Year-end time is great, especially since it gives an opportunity to indulge ourselves in fun activities that are plain foolish. Wish-lists are one of the time-tested practices of newspapers that match the all-round stupidity of the moment.
The great thing about wish-lists is that they need not adhere to any logic or norm, except the one they have to be unrealistic. Or at least the ones that newspaper compile are.
So without much ado, here is the compendium of things I would want to see in 2010 or perhaps even later, say by 3020. So folks, the dope on the hopes.
1) Any one who says he had Chinese food, and includes Gobi Manchurian in the list, deserves to be deported to Fu Manchu or any such place where they eat dog meat only. Sorry for shouting, but IF GOBI MANCHURIAN IS CHINESE THEN KATERINA KAIF IS AVVAIYAR.
2) Legally ban low-waist pants over size-32. If the Constitution doesn’t allow it, well, ban the Constitution. Or even burn it. We don’t need the Constitution that isn’t even remotely useful to the public. To see the tummy lolling out like double-pillows while the pant sags somewhere near the ankles is to suffer the worst form of pornography.
3) The courts shall not entertain any graft case involving amounts less than Rs.1,000 crore. After A Raja and Madhu Koda scandals, amounts less than Rs.1000 crore are an extreme insult to corruption. The Supreme Court can also seriously consider thinking up a special branch to deal with corruption cases. Needless to say, Dinakaran should head this court, as none comes with better credentials than him when you are talking of corruption.
4) All banks must explain in clear-cut logical terms as to why they need to have 16-digit numbers for savings bank accounts. To me, it just seems a sheer waste of numerals. Normal human beings cannot, I repeat, cannot remember numbers involving digits higher than 3. To create 16-digit numbers just for the convenience of unthinking computers is an exercise in excellent perversity.
5) Why don’t telephone companies come out straight and accept that they themselves don’t understand their various plans and talk-time schemes. It’s advisable to quarantine anyone who claims that he or she understands all the schemes on offer. Such openly deranged people are a threat to humanity.
6) In the interest of larger common good, each and every individual of this nation should monetarily contribute large sums to Sun Pictures if it promises to stay away from film production. Sun Pictures, for the record, not only backs all the worst movies produced in a year, but also comes up with the most torturous trailers for them.
7) The Prime Minister or the President should finally take the initiative and address the nation, unravelling the biggest secret confronting humankind: What’s the need for a Vice-President in a country like India? Brand the President or the Prime Minister as straight liar, if the explanation is anything other than: The Rashtrapathi Bhavan has too many free rooms.
8) The country must willingly sign any nuclear test ban treaty if the list of ‘bannable’ items include Barkha Dutt.
9) It’s time to despatch a strong showcause notice to Prince Charles and the men folk in Scotland seeking their explanation on how on earth they accepted kilt as their national attire. To the rest of the humanity, wearing kilts can be acceptable only if transvestitism is a non-negotiable national rule.
10) All movies where the hero uses unimaginable quantities of prosthetics and shows up as something like an unborn boy or a mummified zombie will have to suffer penal tax of 35,000 per cent. A further service cess and octroi will have to be levied if the hero sports a six-pack in some scene. Further, Kamal Haasan’s make-up kit will have to stand confiscated.
10a) With particular reference to Tamilnadu, directors of movies that involve Madurai as their backdrop should be taken aside and shot dead. This has to be done to as a safety precaution to prevent the dangerous virus from spreading further.
11) People using perfumes, which cost above thousand rupees, must be counselled with the help of specialists in common sense that the human nose doesn’t come with built-in sensors to differentiate between ordinary body-sprays and expensive ones. And it also needs to explained to any man that women are not going to be aroused into carnal pleasure just because he spends Rs.10,000 on a vial of perfume.
12) Call all the intelligent scientists of the world. Bring in all the top IQed men and women. Get them all together and figure out how a person could be named: Uda Walawwe Mahim Bandaralage Chanaka Asanga Welegedara. This Sri Lankan fast bowler has obesity in his name itself.
13) Union of Sports and whatever other portfolio he holds has to declare on the floor of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha on the need for the government to run the Wushu Kung-Fu Federation of India. He has also got to elaborate what the heck is this Wushu Kung-Fu. (Latest news: After a bit of googling, it has come to light that Wushu Kung-Fu is an ancient form of martial art that nobody is interested in anymore, and this includes also the makers of insufferable Chinese movies shot in low budget in downtown Hong Kong).
14) The man, or the team, that invented the idea of Captcha need to be gassed. Now, Captcha is the system of rightly typing out randomly scribbled askew letters for validating that the user is a human being and not a spam machine. There are any number of ways to establish humanness. But this has to be the most cruel way ever devised. And if this doesn’t deserve extinction, human kind can never be saved.
15) The nation should pardon Akshay Kumar’s dress sense. While it is at it, an all-party delegation should go to Kareena Kapoor and tell her that meaning to look slim is fine. But if she thins anymore there will be a technical problem: No person can be slimmer than her photograph.
16) Writers in English in India should reaslise that this is a land of several hundred languages. To understand English itself requires extra effort. So to involve strange Latin or French phrases in English writing is plain stupid. Ipso Facto, Crank’s Corner is exempt from this rule.