The Bored Engineer

What is the one thing that defines most of us Indians and still is inherently devoid of any logic? You may well be tempted to mention our quest for getting our children enrolled in an Engineering/Medical college (irrespective of their abilities and aptitude, of course. Where is the fun otherwise?), but no. The one thing that connects us all, that one trait fostering our unity in diversity is our inability to not get offended or simple ignore things that really don’t matter to us (and about the things that truly matter; well who has the time for that! More on that later) and consequentially ban things arbitrarily. Take for example the recent controversy surrounding a video by comedian Tanmay Bhat, impersonating Bharat Ratan Sachin Tendulkar and Bharat Ratan Lata Mangeshkar. Now the video may seem a bit derogatory and in bad humour to many (including me) but why can’t we simply ignore a comedian who is just doing his job. He may not be up to our expected standards (although ...

In the run-up to the recently concluded Delhi Assembly Elections many personal allegations made their way onto national media. Some of them utterly nonsensical while others made a little sense although their relevance in an election campaign was questionable. Once such issue that cropped up was that Arvind Kejriwal who always made a hue and cry about being an Aam Aadmi and denounced other politicians for being Elitist and pro-capitalists totally ignoring the majority population and favouring the few Khaas Aadmi . To make his point he even travelled in Delhi Metro on the way to his inauguration ceremony, refused security cover and to a certain extent endorsed a somewhat messed-up ‘fashion- statement’ resembling more of a rickshawala (although I don’t mean to imply that dressing like that is deplorable, but well at certain times it didn’t meet the dress code of the event he was attending). But all things aside, he made his version of Aam Aadmi into a very successful brand, su...

Recently at a quizzing event I came across a strange fact. The Santa-Banta jokes were named after the killers of late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in order to humiliate the Sikh community and punish them. Although I tried to cross check the fact on the internet, I was unable to verify the authenticity of the above stated fact, but what made me think was that this is not the case of two imaginary individuals (read fools) but an entire community is ridiculed. As I said earlier I can’t verify the origin of these Sardar jokes but the fact that we are openly stereotyping an entire community and ridiculing it is no less disturbing than trampling their basic human rights (The right to live their life with dignity). Can this be considered any less than an Indian version of Apartheid? After all no matter what part of India you are in you will hear a Sardarji joke. People of almost every region and ethnicity make Sardar jokes and forward these jokes on their social networks. Bollywood itse...