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Age of Consent & Anti-Rape Bill

By Abhay Gupta

There’s an old saying that I made up a few minutes ago about carrots and sticks. If you can’t make the
carrots any juicier, line the stick with barbed wire so it hurts more. And that’s presently what the government is in the process of doing with the remodeling of the current laws regarding rape and age of consent. By now, I’m sure everyone’s familiar with the infamous incident where a 23-year old woman was brutally gang-raped and tossed out of a moving bus in New Delhi on the 16th of December, 2012. The public demanded that the government do something in response to such a horrifying tragedy and, well, they’re doing something. They’re sharpening the stick. The carrot isn’t going to taste any different, after all. What, were you expecting the government to start doling out gift baskets and badges of merit for all the rapes you DIDN’T commit today?

What is the government doing about this, though? Have we really questioned whether the government’s actually taking the right steps towards curbing the number of incidents of rape and sexual brutality committed in our country every day? Let’s start with the restructuring of the laws regarding age of consent. As of this week, it’s still 18. There was a lot of commotion regarding the proposal to lower it down to 16 and all I could wonder was – How does that affect anything? Do sex offenders really ask for age proof before sexually violating someone?

The age of consent is basically the youngest one can be before they can lose their virginity. Anyone who takes the virginity of someone below the age of consent is guilty of committing ‘statutory rape’, regardless of whether consent is given or not, and is entitled to a free trip to prison, all expenses covered. The idea of changing the age of consent was to effectively curb the sexual exploitation of minors. There is some genuine legitimacy to this issue but it’s a huge waste of time if our primary agenda is to eliminate rape. What kind of statement is the government making when its solution to stopping rapists and sexual fiends is to lock up pedophiles and horny young people? If you have tigers loose in the city, you don’t solve this problem by hunting down stray dogs in the hopes that this will discourage the tigers from eating your children. You find yourself a hunter who knows the difference between a tiger and an aalsi kutta.

And don’t let that be the only thing that should bother you about the government’s Anti-Rape bill. There’s also stalking and voyeurism that’s under debate. First time offenders could face 1-3 years for voyeurism and up to three years for stalking. I’m not opposed to this. There are some really creepy people roaming our city streets and the last thing anyone wants is for any of these creeps to enact out my deepest, darkest fantasies. Umm, I meant theirs. Obviously.

But seriously, anyone could be a voyeur if poor judgment is applied. If you’re attractive enough, you may just have to get used to a flurry of ogling fans checking you out. There are some obvious boundaries one is allowed to have and too much staring is definitely creepy but if you’re going to enforce a law on it, you should damned well know how far a line you want to draw. I’ve known people who get into trouble with cops for driving after having a single glass of beer and that’s just made it clear to me that our government has a tendency to overcorrect an issue to a dangerous extreme when it can’t find an optimum solution.

On that note, have you ever considered what constitutes stalking? No, checking someone’s Facebook profile isn’t real stalking. But, hey, maybe it will be soon. We won’t know for sure until the government makes up its mind on how much stalking is too much stalking and when the persistent pursuit of a love interest crosses over from ‘endearing’ to ‘holy shit, get a restraining order’. Janata Dal’s Sharad Yadav, for example, suggests that this bill could ‘kill romance’ since it’s his belief that a man must ‘follow a woman’ till she notices him and reciprocates. Uh-huh.

Still, what amount of persistence is stalking? Could I send a woman to jail because she called me a hundred odd times over the course of a week? If I’m walking towards a certain destination and a woman’s walking the same way, some distance in front of me, should I overtake her or stop for a smoke break to avoid the possibility of going to jail over some misguided paranoia? Does that, effectively, make me just as paranoid? Thanks, government. We all feel much safer now.

The task at hand is a complicated, difficult one to solve, and the classic approach of introducing more terrifying penalties seems to have done little to deter close to a dozen men from brutally violating a woman to the point where her consequent death was a small mercy. It’s a grave problem that cannot be fixed simply by discouraging a handful of promiscuous teenagers and everyday voyeurs. If you feel, as I do, that our government can do more, don’t let the Anti-Rape bill circulate around such insignificant factors. Don’t let the December atrocity blow up into another sensation that got swept away underneath a rug of hollow solutions and helpless scapegoats. Remember – the next victim could very easily be you or someone you know.

Like The Smoke From My Cigarette

By Abhay Gupta

She's like smoke from a cigarette.
You know she's bad for you but you can't help but take her in.
She's addictive. She poisons you.
You know she'll eventually destroy you.
And, at the end of it,
She leaves as quickly as she came to you,
Making you crave for more.

She's like smoke from a cigarette,
She leaves with the wind,
You love the feel of her on your lips,
You love watching her envelop you in her presence,
She's hypnotic in her complexity,
She's mesmerizing in her movements,
You know you shouldn't love her but you will.

She's like smoke from a cigarette,
She'll choke the life out of you slowly,
And you'll wonder why you even do it.
But then just the smell of her reminds you,
That you'll never have the willpower to give her up!
You'll try to conquer her, and maybe it'll work for a spell,
But she'll have you ensnared once again."

| articles | twitter |

Simplicity Of Happiness

By Abhay Gupta

It's okay if you like Justin Bieber and not Pink Floyd. Listen to what you like.

