Craziness Personified !

A friend who is in India, shut off his TV minutes after the Blasts, his justification? “Here goes the cacophony, Doordarshan news was better”. There is an incredible amount of sadness among people about the bomb blasts, but there is an even more frustration at what will follow next. I am going to try and make some predictions, and yes everyone knows the sequence of events that will happen next.

July 13 2011: Bomb blasts in 3 crowded areas of Mumbai two dozen people killed, and hundreds hurt. Media Melee follows. Obama condemns blasts, Manmohan Singh our PM has a spine removal surgery. Amitabh, RGV, Karan Johar, Gul Panag and Pritish Nandy tweet this act as horrendous.

July 14 2011 8:00 am: The ordinary man on the street will dress up, have breakfast and go to work. Not because he/she is having “Mumbai Spirit” (The Mumbai Spirit BS has started already), but because they have to feed, clothe and educate their kids, and look after their family. Elderly in the home watch reruns of their saas-bahu serials reruns from yesterday night, since they were watching live coverage of blasts on June 13.

July 14 2011 12:00 PM: An note from SIMI/Indian Mujhudeen/Jaish/Lashkar will be received by police or media, claiming responsiblity. Pakistan high commissioner summoned by prime minister. They have tea, Pakistan claims that there is no evidence, asks USA to fund more money for anti-terror activities. L.K Advani, R.R. Patil will condemn the blasts. R.R Patil will try to talk in Hindi. Raj Thackrey will have some snide comments to make about ‘outsiders’ who are making it difficult for police to investigate.

July 15 2011: Vilasrao Deshmukh becomes the next Mumbai Cricket association president, Shamelessly flashes Victory sign outside CCI club. Maharashtra Chief minister says that since police were alert they could not carry out more and bigger blasts, this is a tactical win for Mumbai Police. In the meanwhile Mumbai police uncover evidence about ISI handlers being part of the blasts. The Chief minister and home minister for state do ‘inspections’ causing more traffic jams and announce compensation for victims families. Its like EBAY. Life will cost 5 lakh, limb and injury costs 2 lakh, amount will be disbursed after years of haggling with babus in Sachivalaya.

July 16 2011: CNN-IBN braindead journalist and Barbie wannabe Sagarika Ghosh calls a chat show “Face the Nation” in which include panelists Rajdeep (screaming) Sardesai, Suhel Seth, Shobhaa De, MJ Akbar, Mani Shankar Aiyar, and Lord Meghnad Desai discuss endlessly about what could have been done to prevent this. Meghnad Desai makes some comments about Hemant Karkare, Mani Shankar Aiyar will say how he would have handled situation since he is pretty much jobless, MJ Akbar will recite statistics and observations, Shobhaa De will make characteristically radical statements which mean nothing.

July 16 2011:SAME TIME as above NDTV organizes a TV discourse in which M.N. Singh, Suhel Seth (again) , Mahesh Bhatt, KPS Gill and management guru Arindam Chaudhary take part. Arindam Chaudhary brings up a list of expenses Indian Government has made in keeping Kasab in protective custody. Suhel Seth condemns blasts, but asks for evidence of Pakistan’s involvement. M.N. Singh gives a vague idea about how police will investigate KPS Gill says that extreme terror should be met with extreme force and privately will be reminiscent of how he spanked an female IAS officer’s ass . Mahesh Bhatt will say cultural integration with Pakistan necessary and will cast a Pakistani girl as actress in his next Vishesh Films movie with Emran Hashmi.

Shahrukh Khan will hastily call a news conference and state to journalists that “those who follow Islam don’t carry out bomb blasts and who do bomb blasts are not Muslims”. Will try hard to generate a controversy for his movie, after all 150 Crore riding on him.

July 17th 2011: Chetan Bhagat and Pritish Nandy publish a column in Times of India. Pritish Nandy will be outraged. Chetan Bhagat, reminiscent of his Banker days will recite history and statistics about how Israel would have retaliated.  In Devil’s Advocate, Karan Thapar will question Arundhati Roy or National Security Advisor ShivShankar Menon. If Arundhati Roy is on air, she will start rambling about how India has become a Hindu nation. If ShivShankar Menon is on the air he will not talk BS, but will appear to be a genuine guy who could not do much for his country because of the corrupt administration.

Aug 15 2011: Digvijaya Singh says that Saffron terrorists outfits are likely behind the blasts (despite Pakistan based terror outfits taking responsibility of the blasts) . He also claims that some honest police officer who died years ago had informed him about these blasts in advance. This will most likely steal thunder from Anna Hazare’s fast. Nitin Gadkari will make sounds about how congress is in decline. In order to embarass NCP, Digvajaya will also say that Home minister R.R. Patil was informed in advance. R.R Patil will fumble again.

Aug 27 2011: Rahul Gandhi will take his private jet from UP and land in Mumbai and will indulge in terror tourism.

July 13 2012: Some students from various colleges in south Mumbai will organize a candlight march. Mid-Day will publish an article in which it will praise the “spirit of Mumbai”, right next to Mid-Day-Mate. No one will see that article. Why read when you can almost see naked chicks.

March 2015: A man of the match for cricket world cup dedicates his win “To the bomb blast victims of Mumbai”. Religious leaders and fanatics say that this was not proper since talking about terror victims in a match is bringing religion into sport.

Many Years Later: A brother and sister who lost their father, a wife who has lost his husband will come to the fateful place in Dadar and weep silently. They have been coming every year yet non one noticed them. They will say out loud, ‘we miss you’.

Terrorists, media, panelists and politicians, we know what you are doing, and you are not fooling anyone but yourselves. Shame on you. Keep off my city !

I had heard first about voicemail hacking by over intrusive journalists from News of the World a while ago, when a prince Harry’s voicemail was illegally accessed by minions of the evil emperor. As usual News Corp started their own hogwash against this illegal hacking (I would go as far as to say that this is actually a sort of a wiretap, except that you can only hear a one way conversation). Two rouge journalists Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire had somehow gotten access to the voicemail access codes (or maybe the royals didn’t really bother to change them keeping them default as 0000 or 1111) . But then, no one is a real sympathizer of the royal family, especially in times of recession.  People were probably even a little angry that Scotland Yard spent its time and resources investigating it.

As it turns out, last week the same News of the World had not only illegally accessed the voicemail of Milly Dowler in 2002, it seems that since the same journalist Glenn Mulcaire and his stooges had also DELETED many of the messages since they were aware that they will not get any juicy titbits of voicemails and information if Dowler’s mailbox were to get full. This led to family and friends believing that since the message box that had reached its limit hours ago, was now accepting messages, only Milly Dowler would have deleted these messages.If she was deleting the messages, her family thought that she were definitely alive. Unfortunately it was just a false hope, and she was tragically dead.

Now consider a scenario where I was a window washer in any normal 60 floor Manhattan building, If my rope were to slowly snap and I were hanging by a few threads and my only hope for living beyond 30 seconds were grabbing the hand of Hannibal Lecter OR any reporter from News Corp, lets just say that I would jump in arms of Hannibal. Many news organizations that are associated with News Corp are special interest outfits that either worship money by selling thrashy news or follow a extremist political ideology that twists each and every news piece to forward their agenda of right wing propaganda under the umbrella of ‘Fair and balanced’ .

As it turns out, the sacrificial lamb here was this particular publication. I wouldn’t say that it has been a spectacular sacrifice. A news publication with a small footprint of 2.6 million units is a negligible price to pay to keep this empire running. Something tells me that this time, just like in the past, its going to be smooth running.