The coverage of the IPL has been so comprehensive that even a man in the street can tell you now with authority as to what brand of inner-wear Lalit Modi sport to inside his bespoke suits or whether Sunanda Pushkar and Shashi Tharoor use…well, forget it, this is getting too intimate.

The point is we are all so well fed on the IPL that we know everything about it, except the part that is shady —- that is to say all parts of it. The round-the-clock frenzy on television over the murky sideshow in the IPL must go down in history as those moments that were accompanied by round-the-clock frenzy. Beyond this, nothing is clear.
Here is what happened on three main English news channels. What you are going to read may sound silly and stupid. But understand, satire has its limitations. The reality was far worse.

Times Now

Arnab Goswami: We can now confirm to the viewers that this channel is the first one to break the news this afternoon after breaking news in the morning and also breaking news last night in the continuing saga of rapidly unfolding events of fast breaking news for the benefit of viewers of this channel.

We now have on the phone line our chief political editor who has been constantly tracking all that is happening on the cricketing arena for the last 20 years or so (To the correspondent on the phone line) Okay, tell us what breaking news do you have for the viewers of this channel that has been breaking news in breaking news?

Correspondent: Arnab, our sources in the Home Ministry, which has been probing cricket events, have just confirmed to us to that the latest developments that we have been breaking to the viewers of this channel are indeed confirmed. We can also tell the viewers of this channel that we break only confirmed news. Back to you, Arnab

Arnab Goswai: Indeed it is a very damning piece of information. It has been a momentous period and the time has come to ask the question that every cricket fan in every corner of this country who has been watching this channel is dying to ask in the light of what has been unfolding before us in the last week ever since we first reported the first-ever reported ….. and as I am speaking to you, we have more breaking news coming in from our chief cricket correspondent who has been keeping track of politics for the last 20 years…

CNN IBN

Rajdeep Sardesai: As the clamour for the nationalisation of the IPL gets louder and louder, CNN-IBN has learnt from extremely reliable sources in the External Affairs Ministry, which takes care of cricket played across the globe, that the government has decided to completely internationalise the IPL and bring it under the ambit of the UN. For the latest on this development, we are joined in by our sports editor who is in charge of foreign affairs.

Correspondent: Rajdeep, indeed sources close to the development aver that the government has moved close to the idea of internationalising the IPL in the face of mounting concerns in Parliament. With heavyweights like Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav, who are neither allies nor rivals but wouldn’t mind if Ministerial posts are offered to them, making it clear that they want to do something to the IPL including banning it, the government has veered down to the view of internationalising cricket and pushing it to the UN.

Rajdeep: To get a true perspective on this new turn, we have now with us, okay he never gets anywhere out of the studio,  Suhel Seth, who is an expert in being an expert on all matters whenever a mike is proferred near him.
Suhel Seth: This is backdoor cronyism. The government seems to have bowed to the pressures of the lobby that wanted the IPL banned.

Rajdeep: How does IPL being taken to the UN amount to it being banned?

Suhel: (Shaking his head and dishevelling his already dishevelled hair further), Rajdeep, who heads the UN? It’s Ban. So taking IPL to UN is prima facie, not to speak ipso facto, banning it.

Anyway, the way out of this mess is more clarity. The need of the hour is transparency, especially since Shilpa Shety and Priety Zinta are involved in this. As far as Sunanda Pushkar goes, let Shashi Tharoor bother about transparency. But any way, her case is a see-through.

NDTV

Barkha Dutt: According to reports just in, the Congress has made it clear that the IPL mess has to be cleaned at the earliest.  In fact Congress sources are telling us that Sonia is discontented with the developments that has brought disrepute to the game and also seen several thousand crores of rupees flow to the NCP. It is also learnt that Rahul Gandhi is unhappy with the state of affairs. (Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, for his part, continued to maintain a facial expression that means to mirror Sonia’s anguish. Of course, Barkha did not say this).

We have in our studios, Shashank Manohar, the president of the BCCI, which is supposed to run the affairs of cricket in this country.

Barkha: Mr Manohar, Hasn’t IPL done more harm to cricket than develop it?

Shashank: The game of cricket is…

Barkha (interjecting): So you mean to say cricket is just a game; if so how do you explain the crores and crores of rupees flowing to the game that has caused anguish to Sonia, Rahul, and perhaps others?

Shashank: Money and market forces….

Barkha (interjecting): You are suggesting that the market is forcing things upon your organisation? Are these forces inimical to the nation’s secularism and Sonia Gandhi (and Rahul Gandhi)?

