A Calendar War!

A massive revolt is brewing in the world of Calendar. The protesters, numbering 364, have hit the streets and gave vent to their anger against the “hegemony and supremacy” of December 12 which gets all the attention of the world for being the birthday of superstar Rajnikanth.

At the heart of the uprising is a perceived sense of victimhood among the rest of the members of calendar. “We are treated like second-class citizens. What sin have we committed to face such a discrimination?” asked a protester, waving a placard that read “We want justice”.  Others also pitched in, vigorously waving banners containing slogans like “Do not make Dalits out of Dates”, “Dates too have dreams”, “Fight for equality”, “Down with one-man show”.

What came as a final straw for the simmering calendar community was the hype generated on the occasion of the sequential numerological arrangement 12-12-12. The breathless media coverage of Rajnikanth’s birthday and what it meant for humanity has stoked anger among the aggrieved dates. “Now, enough is enough. This is hurting our sentiments. We will not take this injustice and discrimination anymore,” fumed an agitator.

An emergency meeting of the rebel members was held to chalk out a future course of action to ensure a level-playing field for all those engaged in chronicling the journey of time. “Folks, we have been silently discharging our duty of recording the events and putting up with all the bullshit that goes in the name of human history. Now, the most important challenge before us is how to correct the mindset of human beings. They can neither have equality among themselves nor can they treat us equally. We need to speak up now,” said January 1, the senior most member of the group.

The meeting assumes significance as the unprecedented upheaval threatens to shake the very foundations of the sentinels of time. “Can we condemn December 12 as communal and a creation of RSS? This may please secular forces,” suggested February 28 whose only claim to fame is that Digvijay Singh was born on that day.

However, the meeting overruled his “pseudo-secular” idea. Then, the gathering turned its attention towards June 19 who always begins like a roar but ends in a whimper, exactly like the scion of India’s first political family born on the day.

“Can I send my team of observers to gauge the public mood on our plight?” asked June 19 in a hesitant tone. A senior member chided him, saying “Abey, Chup! Moov Math Khulao Meri. You know something? We have been telling the world that you will soon play a larger role in the affairs of the calendar management. But, you always slip into your shell and disappoint us.”  

While the main agenda of the meeting was to register a strong and unequivocal condemnation of the undue importance being given to December 12, the members also spoke about the need to debunk astrologers and numerologists for perpetuating wrong notions about certain periods of the day in a calendar year. “We take strong exception to the human concept of “Rahu Kalam” as it paints us in poor light,” a resolution adopted at the meeting said. 

Cries of a Comedian!

Indian stand-up comedians are now a worried lot. Their very survival is under threat. The reasons are not far to seek. Politicians and news channels are rapidly transgressing into their domain and may soon render them jobless.

“Look, our survival essentially depends on our ability to concoct bizarre situations and come up with funny lines to entertain the public. With politicians and television channels sounding stranger than fiction and thereby providing free and wholesome entertainment to the people, we sense a clear threat to our source of livelihood,” explained a leading professional comedian Rahul Joshi.

To buttress his point, he cited the recent statement of Samajwadi Party leader Mohan Singh that his party was not amenable to lobbying by Walmart because no one in the party could speak English. “Now, with a funny statement like this, do you need any further entertainment? And, on top of it, you have news channels repeating these bytes with special effects throughout the day. Do you think anyone would still feel like coming to our comedy shows?” asked Joshi.

Agreed Rehman Qureshi, another stand-up comedian whose stage performances have been facing dwindling crowds these days, forcing him to narrate jokes about Kim Kardashian’s wardrobe malfunction to hold the audience attention.

“We consider Digvijay Singh as the biggest threat. None of the comedians can ever match his twisted words. The next big threat is from India TV whose investigative crime stories and reality shows have become the main source of entertainment for urban audience,” he lamented.

The affected comedians have created a facebook page “We Hate Politician-Media nexus” and have formed Jaspal Bhatti National Federation of Professional Comedians to counter the emerging threat.

In Andhra Pradesh, the Telangana Congress MPs’ rib-tickling public performances, with unfailing regularity, have sent shivers down the spine of professional comedians. “If the present trend continues, we will soon be out of jobs. We cannot even give vent to our frustration by asking “where we are going?” because that expression has been patented by Chandrababu Naidu,” rued a local humourist Kantipudi Subba Rao.

He disclosed that the state JAC of comedians was in the process of preparing a list of the endangered comedians whose only course of action is to wait for Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy to come out of jail and undertake “Odarpu Yatra” for them.

Scam Is In The Air!

This may well turn out to be the Mother of all scams. According to a latest CAG report, the country could have lost trillions of rupees since independence because of the failure of successive governments to auction or tax the most important natural resource: Air.

Using a complex set of formulae, the federal auditor concluded that greedy corporates made a killing by using the air freely without having to pay anything to the government. The private sector should have been brought under “pay-as-you-go” regime where the organisations pay air tax on the income they earn.

“These profit-driven private companies have been breathing it easy, quite literally. Instead, the governments should be breathing down their necks. How can we afford to lose such an important source of revenue?” the C AG said in a report titled “ConAir, an anatomy of national loot.”

The CAG proposed a scientific formula to calculate the total volume and density of air that a private firm uses depending on the area it occupies, number of people it employs and its productivity. “Once the private entrepreneurs submit project reports, the governments concerned should have gone for either auction route or calculated an appropriate tax structure for utilizing the crucial natural resource,” the report said.

By not doing so, the nation has suffered an incalculable loss, the CAG said and pegged the figure at 65 ⁹⁶⁰ trillion rupees. “We are not here to air-brush the economy but to clear the air about what we think is the biggest scam in Independent India,” it said.

However, a junior CAG field official, who retired recently, disputed the figure and the manner in which it was arrived at. He said he had suggested a much lower figure of 12 ²³⁰ trillion but was overruled by his superiors.

Meanwhile, the Union Minister for Countering Scam Reports, Kapil Sibal, dubbed the loss as “notional and presumptive”.  “Clearly, the CAG has overstepped its brief and transgressed into the policy making area which is the prerogative of the government,” Sibal argued.

The BJP had initially wanted to seize the opportunity to attack the UPA government for perpetrating yet another mega scam but soon realized that the “ConAir” report talked about the cumulative losses since independence.