Cost cutting at the Congress

Recession blues have not left our political parties untouched. Latest in line to be contemplating cost-cutting schemes is the Congress. At a working committee meeting recently, the top brass of the Congress leaders set dishing out tips to cut costs. No first class air tickets, no lavish offices, no stupendous salaries, no free chai in the afternoon, blah blah blah… The CWC, congress working committee, insists that it is their way of expressing solidarity with the aam aadmi who is feeling the pinch of the hard times and crying where-is-all-the-money.

The members of the Congress recently pledged their approval to the ‘you suffer, we suffer’ initiative of the CWC and promised to

- keep their money locked in Fixed deposits schemes in Swiss banks and not indulge in any immediate withdrawals
- hold on to their lands and not engage in any immediate real estate transactions,
preserve the gold and diamond jewellery of their wives and daughters for the next season,
- reduce party spending on all internal affairs and let interest accumulate on the corpus
- Lead the lives of a pauper and propogate the selfless behaviour of the Congress workers who want to understand the plight of the aam aadmi by cost cutting and
- Not talk about how the saved money will be used for the benefit of the aam aadmi.

The Battle of the Gas

Whose name is Khan?

Its not everyday that our babus-in-white go out of their way to promote a forthcoming blockbuster bolly movie. Never before has anyone or anything succeeded in doing what My name is Khan has done. For the first time the netas are all singing the same song. Down with the Yanks! Lets go tit-for-tat! Khan-daan zindabad! All for a few little precious votes.

The recent detention of the KJo’s so-proclaimed global icon- SRK at the Newark airport in USA has suddenly given the baadshahs of our babudom large dope to binge upon. Forget the chamchas, even the top-rung’ers cannot stop themselves from crying sympathy for Khan. The behari spirit, with its spokesperson Lalluji, insists that we should take up the matter with the Yanks and demand an apology. Ambika Soni is busy announcing to the world that Anjelina Jolie and Megan Fox will be frisked and detained on their impending arrival to Soni’s country. Soni’s fervour is infectious and the babus cannot resist themselves from hailing her no-negotiation-only-action approach. Shashi Tharoor is busy flooding his twitter page with his opinions on the rights and the wrongs as always.

In the midst of all the political drama, Amar Singh ji is the only person to have caught the trick under the magician’s hat. SRK has received all the publicity and more that he needed for his forthcoming film ‘My name is Khan’. But, of course, as we all know, it was a just a perfectly timed ‘Mishap’.

PPP- President Pratibha Patil

Any little news about Pratibha Patil is exciting. And its got nothing to do with the fact that she is the first person of the female species to occupy the most inactive office of the country. It is simply because news about her is very difficult to find.

Pratibha Patil has always been known to be media shy. After all, before she became the first lady of the country, no one had even heard of her. Even after she became the first lady, things have not changed. Some would expect that she'd take some tips from her predecessor who had converted the highest dormant office of this country into a playground for school children and their principals. Well, as it turns out in the last few years of her Yes-there-is-a-person-occupying-the-president's-office 'rule', she doesn't seem to have picked up many tips from the doc scientist who left her the legacy. As a result, the only noteworthy news heard about her in recent times- A boy from Kerala sent her porn mail!

Had she followed the doc's strategy, it would have probably read- 'The president hosts another delegation of primary school children in the lawns of the Rashtrapati Bhavan' or 'The president cuts the ribbon at another annual day function'. Madame Patil, trust me, they sound more glorious.

However, I would end this hope-this-inspires-the-President note with a word of advice to the little boy- Dude, you are still in college. The President is married.

P.S. The author shares her birthday with the first lady of the nation. Sagi-sisters, Mrs. Patil :)

Disclaimer: This post is not authored by the Pakistan People's Party.

100 days of agony?

The baadshahs of our Babudom have been spoilt for too long. Its time they were disciplined a little. Or so think, some of the politicians who have proposed a bill for 100 days of mandatory Parliamentary attendance. I am excited. Its not often one gets to witness live demonstrations of apne-hi-pair-par-kulhadi-maarna. And our babus are masters at the art of saving their backsides.

Do our babus really have the flair for self discipline? I, for one, don’t think so.

How to answer a stupid question!

Queen Elizabeth: Why was nobody able to predict the recession?
LSE Economists: Your highness, It was a failure of our collective imagination.
ROTFLMAO!!!!