Shashank: Modi is….

Barkha (naturally interjecting): Ok, without needing to put any words into  his mouth, Shashank has eloquently stated that Modi’s presence is detrimental to the country’s secular fabric and leather.

(clang, cling, bang …sound of TV screens being smashed to smithereens in many households).

©2012 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.

Another important aspect when it comes to weighty compilations of this nature is how to include the word ‘definitive’ into the narrative. All things considered, consensus emerged inside me that ‘definitive’ has to definitely feature in the heading especially since many other words with ‘D’s also hang around. Luckily we journalists don’t write history, otherwise you will find plenty of articles like ‘Bipasha Basu in Backless Beachwear’ included just for the sake of rhythm.

And then the challenge was how to do justice in words to the enormity of the 10 years, which is more than 3650 days, which is more than 87600 hours, which is more than 5256000 minutes. And then and there I decided I will not do justice.

What you read below may not make much sense, and that I assure you, is what you will feel if you tried to grasp any meaning from the past decade. This was the decade that began with the Y2K joke, which ten years later continues to haunt the public, as to: What the heck was it?

So we begin with, okay you read it below:

Technology

Cell phones: The cute convenient thingies have completely revolutionised the grammar of modern communication system by empowering the poor and weaker sections of the society with compelling technology and innovations they absolutely have no need for or have no clues about. The beauty of modern cellular phones, which are enterprising tools in emergency, is that they come packed with so much facilities and functions that unfailingly don’t work in an emergency. With cell phones now even a humble, nondescript, son of the soil is acquainted with top-end technology terms like ‘no signal’ ‘battery charge nil’.

The arrival of cellular phones has also now made it possible to immediately reach an indigent farmer in a remote village in, say, Thanjavur, with the helpful information that the pizza outlet, which has no presence in the entire district, is making a special festive discount package of buy 2, pay for 4 offer. This is the power of spam messages, which according to precise scientific data called guessing, make up 543% of all mobile phone information traffic.

Laptops:  From the enigmas that filled the entirety of a room, computers have gone thin and nifty with laptops that are easy to carry and easier to lose. The power of technology is that laptop thefts are now a bigger industry than laptop manufacturing.

The humble PCs, which took roughly the time that a girl needs to reach puberty to just boot up, and which tied you down to a place, were this decade replaced by the handiness of the power-packed laptop that not only helps you to move around but also clamours for ‘tech support’ in remote locations. For, the first rule of laptop running is that it stops running the moment it realises that help is not nearby.  Luckily, help in the form of ‘Tech support’ is forever available in the form of ‘canned music’, which is what you will be forced to hear life-long if you happen to call Tech Support, who programmed to remain ‘busy attending other customers’.

Internet, email, Twitter, Facebook: When this decade arrived the internet was at its infancy, and now when the decade wounds up, the world wide web has grown in ways that were unimagined, but without in any manner affecting its prime purpose: Propagation of porn. The other core competency area of pointless email forwards has now become a multi-billion dollar industry in itself.

Emails, the quintessence of the internet, have helped shorten the distance between people, and it is now very much in the realm of possibility for an ordinary and unpretentious worker in Nigeria to pass on his talent, which is to casually con an over-eager gent in Pondicherry with bogus money transfer deals.

Shashi Tharoor would have been just another Minister with a portfolio and a siren-fitted car that kept him away from the masses and swine flu, but with social media platforms like Twitter, Shashi Tharoor is able to be directly in touch with democracy, defined as chaos and more trouble for himself.

At a plebeian level, too, social media tools provide the emotional space for an individual to unburden to a receptive world his or her inner-most personal ideas or deeply resonant private thoughts like, ‘I am feeling sleepy ’.

I-PODS: If you see the message ‘Unsupported Format’, it’s advisable to upgrade to the higher version of Cranks Corner and continue to enjoy your reading. This is roughly the larger theme of hand-held music players, which enable you to store thousands and thousands megabytes of music but can actually play just one and half song.
(For more details see Digital Music below).

24-Hour News Channels: People like Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt, Arnab Goswami who were just starting out on their careers as TV reporters in the 90s, have now risen to the high stature wherein their mere sight impels the nation to even think of migrating to Mars, despite the fact that it has no air, but because it has no TV channels to beam news 24 hours. This is the power and potential of modern journalism as represented by the motto: Breaking News: Anything that can be scrolled in letters across the TV screen is breaking news.