It's okay if you like Jersey Shore but hate Game of Thrones. Watch what you like.

It's okay if your girlfriend isn't skinny or beautiful, so long as she makes you happy. Be with who you like.

It's okay if you've read all the Harry Potter books but aren't fond of Michael Crichton or Ayn Rand. Read what you like.

It's okay if you prefer shorts and t-shirts over shirts and jeans. Wear what you like.

It's okay if you know nothing about current affairs and everything about Marvel comics. Know what you like.

It's okay if you prefer a plain coke or juice over rum and whiskey. Drink what you like.

It's okay if your status update is dull and mundane instead of witty and interesting. Say what you like.

It's okay if you prefer movies over books, cartoons over Mad Men or 9gag over classic literature. Know what you like.

It's okay to have pipe dreams, fantasies and improbable desires. Follow what you like.

It's okay to be different, even if it comes at the cost of getting ostracized. Be who you like.

Life is short. Life is simple. Your preferences are your own, regardless of who's judging and labeling you. Hide behind a mask of fake interests if you want to fit in. Openly embrace what you love to find people who fit in with you. Be yourself as often as you want and you will always be happy.

Don't let someone else decide who you are. Do that for yourself. Do everything for yourself. Let people love you and love freely. Do what you like.

| articles | twitter |

Cheers to Democracy

By Abhay Gupta

You know what? I totally called it. Kapil Sibal is a tyrant. Well, fine, I can’t take credit for that. I’m sure I’m not the only one who spotted Sibal’s vendetta against internet freedom. I’m sure many of you have encountered these messages, or similar ones, when accessing your beloved torrent sites and your bookmarked porn hubs –

“This site has been blocked as per the instructions of Competent Authority”

I can’t say I wasn’t shocked. My initial reaction was to get out of home, track down said-competent authority and ***************************. What? Don’t tell me that wasn’t your immediate reaction.

But I’m going to ease up on Sibal this time because, for all his faults, he’s not the master-criminal to this heinous act of shackling the internet. The truth is that our government, as a collective body, is in love with the idea of being a democracy without actually understanding what it really means to be a democracy is. See, their arguments for screening our content and taking down websites like Vimeo, Torrentz and any number of porn websites is that it stands to offend the sensibilities of certain religious or secular groups. Here’s a fun question. When have we, as a collective population, not succeeded in doing that, intentionally or not? Or more specifically, what on earth does our own government know about defending sensibilities?

Let’s recap and try to remember how many of our kids couldn’t get into college because of the bill that made it mandatory for several quotas to get priority listing. We made the mistake of not having a distinct enough caste and our shiny 99 per cent marksheets were laughed away as our seat was given to some undeserving schmuck with an ‘OBC’ placard stapled to his head. Not that I have anything against OBC’s, or even have a proper idea of what injustices these poor people’s predecessors faced before I was born. It’s just that the government approached this the same way the American government tried to fight apartheid. By shifting the power balance to the wronged community instead of, you know, BALANCING it.

But I digress. As I’ve said multiple times before, the internet is a domain where people are free to express any opinion they so desire. The government’s argument is that there are various Facebook groups promoting ill-will towards secular groups, porn websites depicting religious deities and forums inciting people against political parties and this is cause of civil unrest within the nation. That’s all fine and dandy, dear government, but pause for a moment and understand that just because your carpet has a wine-stain on it doesn’t mean that the only feasible solution is to set the thing on fire. Blocking entire websites because of the stray offensive content on it is going to stir up nation-wide protests and possible riots and I’m sure I’m not the only one who sees the irony in this move. I’m also fairly confused as to why our government has a problem against piracy. I can somewhat understand America’s capitalist need for monopolizing their content, but why are we bothering? Whose sales are they going to affect? The road-side dvd-salesmen who can’t sell you their camrip knockoffs of movies because you’re perfectly content finding better quality on pirate bay?

Motive aside, another thing that’s laughable about this whole campaign is the method and approach. For starters, it is damn near IMPOSSIBLE to screen every single website and filter through potentially inflammatory material. For every one website that you shut down, twenty more have already circulated. The only end-result is that you’ve gone ahead and upset a whole number of communities who just wanted to watch a harmless cat video on Vimeo, only to find that MTNL, Reliance and other such telecommunication centers strongly disprove of your love for cat videos and probably trample kittens in their spare time. Now I hear Sibal’s been asked by Ghulam Nabi Azad, the Union health minister (yeah, I don’t know why he cares either), to assist in the formulation of the restrictions on the internet and how to go about making our lives miserable. Let’s all raise our middle fingers to these fine men in a lovingly sarcastic salute!

Before the decision to censor the internet, I found no reason why we had to march to China’s tune and give up being a democracy. Blocking Torrentz before the release of Don 2? Why? So that you can continue to hike the prices of movie tickets and make the cinematic experience that much more expensive? It’s like banning cycles or walking so that people started using more petrol. Is there a group on Facebook depicting Shiva as a pot-smoking philanderer? Well, shit, if only Facebook had an option that enabled us to REPORT IT AS OFFENSIVE. Then we wouldn’t have to turn to our mother government’s knees and cry about how our feelings got hurt!

