The point is all the news happens away from the screaming headlines and screeching anchors. But tradition is tradition; We have to fill space. So, as a responsible journalist, who has the responsibility to call himself responsible, here I present the collation of events of 2010, which you obviously missed in the newspapers because you were reading them.

January

The New Year arrives. So does the New Decade. Or did it? Whether 2010 is the birth of a new decade or does it mark the end of one? It’s an acrimonious debate.  The Opposition seeks JPC (Joint Parliamentary Calendar). The ruling coalition says the PAC (Politically Accepted Calendar) is enough. Both decide to bunk Parliament in protest, unmindful of the fact that it’s not in session. This sets the tone for the rest of the year and probably the decade, which may have ended or just begun.

Arundhathi Roy writes to the UN seeking permanent membership for Maoists in the UN Security Council. The courier guy refuses to ferry the letter as it weighs several thousand kilograms over the allowed weight for a parcel. The letter, for the record, runs into 32 kilometres. Arundhathi Roy tries sending the letter through email. Telecom Ministry tells the Supreme Court Arundhathi Roy’s email has eaten up all the allocated 2G spectrum.

Sachin Tendulkar creates a record for being Sachin Tendulkar for the maximum number of hours in the history of international cricket (in all the three formats of the game). Asked to compare him with Donald Bradman, Sunil Gavaskar says it is an unfair situation. ‘In his playing days, Donald Bradman never had the pressure of having himself compared with Sachin,’ the original Little Master reasoned.

Ajmal Kasab asserts he was not a terrorist and was merely stringing along, carrying a machine gun, with the Mumbai 26/11 attackers. Barkha Dutt, who is at hand, takes copious notes.

February

Suresh Kalmadi says a sum of Rs 25,200 crore has been allocated to hire a time machine for Commonwealth Games organisers to have a look at how much toilet paper was bought during the conduct of 1896 Athens Olympics. When asked where the time machine was, Kalmadi pointed to a Raleigh Cycle parked at the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium. ‘Pretty timed machine, na?’ he confidently said.

Technology giant Apple announces the impending launch of new breakthrough product that helps save precious spectrum by blocking calls from corporate lobbyists (ibad).

Telecom Ministry tells the Supreme Court that Facebook’s Farmville game has eaten up all the allocated spectrum.

BCCI serves notice on Kings XI Punjab and Rajasthan Royals, accusing its respective owners Preity Zinta and Shilpa Shetty of gross impropriety of having acted in Akshay Kumar movies. Lalit Modi says he was just stringing along with the two franchises. Barkha Dutt takes note of it.

March

India commits itself to a $ 300 million aid to several African nations, where several hundreds of innocent men and women have become indigent just by offering to transfer huge tranche of money to you because you have an email id. India’s diplomatic overtures in Africa pay rich dividends as Burundi, notwithstanding the fact that it is neither a member of the UN and nor does it have a government, supports India’s candidature to be a candidate for a permanent seat to the UN Security Council cafeteria.

Tickets of Rajnikanth starrer Enthiran, to be released later in the year, are leaked on the internet. The Telecom Ministry tells the Supreme Court that Rajni fans have eaten up all the allocated spectrum.

Unveiling the new education policy, Union Minister Kapil Sibal announces free marks to all those school students who cannot attend classes. He also says grades will be provided instead of the dreaded salary for 10th and 12th standard teachers.

In a bid to cleanse the system and restore the much-needed decency and decorum, Rakhi Sawant is appointed a Supreme Court judge.

April

IPL Kochi comes into being. But it runs into immediate problems, as Sreesanth announces his desire to play for it. Shashi Tharoor, who has got nothing to do with the IPL Kochi franchise, saus he is just stringing along with Sunanda Pushkar, and for further proof, ties the knot with her. Barkha Dutt duly notes it down.

US diplomats send reports to Washington on the propensity of the Indian Foreign Minister to wear toupees. It’s immediately christened as ‘Wig’ileaks.

In a much-needed boost to the Indian economy and the sagging rupee, RBI unveils new symbol for the Indian rupee. The Telecom Ministry tells the Supreme Court that the email forwards announcing the new rupee symbol have eaten up all the allocated spectrum.

Amitabh Bachchan gets the National Best Actor award for his portrayal of a youngster ridden with progeria, a disease where he technically inherits all the old age genes. ‘It’s a remarkable performance considering the fact that in real life Amitabh has overcome the grief of his son Abhishek suffering the exact opposite of progeria, unable to inherit even a single molecule of acting gene from his dad,’ the award selection committee said in its citation.

