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Last word
Our wishlist for the year ahead...
We want to see...
More growing up
In July ’09, when the Delhi High Court declared the decriminalisation of Section 377, which finally gave our sexual minorities a sense of dignity, we cheered. A few weeks later, when the High Court threw out petitions by people who demanded the death of a TV show and suggested very reasonably that if they didn’t like it, they needn’t watch it, we were so excited we threw a party. At last we’re being treated like grown-ups.
Chaand ka tukra
We were so awed in 2009, watching our very own moon mission, Chandrayaan, take off and do its spectacular thing, that we got goosebumps so big, they threatened to blot out the Himalayas. Then, when we learned that Chandrayaan had found water on that supposedly unfriendly-to-life piece of orbiting rock, we had an idea. Could the team that made Chandrayaan make a couple of Prithviyaans for us? Because we certainly could do with more water sources on earth.
Season’s greetings
It’s a little late to ask Santa for a gift by now, but just in case he’s listening, here’s what we want in 2010. Rain. Rain. Rain. During the monsoon, please, when it’s expected, not after it, when it’s a disaster leading to a situation where vegetables have become so expensive that the Income Tax department will soon start raiding us, looking not for black money diamonds, but black market bhindi and baingan.
Film flam
True, Rajkumar Hirani has done much to raise our movie-going experience this year. But that doesn’t mean that we’ll let our filmmakers get away with the fact that their movies were so unentertaining that our most interesting moments at the theatres were when we stood up for the National Anthem and fought with the security guards at the entrance over the right to bring our own water with us. Filmmakers – there is a reason for your existence and boring us to death is not it. Give us good stories in 2010. God knows, we need the entertainment.
Joke of the decade
Face it, anyone with the slightest sliver of a conscience has spent the last couple of years of this decade consumed with guilt because of our massive contributions to global warming. But we’re all too human and while we are doing our best to live without air-conditioning, survive on half a bucket of water per person per day and convince our HR departments that we really should work from home to reduce the carbon emissions from our commutes, we would be very pleased indeed if a bunch of scientists stood up, cleared their throats sheepishly and announced that global warming is actually an April Fool’s Day joke gone on too long. Please?
We don’t want to see— ever
Abhi-Ash pregnancy rumours
We admit it. We are a nation of people who cannot resist asking perfect strangers personal questions such as ‘why don’t you have children, is it your fault or your partner’s?’. But it’s clearly a measure of how bored we must be in life that the biggest question in the world we seem to have is not ‘is the recession finally over?’, but ‘are Abhi-Ash pregnant?’ Every week we’re subject to the same question (with the same answer: No).
Here’s some news for tabloid people: news is when something happens. Not when something hasn’t happened.
Lawmakers breaking the law
We were about to throw a tantrum about the fact that our members of Parliament seem to believe that, having campaigned and stood for election and won, they are entitled to the next five years off. But then we realised there is a bright side to this truancy. It’s this. If there are no MPs in the Lok Sabha, it means we are spared the un-edifying sight of our lawmakers beating each other up with chappals. This leaves us with the impression that ours is a wonderfully peaceful nation.
Sports utility vehicles
Not because they’re gas-guzzling beasts, but because with so many cars jamming the roads these days, it is extremely annoying to be stuck in traffic thanks to a car the size of a truck that holds one single 5-foot 6-inch person. If you want a car bigger than the average Mumbai flat, that’s fine. Just park it on the roof of your building and use it as a penthouse apartment.
‘It’ bags
Birkin, Kelly, Hobo, Louis Vuitton… we are sick of hearing these names – and their price tags. If you want to buy a handbag for 25 lakh, fair enough, but please don’t behave as though that makes you a better human being. Or else we’ll present you with a bag of our own – over your head.
More Tiger Woods mistresses
We have to confess we’ve been quite fascinated by the – er – vastness of Tiger Woods’s personal life. And also by the fact that, for a celebrity renowned as a saint in a country with a paparazzi, he must have had an awesome sense of trust in the women he hung out with. That trust was clearly mistaken. But by now, it’s getting so stale that the only thing that’ll make news about Tiger is women selling stories to the tabloids about how they’ve never met him, never had anything to do with him, and never even heard of his existence till now.