The last 10 years have also provided the conclusive proof that with more and more eager channels peopled by enthusiastic reporters around, corruption and cheating become that much more easy (Don’t refer to Madhu Koda, A Raja below).

Arts

Multiplex: Creative geniuses now need not suffer from the anxiety that their finely-honed offerings will be let down by the inferior facilities at the dingy cinema hall. Thanks to multiplexes they are now sure that howsoever insufferable the movie is, people can still be made to endure it as long as the popcorn is crunchy and tasty, and the parking lot spacious.

Multiplexes are here to stay and have spawned a sub-genre of movies, which deal with the agony and tribulations of an angst-ridden generation that is forever forced to subsist on credit cards and the humble diet of pizza and cappuccino.

Digital Music: See I PODS above.

Digital Camera & Photoshop: The art of photography has been democratized, in that anybody who has the basic talent to see can make it as a talented photographer. With digital cameras and Photoshop applications, quite conceivably your roadside gutter can be shown to be a grand tributary of the gushing Amazon. For instance, I have come up with dramatic pictures of Eiffel Tower at night despite the fact I have never been to Italy (which is where I believe Eiffel tower is) and never owned a camera at night.

Sports

IPL: IPL has done to cricket what Silk Smitha did to Tamil cinema: Bring bedroom glamour to mainstream. IPL not only lifted cricket from the dusty, dirt-ridden surroundings of the stadium and transported it to the comfortable and cool settings of banks, but also brought exciting new talents to the game in the form of busty cheer girls wearing dresses that are deliciously deficient. As long as they are showing those impish girly gaily cavorting around, people can be forced to forget that they are amidst the encompassing miasma of Ferozshah Kotla.

Virendera Sehwag: When he is on song in Tests, T-20s seem plodding and dour like a Minister’s speech at a labour conference. Sehwag’s sublime skills of celerity underscore what MCC coaching manuals can achieve if they are unread. Sehwag, more than Ponting or any other player you can think of, has to be the player of the decade, as his name is more pun-worthy for newspaper writers. Say Wag, I say! Try this pun on Ponting, you will look like a dork.

EPL: India has a national football team that is probably rated just above Outer Mongolia because there is no football team in Outer Mongolia and there is no country named Outer Mongolia as well. Still, EPL is a huge success in India. Why? Well, anything else on the telly is agreeable to Barkha Dutt. People will not mind patronising any channel even if it is showing total strangers kicking a ball amongst themselves in distant lands at odd times here!

Tiger Woods: For long, the weird jargon of golf had the humanity puzzled. But all along the noble sport of golf was waiting for the exalted ability of Tiger Woods to unravel its myriad mysteries. Now we know, birdies, putts, hole in ones have to belong to a golfer, especially if he is Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods take a bow. But mind you, you have to still a long way to go before you can catch with the undisputed leader in these matters — N D Tiwari, the unofficial Minister of Union Mining in the Republic of Raj Bhavan.  

Politics

Manmohan Singh: This humble bureaucrat turned PM has brought a rare dignity to the highest office of the land where even a bureau of rats can aspire to be part of the Union Cabinet. If this is not empowerment, I don’t know what is.(See A Raja, Madhu Koda below).

A B Vajpayee: This mild-mannered genial gent was the silver-tongued orator of the BJP, even though he is still to complete the sentence that he began speaking in 2001. Now you know why the BJP is in such a huge disarray.

Sonia Gandhi: For many she has to be the leader of the decade, devoting herself to relentless rectitude and probity in high office. But since she has not ‘officially’ held any high office, she still has not got the opportunity to observe the rectitude that she has devoted her entire life to. Some of her silly detractors have tried to make a case that she cannot be a member of Lok Sabha. But as far as we know, there is no clause in any Italian laws that prevent her from holding an Indian post.

A Raja, Madhu Koda: Whenever people talked of corruption in the top echelons, many kept silent, mainly because they did not understand the meaning of ‘echelons’. But with the likes of A Raja and Madhu Koda, corruption has got a new dignity as the public are not stirred into pointless furore over pittances below Rs 1000 crores. (For more: See Defamation Laws).

Telengana: Now the entirety of Andhra Pradesh is split in the middle with two sets of people, one who spell Telengana as Telagana and the other who write Telagana as Telengana. The Central government is fully scarred on its posterior as it is sitting on the sharp horns of dilemma as to whether Telengana or Telagana deserves separate identity.