Honestly, there isn’t anything wrong with the system as is. If enough people report a page, it goes down. For every ten people downloading a movie, there are still three people willing to pay full price to watch it on the big screen. For every hate-page towards a political group, there’s a political group rioting and proving the hate-groups right in every possible way. And, as a final kick in the ovaries, they’re attacking porn. The one thing we ALL universally love about the internet. For all the stupid decisions the government’s made, this HAS to be the kingpin of it all.

Bravo, dear Government. We may continue to have our taxes mishandled, our education system wrecked to a bleeding mess and corruption rampant amongst our governing bodies, but you’ve reminded us that nothing, and I mean NOTHING, is more important than Censorship of the internet, the media and all public opinion. Cheers to democracy!

| articles | twitter |

Reasons To Hate Indian Traffic

By Abhay Gupta

Does Traffic irritate you as much as it irritates me? What, it doesn’t? Either you have the tolerance of a Zen guru or I must really really hate traffic. True story. When you live in a city like Mumbai where the roads are narrow and driver’s licenses are available to 18 year olds like Polio drops are to little kids, you tend to realize how much you hate Indian drivers and their penchant for driving like your mother on a good day. Now I’ve started to notice recurring patterns (I have a lot of time to think about these things, in be-tween moving my car up an inch an hour) and I’ve decided that, one fine day, I will trick these crappy drivers into signing a ‘petition’ on my specially prepared Death Note (watch or read the manga if you haven’t. For ONCE, the Japanese have made something good and not weird).

I will now briefly categorize a list of things you will encounter on the road along with why they so royally suck.

RICKSHAWS
Rickshaw swarms, amongst many things, are the reasons I hate rickshaw drivers. Happens to me every time I’m driving back home in the middle of the afternoon. Devouring every square inch of road-space available to them and putting you in the frustrating position of “Should I bulldoze through? SHOULD I?” The annoying and most commonly known fact about auto rickshaws is that they’re the most reckless jag-offs on the street. This stems from the fact that their vehicles are small, easily manoeuvrable and as cheap as the compliments I dole out so freely. It also stems from the fact that rickshaw drivers are impatient, rash and in all probability, not breast-fed as children. Honestly, driving with high concentrations of alcohol in your blood isn’t nearly as bad as driving with high concentrations of idiocy in your blood, and rickshaw drivers regularly drive like they’re drunk on idiocy. I weep for days when there are rickshaw strikes because I tell myself that this is the end of rickshaws altogether and they keep coming back the very next day! It just hurts me in so many deep and irreparable ways!

PEDESTRIANS
Well, I can’t fully blame pedestrians for willingly offering themselves as sacrificial road-kill. I mean, there are so many areas where the line between pavement and road are completely blurred. Here’s the thing though. Even on streets with a clearly defined separation between walking space and driving space, pedestrians don’t seem to give a flying hoot if they’ve promoted themselves to a needless extra red light. Some of them will halt you with an open-palm as they cross your path. Some of them will halt you with an open-palm as they let a large group of people cross your path. Some of them will even stand there in the middle of your path just for the fun of making your life miserable. And it might just be me and my impressively terrible luck, but they always seem to do this when the bloody traffic light is green. I mean, come on. Seriously? You couldn’t find the time to cross when every impeding car was at a standstill? My favourite part is when they choose to randomly celebrate in the middle of the street every couple of weeks. It’s always some festival, or some wedding or some other pointless reason to clog up traffic. It’s always the same dress-code, the same music. And the music will make you head-bang. Is it metal? No! It’ll just you make you bang your head against your steering wheel and make me come up with ridiculous jokes like this.

TWO-WHEELERS
Is it just me or is the annual death toll for two-wheelers just not high enough? I really hate having to handle two-wheelers with kid-gloves and then instantly having to tolerate their verbal abuse as they narrowly avoid murdering themselves against my car. Don’t get me wrong, two-wheelers are awesome. They’re cheap, durable and have excellent mileage and are much easier to park. But then there is that widely increased risk of injury, death or douchebaggery. I’m going to emphasize that last part as the most serious risk that no two-wheeler should take lightly. Now, if you’re half-way good at handling yourself on a two-wheeler, you’ll never take these risks lightly. If you’re like practically the rest of the two-wheeler population, you’ll consider yourself an immortal stud of the street, free to ride as you please. I have once laughed for a full minute when I saw a motorcyclist fall over after stupidly attempting to slice through traffic. He didn’t die, of course, otherwise I would’ve laughed for two. And note: cyclists are not excused from two-wheeler douchebaggery. They’re probably worse, given the fact that they really shouldn’t even be on the road and the fact that they can crumple and die with even greater ease. And, hilariously enough, they take these risks even less seriously. Hurray!

