The Art of Getting Offended

Of all the skills needed to survive today (2020), the one of paramount importance is knowing how to get offended. You don't always have to lead a riot, though that can grab headlines in national media for a few hours to a few days. But you must do it right, and therefore, there is a market for Skill-building courses involving this skill. Entrepreneurship, e-commerce and food delivery are passe.

There is no need to impress upon you why this skill is important. If you don't get offended these days, you are a nobody. You may think you are something great like a Social Media Influencer with thousands of followers, but if you don't get offended regularly, you will lose all those followers. The only other way to get loyal followers is to get into scandals regularly. But getting offended is easier. Let me explain.

You can get offended by almost anything. That's a huge advantage. If the name of a new film is not to your liking, you can get offended. If the film shows your profession in a bad light (even if fictionally), you can still get offended. If the director does not apologise for the imaginary slights, you can get offended. Even if he does, you can get offended by his insincerity in apologising. You get the point?

If someone tells a joke involving gender, ethnicity, nationality, eating habits, accent, what-have-you, you can get offended. Humorists and cartoonists (the ones that are out of jail) will have a tough time because of you too- an added plus for getting offended.

If you are offended by this blog post, it would have served a purpose-of educating you as to the importance of the whole thing.

Election Graffiti

Elections are usually the time for acerbic wit, and even usually docile people suddenly get animated. Some of the gems that keep popping up have to do with nicknames- Pappu, Pheku, Maut ka saudagar,  and so on.

A new title was coined after the very notorious weapon of mass destruction, aka the AK-47. This one is known as AK-49, named after the party founder who first did a sit-in, and then a walk-out from his own government, all in just 49 days. His cap and muffler have provided wonderful fodder to all the cartoonists around. A cartoon showed NaMo cough syrup as an antidote to his recalcitrant cough.

The case of the pot calling the kettle black is also pretty prevalent. Every party blames the other for all kinds of omissions and commissions (I am not referring to commissions of enquiry here, they are a saga unto themselves), as if they are comprised of saints and Mahatmas.  I wonder if the holier-than-thou posturing comes from having celebrated Holi recently! It is quite amusing to see banalities and generalities being bandied around with gay (used in a hetero context) abandon.

But the bottomline for me is that the election continuing to be fought every five years on the same issues, even after 65 odd years. Gives you a feeling of having been gypped, doesn't it?