World Affairs

George Bush & Barack Obama:  The impact of George Bush is so enormous that they decided to award the Nobel prize to Barack Obama simply because the brilliant minds of Nobel Committee quickly grasped the fact that Obama is a separate individual not answering to the name George Bush. But Obama, in the manner he is going, will soon surely bring a good name to Bush. And who knows, one day George Bush may get the Nobel peace prize or the Oscars for not having been the Obama of his times.

Islamic Terror:  Sorry, no fun and levity here. Jokes, in this terrain, are attached to an explosive circuit and can trigger blasts.

Middle East: In the 80s, the entirety of the Middle East was raven with conflicts. But by the 90s, the leaders of this region along with responsible global powers and the UN had the good sense to involve themselves in warm talks. And now when the first decade of the 2000s is about to end, we are in a strategic situation where the continuing talks have ensured that the entire area is not only conflict-ridden but also chaos-filled.

Middle-East has provided the maximum number of headlines for newspapers (across the world) that enable the readers to conveniently skip the underlying news and move on to reports that feature photos of nubile girls.
Don’t be surprised if Uganda and Czech Republic are engaged in talks at Guatemala to ensure peace in the Middle East. One day, they will realise that they have nothing to do with Middle East, and that Middle East itself does not lie in the middle of the east to them.

Pakistan:  India’s North-Western neighbour has quickly relapsed into anarchy and the dawn of every second brings with it new possibilities for strife and blasts. In Pakistan everyone is at war with everyone else, and hell has seen nothing like this before. And so, naturally, the intelligent minds in India want to have talks with Pakistan. Pakistan is a Middle-East in the making. So newspapers better get ready for more news reports with accompanying glamour pictures.

Global Warming: This has been the topic of this decade. I would want to say that the threat of Global Warming hangs like a Damocles’ Sword over the planet, but refrain from doing so because I can’t decide on the spelling of ‘Damocels’. Global Warming impacts human lives in many ways, leading to the melting of Polar Caps and other words spelt in Upper Caps.

Considering the calamitous nature of the threat that Earth is faced with, the world leaders, in a rare of show unanimity, met in Copenhagen recently and laid out what collective will can eventually achieve: Total absurdity. At Copenhagen, they debated on whether they agreed on what they thought they agreed on at Kyoto, a similar gathering held several years ago. If my reading is correct, I think they all have come to the conclusion that Kyoto is somewhere in Asia, which could be in, well I don’t know.

Surely, in the fullness of time, the talks will gain momentum and progress, and eventually lead to a quick solution to all the perils that face this world, by pleading with Barkha Dutt to quit her job as a TV anchor. But that could well be in 2100.

For the now, well a Happy New year to you all. And may 2100 come soon. I’m waiting for salvation through resurrection — of YK bug, that is.

©2012 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.

Anyway, before you set out to buy any new technological thingy, the thing is to get a good lowdown on it and whether it will suit your taste and budget. Make no mistake about it, the law of the universe is: If it is tasteful and likable, it will be beyond your budget. So you cannot have it both ways.
Okay then, we will leave out the budget and focus on the many items that will dance before your eyes, seeking your attention this festive season. The following check-list has been painstakingly prepared with all the attendant effort that goes into looking stupid. If, in spite of all this, you actually find this useful, you can sue me. That’s a guarantee, which like all guarantees on household items, is never useful.

LCD/Plasma TV

LCD TVs and their cousins in household entertainment, Plasma TVs, are a good example of the scientific rule, which lays out that technology will keep improving and be easily available to the common public in fields where there is actually no need for it.

The world has been desperately looking for a cure to the blighted common cold ever since it realsied that vapour-rubs and cough syrups are nothing more than a prank thought up by physicians when on vacation. Probably researchers and scientists were all these days busy thinking up ways to put sparkling lights on shoes, which needless to say is what the humankind was waiting with bated breath for all these centuries, that they couldn’t devote their time to anything else. On behalf of the scientists, let me assure you that the sure-fire medicine to treat everyday cold is on its way once they are through with their labour of putting the life-saving USB port on combs and the emergency bluetooth apparatus on toothbrushes.

Getting back to LCD/Plasma TVs, they have taken home entertainment to a bigger and beautiful canvas by doing away with the previously grainy TV telecasts with the easy-on-the-eye pixels that all but blur out human faces and surroundings. Watching every-day telecasts on a high-definition LCD/Plasma TV is to experience the rare phenomenon of Censor board officials at work even on Vazhalum Vazvum.

For, every face on LCD/Plasma TV comes in unscrambled pixels, joyously providing you the guilty pleasure of watching an X-Rated telecast even though the mug behind those pixels could be that of the eminently ‘un-arousing’ Solomon Pappiah or Arnab Goswami.