ALL VEHICLES BIGGER THAN YOURS
Time to take a sip of my coffee laced with 100% pure hypocrisy. Just the way I like it. See, it’s easy to wail on two-wheelers until you realize that they simple suffer Smaller-Vehicle Syndrome. As a smaller vehicle, you naturally tend to want to move through traffic faster and more efficiently than bulkier more space-consuming vehicles. Two-wheelers fall under the same frustration (not saying they’re fully justified for being total douchebags. Just that they’re, at least partially justified for being total douchebags). Now to partially understand some of their tribulations recall every instance you get blocked off by a bus or a truck or a car that’s approximately the size of the former two. It can be pretty damn frustrating, right? They just don’t budge and they treat your vehicle like it’s completely invisible. And dammit, bigger vehicles can be such hogs when it comes to space distribution, aside from the fact that they don’t even have the courtesy of driving faster than you. Buses, for some strange reason, always want to ram you into a divider. I’ve always made a constant mental reminder to never drive alongside a bus unless I have a quick and easy opportunity to overtake it. Linger on for too long and you’re playing a losing game of Road Rash with them. As for bigger cars, understand that they’re probably also more expensive than yours which means they’re forced to drive that much safer, even if it comes at the cost of making your life miserable.

In short, there’s nothing to love about driving down anywhere when it’s not a rickshaw strike (god bless those days. Every single one of them) or when it’s not at an unearthly hour. From what I hear, it won’t be long before jetpacks and flying vehicular transport becomes a glorious reality! Of course, our traffic will most certainly blot out the sun and the resultant chaos (and there will be plenty of it) will result in a lot of crashed vehicles raining down along with paan-spit dropping on our heads like pigeon-shit. On the bright side, we could use the shade.

| articles | twitter |

Abhay Gupta
What about me? Well, I don't know really. I could be brooding and nihilistic or bouncing off walls like flubber on crack. I categorize and analyze everything because I get bored easy. I'm a tv buff, movie buff, comic fanatic, atheist and meme-literate. I follow the words of a wise and all-knowing philosiraptor who once said: If one enjoys wasting time, is that time really wasted? And finally, cheesecake.

A Stunted Generation

By Abhay Gupta

I have a big stick up my ass regarding today’s generation. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m an aged soul or a forty-something disgruntled old mutt either. It’s just that I grew up thinking that our generation was going to be a step-up from our previous generations. A generation that shakes things up and changes the way things are done, tossing aside the silly social restrictions and ass-backwards notions about how we must live our lives. You people and your facebook status updates rebelling against the system and talking about how You Only Live Once. You’re actually all lying hypocrites who are too busy conforming and adjusting to what your parents want instead of actually trying to adapt your own individualism. I grew up thinking that our generation was going to be better and adapt with the rapidly progressing world. Imagine my surprise when I realized that this generation’s a massive carbon copy of all our previous generations, except with a different colour scheme and an even larger need to suck.

Yeah sure. We’re not all that bad, right? I mean, the generation before us had to marry who their parents thought was appropriate or raved about the three choices of career streams that they had to choose. That’s changed now. We have so many more choices! Bullshit. We’re still stuck in that same fucking mind-frame. Here’s some examples that I’ve had the happy luxury of encountering in the last few years. There was this one person (For the sake of anonymity, we’ll call him Jalapeno Cheesecake) I used to know who was an intelligent, broad-minded individual who was funny, clever and had a worldly way of looking at things. I liked Jalapeno because he represented a difference in this generation that would contribute to setting a difference in the world. Jalapeno was dating this other close friend of mine, Dodney Rangerfield (names changed because she will kick my ass if I don’t) and had a very happy relationship. It’s just that one fine day, sweet Dodney told me she doesn’t know whether they’ll have much of a future or not because Jalapeno’s of a certain religion and his parents would object such a blasphemous union of love. She might have to convert or they might have to break up. Upon asking Jalapeno, he tells me “It’s not that I don’t believe in marrying for love and I love sweet Dodney. But I love my parents more and I wouldn’t want them to suffer all that judgment from the community for my own selfish reasons.”

Jalapeno, my dear lad, you might see this as a noble gesture of protecting your wards. It isn’t. The community can go fuck themselves. All you’re doing is carrying down the tradition of choosing religious compatibility over, you know, ACTUAL compatibility. I got to see another friend of mine, Bunny Soulevard, use the exact same ‘my poor dear parents worked so hard for me, it wouldn’t be fair for them to suffer so much from the community.’ You’re right, Bunny. It wouldn’t be fair. But your response to this is startling weak-hearted. Our need to conform to the larger community is so immensely great that we will actively sacrifice our own happiness to please the over-zealous conglomeration of drones that think they’re doing us a favour by accepting us as their own. And this isn’t just a religious thing either. If our parents strongly oppose a union, we bend over backwards, either begging them to accept our to-be soul-mate or ending things altogether for the sake of respecting our parents’ wishes.

A girl from our my college once told me that she picked this stream even though she had her heart set out to do something entirely different. It wasn’t like it was some ridiculously risky life-choice either. It was profitable and she knew she’d be very happy doing it. Instead she chose to be an engineer because her parents pushed her into it and now she sucks at it. I can’t pity this woman. It’s her own damn lack of cahonies and dedication that suppresses any amount of sympathy I should have for her plight. I recently met a woman, close to my age, who impressed me this time. Ringo Applefeet dropped out of her first year of college to follow her dreams in a different city. It’s a move most people would consider ballsy and incredibly risky, especially since she knew no one in the city and had very little platform to start out from. Today she’s a rapidly rising superstar in her industry, earning her own keep, paying her own rent and has established her own life, devoid of any external support or financial backing. She’s a prime example of what this generation needed to be and failed astronomically.