May

In Tamilnadu, the local BJP, preparing itself for the elections in 2011, announces that it is ready for an alliance with any like-minded party that manages to locate its address.

Extreme hot weather conditions prevail across India, while the Telecom Ministry tells the Supreme Court that the heat might have evaporated up all the allocated spectrum.

CWG head honcho Suresh Kalmadi files a police complaint as a huge stadium, apparently constructed to accommodate over one lakh spectators, goes missing. Kalmadi  vows to capture the pickpocket behind the daring heist.

Reacting to banking crisis all over the world, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee tells Parliament that India may not feel the problem as most people here these days depend more on the ATMS than on the banks.

June

Monsoon arrives on time, but there is still a water crisis, as director Maniratnam’s movie Ravanan is released around the same time.

Maoists are an integral part of India, succinctly asserts Arundhathi Roy in a 76,098676-worded essay. The Hindu alone publishes it and also writes a dense editorial on the whole matter. Rahul Gandhi naturally complains of the Hindu terror.

Doordarshan bags the exclusive rights to re-telecast the live recordings of the soccer World Cup of 1988. After every newspaper points that there was no football World Cup held in 1988, the Prime Minister appoints a committee to file a report on whether it is a scam worthy of further denial. The Union Telecom Ministry tells the Supreme Court that no amount of spectrum allocation can save Doordarshan.

Vir Sanghvi puts out a column on two warring brothers. Queried on that, Sanghvi retorts that it his review of the film Deewar, albeit dressed up.

July

Swami Nithyananda pulls off a miracle that only evolved sadhus can: Clad in saffron robes, he is magically caught with his pants down. Actress Ranjitha says she was in Nithyananda’s ashram for true love. ‘True love means never having to wear sari, na?’ she said.

Pakistan cricketer Salman Butt is caught offering to fix a World Cup match. Commenting on it, an ICC spokesperson said: ‘Initially we thought this to be pretty routine stuff for a Pakistan cricketer. But things got a bit bizarre when we realized that the offer was for a match played in the 2003 World Cup.’  Pakistan cricket authorities quickly ordered an inquiry and also suspended Hafeez Kardar, the country’s first cricket captain who is long dead now.

Indian External Affairs Ministry puts out a press release saying that the SAARC summit is put off. But there is no SAARC summit scheduled. ‘We knew there was no summit set to happen. But we still didn’t want to take any chance. With SARS or SAARC, it’s better to be safe than be sorry,’ said an Indian External Affairs spokesperson from Switzerland. (Foreign Affairs officials in New Delhi are known to repair to Switzerland for their daily morning briefing).

The Union Telecom Ministry says all the allocated spectrum allocation may have been eaten up by the rats at the North Block.

August

Octopus Paul, the underwater soothsayer who captures the imagination of the world by correctly predicting Spain will win the soccer World Cup, doesn’t foretell the fortunes in the cricket World Cup. ‘Sorry. Pakistan is involved,’ is the gist of the noise it made before it chose to commit suicide.

Italian fugitive Ottavio Quattrocchi is the special invitee for the Independence Day parade. Later the CBI sleuths reveal that though they could identify him, but did not arrest him because they did not know his spelling. ‘There was no way we could have prepared even an FIR,’ an exasperated CBI officer said. ‘We saved the country from a major embarrassment,’ he added sagely.

Indian hockey team goes to an international tournament. It turns out that the team has been selected without any goalkeeper. DD commentator Anupam Ghulati, who had been sent there without any mike (budget constraints), doubles up as the goalkeeper. India loses 75-0 to Costa Rica, which for the record, did not participate in the event.

The Union Telecom Ministry says all the allocated spectrum allocation may have been eaten up by their effort to explain all the spectrum allocation.

September

Commonwealth Games are a huge success, especially on the television. It is later known that the DD had inadvertently telecast feeds from the 1984 Olympics (wherever it was held).

More power for the judiciary. After Rakhi Sawant, Dolly Bindra seems to be in the running for a post in the Supreme Court.

Sachin Tendulkar signs a multi-crore contract will all the major companies across the globe. Tendulkar, who gets roughly Rs 35,0000 crore, says that he is accepting all the money due to his sheer love of cricket. The nation goes misty-eyed listening to him.