It is a fact that these pixels are not so evident when watching the telecasts from a distance. Say if your house and TV is in Vadapalani, you have to hire a house in Tambaram to serenely enjoy the clarity and precision that inevitably come along with the expensive but stylish LCD/Plasma TVs. You may also buy yourself two spouses to give you company in the two houses. Technology, as I said, is all about giving you more choices.

In the passing, it is pertinent to point out the vital technological difference between Plasma and LCD TVs. The science behind both is actually same: If you have bought Plasma TV, LCDs are better. And if your choice is LCD, then Plasma scores. A prayer is handy for both.

LED TV

LED TVs are another important step in the evolution of technology that is entirely based on the thumb rule that people are fools and they can be convinced into buying any product as long it is possible to feature a beautiful girl in its advertisement.

The 3D television that was in the market not log ago is a good example. People went ahead and bought it even though practical experience suggested that the only thing connected with that TV that possibly gave the 3D feeling was the remote-control unit that came with it.

On the face of it, there may be very little to choose between LCD and LED TVs. But LED TV’s superior technology and its array of impressive features immediately come alive when you put in huge amounts of money in buying an LCD TV. The technical beauty of LED TV is the picture it is able to deliver to you that whatever TV you have now is worthless.

Almost all the LED TVs sold in the market today come with the built-in feature of becoming obsolete and useless the moment you buy it.

Home Theatre

You would have always wondered, and even marvelled, at such desirable descriptions like Dolby, DTS, DiVX that you came across at classy multiplexes. Now with the arrival of home theatres, those vaunted specifications are available in your drawing room itself but without in any way you being wiser about what they actually mean and deliver.

The great thing about home theatre systems is that they help to elevate your simple every-day DVD-viewing experience into something more superior, by which I mean, complicated and difficult.
The beauty of home theatre is that it can intrinsically promote and upgrade art. That is, even a Vikraman’s lurid and bright-coloured movie, on a pirated DVD, will play out in dark and muted hues as if Manirathnam had conceived it.

Home Theatre systems come with a plethora of speakers, and a sub-woofer, whose technical virtuosity lies in the fact that it is no more than a speaker but still gets to be called a sub-woofer.

The surround speakers help provide the unmistakable flavour and fervour of movie-watching provided you are a moron to believe your dinghy, constricting drawing room to be commodious like a 1000-seat theatre.

With your home theatre system you get an all-purpose remote-control unit that help you operate every function available except the one you need. And operating the remote control is not to be attempted unless you have majored in every science subject on offer at Harvard. Otherwise you may end up activating the nuclear warheads stationed in distant North Dakota.

3G Phone

This should be the highest on the list of must-buy items, as 3G technology allows for high-speed, high-resolution exchange of voice and data files that you will not need top send.

You should not allow the minor fact that 3G technology lines are not ready in India, and the phone’s features are as useful as logic is in Rajnikanth’s movies.
Till the phone is anywhere near usable, you can play with many of the games that handily come along on the phone. One such wonderful high-end thought-inducing game is dices. Yes, modern technology has evolved to the brilliant level where games that are available free in the market can be put in on a high-end phone and can be marketed as its USP.

I am already looking forward to the 4G phone.

©2012 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.

In case, you missed the telecasts, here is a reprise of that.

(Reader alert: Some of what is to follow may not be factual and may not even make sense. But trust us, on the television out there, it was much worse).

Times Now: It has been a historical day for Indian democracy, because for the fist time in India in the history of democracy, as democracy makes history in India, with India, democracy and history for the time that is first, sorry to interrupt, but we have an important ‘breaking news’ coming in. Manmohan Singh, the country’s Prime Minister, has just woken up and brushed his teeth. This marks a major change from the past, as he was said to do nothing without consulting his allies during his previous stint.  Let us go to our correspondent, reporting live from outside the Prime Minister’s residence inside which he is brushing his teeth.

Arnab Ghoswami: What is the sense you are getting right now?

Correspondent: Indeed it has been a dramatic morning, Arnab. As I am speaking to you, Manmohan Singh is brushing his teeth with a firmness that will surprise many of his party’s allies, who can no longer brush him aside. Arnab, the message is loud and clear: The Prime Minister knows when to smile, and when to bite, when to chew and when to rinse his mouth. But credit for this should go to Sonia, the UPA chairperson. She has been the pillar of strength behind Manmohan, letting him have his way when brushing the teeth. She has stood by him all through because Rahul Gandhi has stood by her as because he is stood by Priyanka Gandhi, who seems to have taken to her grandmother, Indira Gandhi, in standing firm.