Don’t worry, folks. It’s not over yet. I get it. So long as you’re still under your parents’ wing, you’re under the obvious restriction of ‘my way or the highway’ and the highway’s a shitty place to set up shop unless you’re vending cigarettes. I get that a lot of you don’t have very liberal parents or come from households that are really tightly integrated into a community they don’t want to piss off. Here’s the thing though. There are three major things in your life that you can’t compromise or sacrifice for the benefit of people-pleasing: your future career, your future soulmate and your individualism. I mean, seriously, what else are you going to fight for? Kony 2012? Bitch please, signing an online petition, sharing a sensationalist video and facebook-spamming people

you don’t talk to won’t make you a social activist.

Fight for who you want to be and who you want to be with. Be the change you want to see in the world. Seriously, these aren’t just words. Stop making excuses and rise against everything that stunts this generation. Whatever you do, someone some where’s most definitely going to disapprove of it. It could be Osama Bin Laden’s posse or your next door neighbour. It doesn’t make a damned difference if you’re constantly going to be worrying about what people are going to say or who’s going to have a problem with it. Just do whatever it is you want to and deal with the consequences fearlessly and you will jumpstart a revolution of free-thinkers, happy individualists and people who dedicated themselves to their dreams without any regrets. Be a generation worth noticing. Be unique. Don’t suck.

| articles | twitter |

Writer's Note

By Abhay Gupta

Have you ever met a guy who introduces himself as a writer? They always have this narcissistic air of self-importance and elitism. I would know. My name is Abhay Gupta and I’m a writer. And I happen to be better than you.

Relax, I don’t really believe that. Honestly, I don’t think you can qualify yourself as a writer until you’ve written things that people can appreciate as good work. It’s pretty simple. You don’t attach an MD to your name just for knowing how to perform CPR or administering first-aid. You need to earn that glorious insigne in order to call yourself a writer and that requires incorporating a simple set of skills that differentiates you from a guy who writes. Well, what makes a good writer? Verbosity? A command over the English language? The ability to flawlessly plagiarize works of those who are well established in the field?

Well, let’s start simple. What are you writing? If you’re writing an article, you need the necessary rhythm and flow. Construction is the key here. Collect your thoughts and understand that paragraphs are not blocks of text that people use to make their articles look pretty and neat. They’re singular building blocks of information that construct the entire article. They need to consistently illustrate a point without disconnecting from the overall idea or theme of the article in question. At the same time, they need connectors so that the entire article flows in a smooth fluid manner. Don’t vomit your ideas all over the article, collect the similarly themed points and construct them within a paragraph. Pick a rhythm. Your written words are your readers’ dancing partners and it’s up to you to decide what music’s playing. You may provide the hottest prom date in the world with some great thoughts penned down but you can kill the mood if you lack rhythm. Like playing Tubthumping in the background.

The next step is to be clear about why you’re writing in the first place. Are you doing it because all the cool kids are doing it? Are you doing it because it’s easier than getting a bachelor’s degree in Engineering? (Nb: Just so you know, Abhay wrote this column and I helped with the editing and both of us write because we are disgruntled engineers to be!) Like everything else in the world, you put your best works out when you’re doing it because you’re passionate about writing. You feel for whatever it is you’re translating into text. Writers write because it’s their ideal and most channelled release of the ideas, thoughts and emotions that they have bottled up inside of them. It’s all about expression. Express all that you feel and think about what you’re writing and you’ll find that writing is really an effortless skill if you’re doing it for the right reasons. Paint a canvas with your words. Create a world of imagination and invite your readers into it by structuring your words in the most tantalising form possible.

While writing is undoubtedly a skill, a good writer will always recognize it as an art form. Are any of you reading this fans of art? Yeah, me neither. I don’t get it. Some paintings are just scribbly colours or abstract images that probably mean something profound but need a little explanation or the right amount of LSD to understand. Once, I walked into an art exhibition and there was a painting of a blue background and a giant red dot in the centre. That’s it. That was the whole painting. It’s like walking in to a Foo Fighters concert and finding Anu Malik singing on the stage! I asked the artist what it meant and he gave me some artsy jargon involving a tragic love story and the fight between good and evil. Honestly, I just saw a big fucking red dot in the middle of a lot of blue. My point to this is that any and every article is as open to subjectivity and opinionated interpretation as a painting would be. If you try too hard to make an article abstract and full of hidden meaning, you stand to alienate a lot of readers by confusing them silly. If you don’t put in the right amount of effort into it, you’ve made the writer’s equivalent of a finger-painting.

Finally, mould your own style. Understand your own strengths and weaknesses as a writer. If your vocabulary’s weak, don’t fret. Some of the best articles that I’ve read used the simplest words and sentence structures. The trick is to find a style that’s both natural for you and appealing to your readers. Adapt. Incorporate new things into your writing and pay attention to what works for both yourself and your readers. Never shun criticism in any form. Criticism is good. It means someone actually paid enough attention to your article to realize where it’s inherently weak. Remember that your articles are a reflection of your skills as a writer. If there are holes in your article, there are holes in your technique and you have to revise your technique if you want your future articles to get better. When you’ve grown into your own customized style of writing, you’ll find that you’ve established your signature and groove as a writer and it becomes a part of who you are.