The Union Telecom Ministry tells the Supreme Court that Tendulkar may have bought all the allocated spectrum with the spare change in his pocket.

October

Barack Obama, the inspiring and intelligent US President, arrives in India, and discusses important far-reaching international happenings with a group of seasoned college and school students. Later they tag him in their Facebook photos.

Vice-President’s rule imposed in Karnataka. But since nobody recalls who the country’s Vice-President is. So the state of limbo continues in the State of Karnataka.

Pakistan wicketkeeper Zulqarnain Haider goes missing just ahead of the finals against South Africa in Dubai. Pakistan board officials, who fly out to Dubai immediately, smother the crisis by borrowing a pair of wicketkeeping gloves from a local schoolboy.

When the Supreme Court demands an answer as to what happened to all the allocated spectrum, the Union Telecom Ministry asks: ‘Whether phone-a-friend option is allowed?’

November

Some of the Indians, who don’t perform well at the Asian games in Guangzhou, take comfort from the fact that the medals they won at the Commonwealth Games luckily had the ‘Made in China’ mark. A small scam of a few thousand of crores follows over the minting of medals for the Commonwealth Games emerges. But the media chose to string along much to the satisfaction of Barkha  Dutt.

Ratan Tata moves the Supreme Court against publishing the ‘letters to the editors’ in the media as it invaded the privacy of individual editors.

A song from Kamal Haasan’s new movie Manmadhan Ambu runs into trouble due to some contentious lyrics. An unfazed Kamal later tells the press that he is happy that at least there is somebody who understands the meaning to actually feel offended. ‘Even to me it didn’t make any sense. But since it was K S Ravikumar’s movie I didn’t bother much. But now it turns somebody has found meaning in it to feel offended. It only shows the power of true art and a false artist,’ he says quoting Aristotle or some such.

Union Telecom Ministry tells the Supreme Court that the all the allocated spectrum is…, but before it can open its mouth the court is adjourned.

December

World leaders at the International Climate Talks in Cancun discuss the ways and means to control green gas emissions and also depletion in the world water resources. All the nations unanimously agree to ban Mani Ratnam from making any more movies. Half of Amazon’s waters is required to shoot one song in Mani’s movie, according to a statistic released at the meet.

A R Rahman announces an international rap album on Thiruvalluvar composed solely with the vowels of the English language. Or at least that is how it sounded.

Ayodhya imbroglio, with a crucial verdict in the middle of the year, threatened to infuse a sense of communal crisis in the country, but the government deftly tackled it by raising the prices of onion, which everyone will confirm is a secular vegetable.

Entertainment tax waived on Digvijay Singh, and he can now go with his show anywhere, anytime.

The Union Telecom Ministry tells the Supreme Court that there was no loss to the national exchequer due to the spectrum allocation. ‘All the money was actually recovered through the phone bills that Niira Radia ran up,’ the court was told.  Barkha Dutt strings along in happy unison with Vir Sanghvi.

A year, in which the chief protagonists, among others, are Barkha Dutt, Niira Radia, Dolly Bindra, Rakhi Sawant, Sunanda Pushkar…I don’t know about you, but I am already looking to move to 2011.

©2012 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.

The coverage of the IPL has been so comprehensive that even a man in the street can tell you now with authority as to what brand of inner-wear Lalit Modi sport to inside his bespoke suits or whether Sunanda Pushkar and Shashi Tharoor use…well, forget it, this is getting too intimate.

The point is we are all so well fed on the IPL that we know everything about it, except the part that is shady —- that is to say all parts of it. The round-the-clock frenzy on television over the murky sideshow in the IPL must go down in history as those moments that were accompanied by round-the-clock frenzy. Beyond this, nothing is clear.
Here is what happened on three main English news channels. What you are going to read may sound silly and stupid. But understand, satire has its limitations. The reality was far worse.

Times Now

Arnab Goswami: We can now confirm to the viewers that this channel is the first one to break the news this afternoon after breaking news in the morning and also breaking news last night in the continuing saga of rapidly unfolding events of fast breaking news for the benefit of viewers of this channel.

We now have on the phone line our chief political editor who has been constantly tracking all that is happening on the cricketing arena for the last 20 years or so (To the correspondent on the phone line) Okay, tell us what breaking news do you have for the viewers of this channel that has been breaking news in breaking news?