Arnab: Remember, Times Now is the first channel to break the news about Prime Minister and his teeth. I can now hear some rustling inside the PM’s house and I think he is combing his hair. Our sources also confirm that he wears a turban.

(Scroll) Breaking News: PM in a rush to brush. Sonia sticks by him.

IBN Live: The DMK camp seems to be extremely unhappy with the way things have been developing over the last 24 hours with the Congress refusing its demand for more Cabinet berths. The DMK’s main grouse stems from the fact that its president’s family itself is big enough to be earmarked as a reserved constituency. The formula that the DMK is offering simple, a Cabinet post for every son and nephew, a MoS for every daughter and grandniece and some lollipops for other MPs who do not belong to the family.

Rajdeep Sardesai: Even as we are speaking to you, on a day of tumultuous developments, sources are telling CNN IBN that the DMK will up the ante, bite the bullet, throw the spanner (in the works), turn the tables, spin the wheels, soap the shirt, kick the bucket, shut the door on the Congress for being unreasonable.

Rajdeep: (To the correspondent who is standing behind what seems to be a large building, but actually small considering the size of Karunanidhi’s family). What are your sources telling you now at the moment when the DMK is spinning the wheel, turning the tide and hitting the turf running?

Reporter: Rajdeep, the mood here is one of high tension as the DMK is mighty upset with the Congress for being unreasonable and adamant and refusing to provide Cabinet Ministership for all those who make up Karunanidhi’s kitchen cabinet. The Congress, it seems, is veering around to the formula that it will be impossible to provide berths to all of Karunanidhi’s kin and kitchen as the Lok Sabha is puny in comparison with just 532 members.

Rajdeep: That’s big story we are breaking now: Karuanidhi’s family is big, bigger than anything big.

(Scroll) Breaking News: T R Baalu out of Karuanidhi’s family, PM stands firm against his inclusion in Karunanidhi family’s ration card.

NDTV: It has been time of constant flux as one event is leading to another and another, each of which goes on to prove that Rahul Gandhi is the true star of this campaign in which the Congress has proved that Rahul Ganhdi is its true star.

Prannoy Roy: Barkha, You mean to say, Rahul has stamped his authority and completely enveloped it with his charisma?

Barkha: Not only that, Prannoy. The Congress cadres are demanding a postal stamp in his honour. Rahul has impressed everyone with his easy-going demeanour and pleasing ways that Kasab and Afzal Guru deserve to be pardoned and let off. After all, Rahul’s charm has completely won them over. (She gets all emotional as her eyes start to well and nose begins to flare and nation begins to fell jittery).

(Scroll) Breaking News: Rahul wins over Prabhakaran. Army confirms Prabhakaran is dead.

Times Now: We have been told by our sources that the Prime Minister has just finished washing the face. We can also categorically confirm that the face belongs to him as it looks exactly like his image on the mirror.

(Scroll) Breaking News: Times Now is always Breaking News.

IBN: We have just heard that the DMK has put forth a demand to the Congress to make Azhagiri the secretary general of the UN. ‘If Kofi Annan can head the UN, why not Azhagiri annan?,’ asked a top leader in the DMK. The Congress camp is worried that this might give its other ally Trinamool’s Mamta to rope in Moon Moon Sen into her part fold and demand UN Secretaryship to her on similar grounds. ‘If Ban Moon can head the UN, why not Moon Moon Sen,’ will be her argument. Dayanidhi Maran is not available for comments as he is trying to be present in all the pictures snapped by all the cameras in New Delhi now.

Breaking News: Dayanidhi Maran is a wall-paper/screensaver.

NDTV: Barkha: (dramatically raises her hand up and down, as words come out in torrent, like the bullets out of the guns of terrorists, who not long ago had taken siege of Mumbai and let it off only after they realised that Barkha had taken siege of the country with her high-decibel histrionics): It has been Rahul’s show all the way.

Barkha: Rahul has charged the Deccans, challenged the Royals in both Bangalore and Rajasthan, showed that he is Indian to Mumbai, proved that he is a daredevil in Delhi, a super king in Chennai, and is willing take on any King’s eleven in Punjab.

(Scroll) Breaking News: Rahul wins IPL.Lalit Modi takes a strategy break.

Many of us in the print media are mighty worried at the state of affairs: You can’t blame us — Our sole source for news these days is the TV news.

(This my column for the publication this week).

©2012 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.