So what have we learned today, folks? Is writing a skill or an art form? Is it structure more important or vision? Is it important to write the way you want to or to appease and please your readers? My personal opinion is a big black tick mark in the box next to ‘YES TO ALL’. Seriously, it’s like trying to answer “Does breadth contribute more than height does in calculating the area of a rectangle?” (Nb: That’s how good we are at engineering. Neither of us could come up with anything better than area of a rectangle!) Just write the way you want and work it out as you go along. That’s the fun of it all. And if you ever find yourself hitting writer’s block, understand that a true writer would see it as a momentary pause in their thought flow and not a full stop. We writers are obnoxious and pretentious and believe we’re better than everyone else because what we do is more than just scribble some fancy words for you to read during your bathroom breaks. We consider ourselves elite members of a society whose primal task is to influence the way you think using something as basic as a pen and paper. The pen truly is mightier than the sword. Unless you’re in an actual sword-fight, because then you’re a fucking idiot for bringing a Cellopoint to save your sorry ass against four and a half pounds of chiseled steel. Words of wisdom for you, kids.

| articles | twitter |

Kapil Sibal - The Congress Crusader

By Abhay Gupta

Recently, Kapil Sabil made a controversial decision to say “screw you” to India’s democracy and proposed censoring and monitoring our freedom of speech on the internet. He claims we made mean remarks about the Gandhis and their feelings were so badly hurt that he decided to seek and destroy internet trolls from saying anything more. Personally, I wish I had the power to strip a person of his freedom of speech because it would save me the trouble of having to say “shut the f*** up” every time they abused that freedom.

Now, honestly I don’t buy that Kapil Sabil is a retrogressive suck up who’s solely doing this to defend the sentiments of his precious Gandhi family and his beloved Congress. I mean, come on. The Gandhis are the Indian Kadarshians except none of them are hot and all of them have been given the power to rob our taxpayers. Everyone knows that and jokes have been flying about them ever since I was first taught how Indian politics works (taxpayer’s money = your own personal spending money). I believe that, while this old man is quite capable of being an ignorant tool who doesn’t understand the internet, he could actually be an incredibly devious bastard who had other ulterior motives behind this move. My mum cleverly pointed out that this whole Kapil Sabil issue is suspiciously timed to emerge mere weeks before Anna Hazare’s movement was to gather speed this month.

Now trying to work an algorithm to track trolls trolling good ol Sonia Gandhi and the rest of her bizarro brady bunch wouldn’t be very practical, given the fact that the internet consists of people who don’t give a f*** about the Congress family and people who give plenty of f**** about the family. Finding real haters and trolls would be tedious, wasteful and extremely boring. Anna Hazare, on the hand, is gaining popularity faster than Jesus did when he first turned water to booze. And what self-respecting government would put up with a punk like Anna trying to thwart their plans for mass-extortion? It’s bad for business and whacking him would make him a martyr. SO, practically, you make up some bullshit excuse about filtering ‘offensive material’ like a picture of my penis with the words “Visual Representation of Kapil Sibal” tattooed across the shaft, and secretly build an algorithm to filter out anything pro-Hazare and put an end to his reign of anti-corruption. Very sneaky, Mr Sibal. I shake your hands with my jizzing hand and wonder how quickly you’ll stay in power, now that you’ve successfully pissed off the Indian internet population.

Personally, I don’t care much. Mr Sibal is attempting to pull a China on us and slowly convert our democracy into full-blown communism. I mean, sure, we breed like bunnies, eat buckets full of rice and come under the general category of ‘Asian’ but we, as Indians, are distinctly different because of our bigger addiction to democracy. Sure we drive like assholes. Sure, we’re racist to all our little internal segregations of regional identity, religion and even the city we belong to. But the day the government decides to filter our free internet porn and our freedom to Facebook or tweet our opinions is the day that people like Sibal will cower behind his beloved Congress to save himself from a unanimous public decision to lynch the f*** out of him. Read this, Mr Sibal and take as much offence as you possibly can. Trust me when I say I mean every bit of it. And if that wasn’t offensive enough, then feel free to assume that I’m waking up in the morning with the words, “Screw you, Sibal” and a cup of black coffee.

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Four Stages Of A Relationship

By Abhay Gupta

Relationships can be complicated things and I’m sure most of you will agree, especially if your relationship status is “It’s complicated”. Some of you will swear by your partners like they shit rainbows and won a dozen nobel prizes in the time that it took me to write this. Some of you will bitch about your partners like they blackmailed you to be with them. In any case, I’ve come to realize that a majority of relationships have a definite recurring pattern and can be dissected into stages. Now, like the five stages of grief, any of these stages can either recur or follow a different sequence, but usually this is how most of them definitely start out.

