Smiling year to year

An article I wrote for some xyz youth magazine.. Yeah! What ever!

With 2008 behind us, it’s time to say goodbye to some wonderful moments, welcome some wonderful moments & say, ohh ! This again, how wonderful. I thought, before welcoming 2009, I’d look back at 2008 and how it moved me... or so it wished to !

Entertainment: - This year, over 125 mainstream Hindi movies were released. Some of them made my heart beat haule haule while others were simply ugly or pagli and even though there’s stiff competition for the best movie, best actor/actress, best new comer and yada yada; the competition down under (and no, I’m not talking about Andrew Symonds’ acting skills) is also quite tough. 120+ minutes EACH, of Jimmy, ugly aur pagli and kyaa kool hain hum (yes!) made it to my “Things I could have survived without” list.
Ugly aur Pagli: - With binge drinking, a lot of puking, a lot of violence (yeah! right) and an actress ready to shed clothes like a tree in autumn, this should have been a must watch for every guy but, now, I’ve realized that some things are good only if you are a part of it. Who's the man ? Ranbir is!
Jimmy: - With an epic like gunda under his belt err... Or yet lower, I thought I had seen everything Mithun da had to offer. I was wrong and, I think I speak for both, Muhammad Ali and Michael Jackson (MI-MOH a la Amit + Asha = Amisha, only that both his parents would be men, then) when I say, neither of them would have been proud of it. Mr. Jackson was seen filing a law suit for his name being misused. Although, he confessed that he was doing this so that for once, he could be at the other end of the court room.
Kyaa Kool hain hum: - Yes, from its date of release, I have been trying to watch this movie in 1 go or at least watch it to the end but, I’ve failed miserably. In 2008, I made a strategy to watch a 2 minute clip of the movie if I were happy (to regain normalcy) and a 3 minute clip if I were sad (since it made me realize that there are far worse things out there).
Disclaimer: - This outrage against Balaji telefilms should not be linked with the production house robbing me of an article titled (K)ab bas ?? By ending the saas-bahu sagas.

Science: - If it’s science, it has to be Chandrayaan, you’d think. No, I'd say. Even though Chandrayaan was Shahrukh Khan of science this year, but I’d like to talk about the Harman Bawejas, the Mimohs (oh! I already did). Scientists have discovered methods to grow paddy 4 times in a year. If you think I’m mentioning this because it affects the common man, it shows the impact of science on us... You’re wrong. I’m saying all this because this means more biryani, more pulao, more kheer and oh! Yeah, we can even think of exporting the surplus and generating some jobs and ending my joblessness.

Technology: - Is it a bird ?? Is it a plane ?? Is it a super hero who wears his briefs over his pants ?? No, silly. It’s the launch of iphone in India. The much awaited iphone finally hit India and now, is resting in pieces. We talked to Ms. Eve Works (a random person, good at math and as American as an apple (please excuse the pun) pie with a simple mantra in life: - “an apple a day keeps the viruses and bugs away” and, although this philosophy once led her to her NeXT life but, with apple being “in” again, she’s good). Ms Works said that, “after working on complex algorithms, I have come to the following conclusion:-
a) An ipod + a high end phone cost less than an iphone.
b) A phone has to have the basic function of voice clarity at the time of call. “
Amen to that.

Politics: - I won’t talk about 123. Not because it flashed across, 456 times, in 789 newspapers and news channels but, because, I’m still confused about it and, the political parties haven’t made my task any easier. A party, which once mooted for the deal, when it was in power, is completely against it, now. A major ally of the government backed out of the deal, the reasons of which are still a little unclear to me.
Instead, I’ll talk about something I know.
Finally, after 12 years, right to education bill was cleared and the icing on the cake for students was the inception of new IITs (the number of campuses remaining the same is a topic for another day). On this occasion we talked to Inder, a 20 year old entrepreneur (who always wanted to go to an IIT and would have received free education had this bill been passed earlier). “I always dreamt of IITs and now, I own it”, he said. IIT aka Inder’s International Tea is a famous tea stall near NITs, yeah, you guessed it - Narender's ITing (eating ?) Station. We talked to a Sr. official in the government about this issue and this is what he had to say “it is all because of our party that young people like Inder are becoming entrepreneurs. Had this bill been passed earlier, he would have been yet another jobless engineer, in this time of recession. Soon he’ll have franchise stores all over the country, create job opportunities and who knows, the youth of Honolulu might hang out @ IITs in the years to come.”
What can we say ? India shining or is it Bharat moving towards nirmaan ?