible.

3.  Nab the real culprits: I mean those dadhi-waala mullahs who radicalize young, impressionable minds. Naik is just the rubber stamp. Sure, if Naik is secretly peddling hate to kids, there is a case to chastise him as well, but I don’t see any such thing happening at his public lectures.

A Dark Take on Inequality

I have been hearing a lot about inequality lately. Everyone, and I mean literally everyone, has termed it greatest evil facing mankind. Really?

I say inequality is about as crucial to life as air to breathe and water to drink, but only when you’re on the right side of it. If you’re on the wrong side, you’re fucked. If everyone’s rich and educated, who’s gonna scrape the commode clean when I’m done taking a shit? If everyone goes to McDonald’s to place the order, who’s gonna deliver it to me? If everyone is Steve Jobs, who’s gonna die of heat and overwork at a Chinese factory while making one of his phones that I can use to retweet the news of that very death?

Human race needs inequality to progress. The poor are nothing but the modern euphemistic equivalent of slaves, whom we all must thank for enabling the super comfy world of today. Nothing has changed. Back then, there were chains to tie them up with, now there is hope. Hope that one day they will, too, be rich.  Hope is the opium of the poor. Hope is the dangerous cocktail and it comes packaged in the form of promise of education and equal opportunity, leading to social mobility and eventual richness down the generations. This isn’t too different from how men have controlled women, previously by force, and now by the lure of good looks, big boobs, tight ass, shaved vagina, waxed legs, perfectly-done eyebrows, earrings, nose-rings, big bags, high heels, tube tops, low necklines.

Let’s leave the women for later and come back to controlling the poor through hope. Hope is often considered a necessary evil. It isn’t. It is either necessary or evil, but never both at the same time – necessary for the rich, and evil for the poor. Hope is necessary for the rich to maintain society’s status quo. Hope is evil for the poor because it is a mirage that the poor die chasing, exactly what the likes of Paul Krugman want them to do as they draw six-figure Dollar salaries for researching and writing op-eds about inequality. Hope is Huxley's dystopia brought alive. Hope is the carrot that those on the right side of inequality dangle just high enough to keep those on the wrong side jumping up perpetually without realising how shitty their lives are. Of course, time and again, the carrot is lowered just enough to let a few grab it. That serves a purpose too – of making hope realistic, and making those unsuccessful jumps permanent and all-captivating.

On the nature of Happiness

Happiness, the indisputable goal of human existence. Happiness, the end goal of every human being’s actions.

But, is happiness really all that important? In a recent gathering of friends, everyone except me seemed to agree, to the point that the idea that happiness could be overrated was not open to debate. Not willing to ruffle the tranquility of the gathering, I turned inward and introspected - had happiness been the end goal of all my actions so far?

The question turned out more intricate than I’d thought. Before I could answer it to myself, perhaps for the first time I had to stop and think about the meaning of “happiness”. Of course, we all know it’s a good feeling. At the surface, all actions that I undertake are either for the sake of survival or for the sake of happiness. If I buy veggies, it’s because I need it to live. If I write and run – two of my favourite activities presently – I do get a good feeling at the end of each. That should settle the debate in favour of happiness, right? Nope. Not that simple. The enquiry about happiness has more layers to peel.

As one of the friends in the gathering pointed out, he derived the most happiness from human relationships – from actions such as taking a long drive in a slightly inebriated state with a bunch of friends. Sure, friends make me happy too. But if that good feeling can be derived from such simplistic actions that require nil effort, why do I write and run? After all, both of these activities require considerable heartburn, frustration, and sheer mental and/or physical exhaustion, before the good feeling can be felt.

Writing and running is easy. Why would one perform the unthinkably painful act of summiting Mount Everest, when the same good feeling can be derived from being a couch potato? Or, why would one build Google and Microsoft, when going on a drive with friends suffices? To me, the answer boils down to just one thing – not all happiness is equal. Such a ‘higher form’ of happiness, often derived from goal-setting, toil and accomplishment, is what Aristotle called “Eudaimonia”. Like all things precious, Eudaimonia is exacting and often downright nonsensical to those who don’t strive for it. On the other hand, the ‘lower form’ of happiness is akin to a stroll in the park – easy and devoid of the need for any enterprise, bang in the centre of one’s comfort zone.

I realise I come off pretty judgemental right now, trying to distinguish between the degree and sources of happiness for individuals. But here’s what convinces me of my argument – the gathering unanimously agreed that rarity was the currency that gave activities such as a booze-laced evening with friends its value. Too much of it, and it would get boring.

Fairness creams are fair game

Only Bill Burr can do complete justice to this topic, but I’ll take a shot.

An article in today’s IE (http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/attack-on-africans-ban-on-fairness-advertisements-unfair-and-unlovely-2831346/) pointedly highlights the vicious anti-dark skin prejudice in India. Indeed, that’s true. Mindless beating up of Africans, bullying of dark-skinned kids, preference for fair people in jobs etc. are all reminders of the dark skin-phobia a lot of Indians so dearly nurture in their heart.

But of course, just like racism itself, no admonishment of it is untouched by the obnoxious PC culture – the kind that compels idiots to use the dark thumbs-up smiley on WhatsApp. Inevitably, such articles veer into conflating personal preferences with institutional racism. How is a preference for fair-skinned love interests or life partners any different from that for tall, able-bodied, wealthy, and educated ones?

As an individual, it is my indisputable right to choose who I want to talk to, my friends, and life/love partners as per my preferences. Racism starts where the boundary between personal and public is overstepped, such as in case of discrimination in jobs, and bullying someone for being dark-skinned, since they’re dastardly ways of inflicting personal preferences on another.

If preference for fair skin is such a social evil, why shouldn’t preference for dark hair be? Or for that matter, bigger boobs? And oh, what about the latest fad in town – abs? How unfortunate are those parts of human anatomy that haven't yet had an -ism started under their name. Do I sniff discrimination, PC warriors? So yeah, let’s have hairism, boobism, absism, and what-have-you-ism. But let’s start with the lowest hanging fruit – the proudly brandished about “TDH”. Let’s rechristen it tallism,racism,lookism.

The article calls for a ban on fairness creams. I say, why? After all, what is entrepreneurship but a knack for knowing what people would pay for? It isn’t the State’s job to determine individual preferences, or to have a confidence-building ministry for those rendered diffident by their dark skin. Those who don’t like such creams are free to ignore them, it’s a matter of personal preference. Getting them banned would be, ironically, inflicting one’s preference on another - the root cause of all social evils. If fairness creams are banned, so should matrimonial advertisements and websites, and liposuction and body-enhancing supplements and surgeries. Best solution: stay clear of bans and let the individual decide.