Jassi babu and a few peals of laughter

Jassi babu and a few peals of laughter
No, it isn't Jaspal Bhatti but our beloved ex-finance minister Jaswant Singh who decided to play comedian to our perpetually-somnolent central legislators this time. Jaswant babu triggered quite a few peals of laughter in the recent session of the Lok Sabha as he dished out some anti-dethroning tips to the government in power. His tip- Money, Money, Money, It's not funny.

According to him, the finance minister is faced by a tough job. He often has to endure sleepless nights in the foregoing weeks of the budget because everything is related to money. making reference to his one brief and one not-so-brief terms in the same office, he prophesied- Sooner, than later, the finance minister ends up abandoning this portfolio. Reminiscing in nostalgia, he remembered- during his days in that office, he had to transfer the reins because the government was kicked out. He cleverly added in the middle of this autobiographical repertoire- ' I am only cautioning'. This makes me wonder whether that was for the ears of Pranab Mukherjee or Sonia Gandhi. Whoever the intended recipient, he sure had the Babus-in-white entertained even as he thrust a direct attack at his residing-in-office counterpart on the budget saying- The tax break would not even gift me a bottle of whisky! Jassi Babu, I sympathize.

How dare you, you Yanks!

Dr. Abdul Kalam was recently frisked at the Indira Gandhi International Airport on a Newark-bound flight. FYI, Newark is not an indigenous spelling of New York, but a town in the latter. Anyway, the subject of the article is not a certain part of the huge North American country nor the U.S. flight which indulged in this allegedly 'preposterous' gimmick. If it was the airline's intention to grab a little attention though, it surely succeeded.

What IS preposterous about the whole episode,however, is the reaction of our beloved Ex-President. He has demanded an apology from the airline for treating him like a civilian passenger. He was after all the 'ex' de-facto supreme commander of the armed forces of the country. Our now jobless ex-president, tired of attending ribbon-cutting invitations at school annual functions and science laboratories, is now resorting to unworthy acts of grabbing attention in order to be back in the limelight once again. Our Parlimentarian babus, always happy to oblige, cannot stop singing 'Amen! So be it!'

Yet another Babu Basher!

This blog has been inactive for a while. Now that I am reveling in that beautiful phase of life which is the blogging universe's delight- read unemployment, this blog shall see the light of the day once again. And yes, I am a civilized citizen of this blogging universe and like every good civilized citizen I shall respect the rituals of the blogosphere. So, I commence to do the.back-from-the-dead Shree-Ganesh of this blog with the customary hows and whats and whys.

I used to work as a writer. Yes, I am one of those few neuron-damaged people who think they can make a living out of putting words in perfect grammatical sentences. Having dabbled in a fair bit of freelance writing for some magazines, I worked for a while as a web content developer. I was hired on the proposal that I would be given charge of an orphaned political blog. Instead, I was asked to write ‘well-researched’ articles on ‘Top ten ways to get bitten by a dog’ and ‘Top ten ways to be sad’. I was witnessing commercialization of writing in its crudest form and was being made a victim of the ‘show me the money’ game. Well, the plea of the directors couldn’t be ignored and I decided that charity- (read: not-for-profit writing) was the best way to keep alive the human in me.

So ‘ByMerlin' shall celebrate its return-to-life birthday on 24th July 2009. How does this blog promise to be different from the rest? Well, it doesn’t. Like the others in its realm, it, too, will indulge in self-righteous talk proclaiming the ludicrousness of others while offering no solutions of its own. It will often broach highly controversial subjects, delve into trivial inconsequential details and avoid sensitivity talks. It will call a man a man, a woman a woman and Karan Johar Karan Johar. It will accept only love mail with open hands and trash the rest. And yes, it will make the mistake of revealing that the author is a woman.

How dare you, you Yanks!

Dr. Abdul Kalam was recently frisked at the Indira Gandhi International Airport on a Newark-bound flight. FYI, Newark is not an indigenous spelling of New York, but a town in the latter. Anyway, the subject of the article is not a certain part of the huge North American country nor the U.S. flight which indulged in this allegedly 'preposterous' gimmick. If it was the airline's intention to grab a little attention though, it surely succeeded.

What IS preposterous about the whole episode,however, is the reaction of our beloved Ex-President. He has demanded an apology from the airline for treating him like a civilian passenger. He was after all the 'ex' de-facto supreme commander of the armed forces of the country. Our now jobless ex-president, tired of attending ribbon-cutting invitations at school annual functions and science laboratories, is now resorting to unworthy acts in order to be back in the limelight once again. Our Parlimentarian babus, always happy to oblige, cannot stop singing 'Amen! So be it!'