STAGE 1: The Honeymoon

I’m sure all of you are familiar with the ever-famous honeymoon phase of relationships. That period of time when you fuck like bunnies and your partner’s the epitome of perfection. It’s a glorious period of time and, so long as it remains untarnished, it’s the best time of your life. You take dozens of pictures, put them up on Facebook and give them ridiculously love-soaked captions like “Ma pwincess!!!!!! <3<3<3<3<3<3”

Relish this stage because it’s usually pretty damn short and when it burns out it’s gone for good.

STAGE 2: The Conflict

Photo Credit - Swagat Yadav

Ah, now this is when the bubble of perfection finally pops. This is the stage when you finally begin to learn all the annoying little things about the other person. It could be the way they bitch about everything that goes in their life, in excruciatingly painful detail. It could be the mole that you didn’t notice while fornicating and now repulses you. It could be the incessant nagging or the way they deal with simple issues or their driving. It’s the time when all their little flaws and all the little things begin to bother you.

You could tackle it by pointing it out a couple of times or finding elaborate methods to ignore it like switching off the lights when you’re in bed together or gritting your teeth until they shut the fuck up. The minute you pop a blood vessel every time they sing will be the moment when you’ve realized that your honeymoon stage is officially over.

STAGE 3: War

You know that phrase that people spurt out whenever you get the dick end of the stick? All’s fair in love and war? Love and war both follow a certain pattern and this stage is definitely the ugliest side of relationships. While the prior stage deals with collecting and learning reasons to hate the other person, this one deals with finally tripping a trigger for it all. You’re finally done pretending her singing brightens up your day. You’re finally done fake-laughing at all his unfunny jokes. It’s the time when the boxing gloves come out and you’re constantly at each other’s throats over all the little things that aggravate you. The ratio of fights to sex drastically rises and you find yourself at a point where you’re dating a dangerous enemy; an enemy you’ve shared a lot of sensitive information with.

If your foundation’s weak enough, the urge to breakup will overwhelm everything but if it’s not then you’re relishing every victory and sourly enduring every loss. On the upside, the balancing act is over and you can finally let loose everything that you’ve bottled up inside.

STAGE 4: The Turning Point

A very crucial stage which will either make or break your relationship. It’s the time when you’re finally faced with all of the things that you hate about your partner and decide if your love for them will be enough. You finally weigh out the pros and cons of being with your partner and ask yourself whether you’re willing to see this continue or throw in the towel. Of the two results, the obvious one is when you decide it’s run its course and sever the relationship. If you decide to stick with your partner, however, then it’s the time when you’ve reached a compromise of sorts that allow you to continue the relationship in relative harmony. The war is over and you’ve finally decided to work together as team and strive to constantly make concessions, compensations and corrections to keep the boat floating.

The makers of strong marriages. The parent of every divorce. The turning point is a time of deep reflection, introspection and evaluation and must never be taken lightly, lest it leave a crazy angry bitch outside your house with a shotgun.

Good friendships tend to go through the four stages of companionship as well, but usually involves long-drawn out honeymoon stages and conflict stages with relatively short war periods. Romantic involvements have a tendency of embracing the ugly stuff much quicker and much longer than friendships would. That’s the defining difference between the two, other than the crazy amounts of sex. The best anyone can do is prepare for these stages to follow through in any randomized duration per stage and hope that you can prolong stage 1 and 2 for as long as you can before shit gets sour. And remember kids, you can either be right or get laid. Never both.

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Fawke You

“Remember remember,

The Fifth of November,

The gunpowder, treason and plot,

I know of no reason,

Why the gunpowder treason,

Should ever be forgot.”

Happy Guy Fawkes Night, everyone! Yes, time to put on your Guy Fawkes masks, buy a truckload of firecrackers and drink wine to celebrate the night that eight conspirators were put to death for treason and for the night hugely celebrated by the eponymous V from the movie V for Vendetta.

So what is the real significance behind this night? Well, I guess it’s time for a little history lesson then. Gather around, children. I’m going to tell you a tale of men who became legends of their time. Once upon a time, during the start of the 17^th Century, Great Britain saw the rise of a new ruler, known as King James VI of Scotland and King James I of England and Ireland. Like most kings of England, he was a pompous arrogant douche, who pronounced butter as “bu’er” and had really bad dental. Following his ascension to the throne, a lot of people expected governmental changes, especially the English Catholics who had been repressed and persecuted for their beliefs. They were, sadly, disappointed by the king’s response which involved him promptly telling them to “bugger off” and “eat his fluffy shorts.” (some citation needed).

But don’t blame the king entirely. Times were pretty crap before his ascension to power. The Parliament, as a whole, had decades of notoriety for oppressing the non-conforming English Catholics. The previous rulers imposed such penalties as fines for recusancy (refusal to attend Anglican services) with repeat offenders faced imprisonment and even execution. Catholicism was, more or less, forbidden and anyone practicing it would face torture and severe prosecution. The monarchs at the time had a real stick up their asses for anyone who didn’t follow their religion.

Enter Robert Catesby, a dashing tall and handsome young man who was described as a good swordsman and a real player with the ladies. He was a pretty cool guy and very non-douchey. He also happened to be English Catholic and found what the government was doing to be very “uncool”. So he gathered a bunch of his buddies, namely Evarard Digby, Robert Wintour, John Grant, Thomas Bates, Thomas Wintour, Ambrose Rookwood, Robert Keyes, Thomas Percy, Christopher and John Wright, Hugh Owen and Guy Fawkes, and reported told them “Bros, seriously, these guys are totally damping our buzzes. Let’s fuck their shit up.”

And so they did. They planned to have King James killed and have his nine-year old daughter, Elizabeth, on the throne since she was Catholic and way cooler. So, on the 5^th Of November, 1605, while everyone sitting in the House of Parliament, including King James, was together the conspirators planted 36 barrels of gunpowder which not only kill their asses but also completely level the House of Parliament into nothingness. They were, however, caught before the explosives could go boom. Some died in pursuit. The rest were tried for treason, prosecuted and consequently sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered. And thus, that night is forever remembered, as the night 13 bros attempted to set off the coolest of most epic fireworks display the world would ever see.

The Guy Fawkes thing also blew up pretty big. The Guy Fawkes mask consisted of a pointy white mask with eyebrows, a pointy beard and a wicked cool smirk. Poor kids of those days would wear the masks and say, “A penny for the guy.” This act of defiance was of such epic proportions that it eventually set off a revolution of sorts against the oppressive rulers who had a thing against Catholics. Even today, it’s being used as a symbol for defiance against retrogressive impositions of law that infringe the rights and freedoms of people. For all those people who still haven’t seen V for Vendetta, do so now. It’s a modern day adaption of the infamous story of conspiracy, except it focuses on a singular character and his chick sidekick and it really proves that alliteration, top hats with a Guy Fawkes mask and knives are pretty damn cool.

So celebrate tonight by blowing up the parliament while loudly playing the 1812 Overture by Peter Illych Tchaikovsky on full volume and putting on your Guy Fawkes masks. Tonight is a night of Gunpowder. Tonight is a night of Treason. Tonight is the night of Plot.

Tell me. Do you like music, Mr Finch?

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Action Cartoons

By Abhay Gupta

Back when I was still a kid, we had a fixed formula for what made an awesome cartoon show. This went beyond your run of the mill usual colourful, brainlessly slapstick cartoons like Bugs Bunny and any other Looney Toons products. The cartoon qualifying for awesomeness managed to combine that spectacular animation with fast-paced, adrenalin-pumping action. And this is before Anime made it big in India. I’m talking about shows like Swat Kats, Centurions, Galtar and the Golden Lance, Ninja Robots, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, etc. You also had shows like Powerpuff Girls, that were action-packed but silly, as well as shows like Captain Planet, which attempted to teach kids values like recycling and living green. Personally, blowing stuff up with massive guns and shiny swords appealed to me more than using elemental super-powers to clean up the environment.

The formula was pretty simple. Have a generic character and give him a shiny weapon. Throw in a dinosaur or a robot or a ninja, or even fighter jets and cool gadgets. Mix them up in permutations if you have to. Have exaggerated fight scenes followed by another generic good-versus-evil showdown each episode with the good guys triumphing and yelling out catchphrases like Razor’s “Bingo” or Captain Planet’s even cheesier “The power is yours!” or even He-man’s “I have the power!” It’s the perfect way to appeal to young testosterone-driven boys who grow up to become young testosterone-driven men with libidos. Action cartoons were, by far, the one genre of cartoons that appealed to all male members of our generation. Who amongst us doesn’t occasionally YouTube the action cartoon oldies of our time now and then just to reminisce about how freaking awesome growing up was?

I mean, sure, school was tough. Homework was dull, teachers nagged, parents exacerbated every situation by nagging some more. Playing cards and fitting in with social groups was either too expensive or too difficult to understand. What better way to connect with your peers than to discuss what happened in the last episode of Swat Kats, breathlessly re-enacting exciting fight scenes and discussing whether Razor or T-Bone was more badass? In my opinion, T-Bone was decidedly more badass, if only because he was far more underrated than his partner and I have a thing for underdogs. Or, if you’d prefer, underkats.

Even today, I wish I had my own jet in a secret base under my building. Or a suit that I could attach a whole bunch of guns, missiles and transportation devices to. Don’t we all, sometimes? I mean, it’d be so useful to fight off bullies if you could instantly attach an RPG to your arm or summon a super-powered eco-freak with a green mullet. And that love for violent content and action grows with us. As adult men, 300, Transformers, Terminator Salvation, Jurassic Park, X-Men, Ninja Assassin and Gladiator are just a small sample of the kind of movies we’d put on our top ten lists. And, going by the trend, they each have one or more of the following qualifying items: shiny weapons, dinosaurs, robots, ninjas, fighter jets (that turned into robots), a good-versus-evil battle sequence and lots of stuff getting blown up. Action cartoons are every young boy’s initiation process into the fast-paced themes of the all-general action genre that is, inherently, male-bait.

Cowabunga, anyone?

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Latest Issue

Age of Consent & Anti-Rape Bill

Like The Smoke From My Cigarette

Simplicity Of Happiness

Cheers to Democracy

Reasons To Hate Indian Traffic

A Stunted Generation

Writer's Note

Kapil Sibal - The Congress Crusader

Four Stages Of A Relationship

Fawke You

Action Cartoons

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