Correspondent: Arnab, our sources in the Home Ministry, which has been probing cricket events, have just confirmed to us to that the latest developments that we have been breaking to the viewers of this channel are indeed confirmed. We can also tell the viewers of this channel that we break only confirmed news. Back to you, Arnab

Arnab Goswai: Indeed it is a very damning piece of information. It has been a momentous period and the time has come to ask the question that every cricket fan in every corner of this country who has been watching this channel is dying to ask in the light of what has been unfolding before us in the last week ever since we first reported the first-ever reported ….. and as I am speaking to you, we have more breaking news coming in from our chief cricket correspondent who has been keeping track of politics for the last 20 years…

CNN IBN

Rajdeep Sardesai: As the clamour for the nationalisation of the IPL gets louder and louder, CNN-IBN has learnt from extremely reliable sources in the External Affairs Ministry, which takes care of cricket played across the globe, that the government has decided to completely internationalise the IPL and bring it under the ambit of the UN. For the latest on this development, we are joined in by our sports editor who is in charge of foreign affairs.

Correspondent: Rajdeep, indeed sources close to the development aver that the government has moved close to the idea of internationalising the IPL in the face of mounting concerns in Parliament. With heavyweights like Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav, who are neither allies nor rivals but wouldn’t mind if Ministerial posts are offered to them, making it clear that they want to do something to the IPL including banning it, the government has veered down to the view of internationalising cricket and pushing it to the UN.

Rajdeep: To get a true perspective on this new turn, we have now with us, okay he never gets anywhere out of the studio,  Suhel Seth, who is an expert in being an expert on all matters whenever a mike is proferred near him.
Suhel Seth: This is backdoor cronyism. The government seems to have bowed to the pressures of the lobby that wanted the IPL banned.

Rajdeep: How does IPL being taken to the UN amount to it being banned?

Suhel: (Shaking his head and dishevelling his already dishevelled hair further), Rajdeep, who heads the UN? It’s Ban. So taking IPL to UN is prima facie, not to speak ipso facto, banning it.

Anyway, the way out of this mess is more clarity. The need of the hour is transparency, especially since Shilpa Shety and Priety Zinta are involved in this. As far as Sunanda Pushkar goes, let Shashi Tharoor bother about transparency. But any way, her case is a see-through.

NDTV

Barkha Dutt: According to reports just in, the Congress has made it clear that the IPL mess has to be cleaned at the earliest.  In fact Congress sources are telling us that Sonia is discontented with the developments that has brought disrepute to the game and also seen several thousand crores of rupees flow to the NCP. It is also learnt that Rahul Gandhi is unhappy with the state of affairs. (Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, for his part, continued to maintain a facial expression that means to mirror Sonia’s anguish. Of course, Barkha did not say this).

We have in our studios, Shashank Manohar, the president of the BCCI, which is supposed to run the affairs of cricket in this country.

Barkha: Mr Manohar, Hasn’t IPL done more harm to cricket than develop it?

Shashank: The game of cricket is…

Barkha (interjecting): So you mean to say cricket is just a game; if so how do you explain the crores and crores of rupees flowing to the game that has caused anguish to Sonia, Rahul, and perhaps others?

Shashank: Money and market forces….

Barkha (interjecting): You are suggesting that the market is forcing things upon your organisation? Are these forces inimical to the nation’s secularism and Sonia Gandhi (and Rahul Gandhi)?

Shashank: Modi is….

Barkha (naturally interjecting): Ok, without needing to put any words into  his mouth, Shashank has eloquently stated that Modi’s presence is detrimental to the country’s secular fabric and leather.

(clang, cling, bang …sound of TV screens being smashed to smithereens in many households).

©2012 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.

Another important aspect when it comes to weighty compilations of this nature is how to include the word ‘definitive’ into the narrative. All things considered, consensus emerged inside me that ‘definitive’ has to definitely feature in the heading especially since many other words with ‘D’s also hang around. Luckily we journalists don’t write history, otherwise you will find plenty of articles like ‘Bipasha Basu in Backless Beachwear’ included just for the sake of rhythm.

And then the challenge was how to do justice in words to the enormity of the 10 years, which is more than 3650 days, which is more than 87600 hours, which is more than 5256000 minutes. And then and there I decided I will not do justice.

What you read below may not make much sense, and that I assure you, is what you will feel if you tried to grasp any meaning from the past decade. This was the decade that began with the Y2K joke, which ten years later continues to haunt the public, as to: What the heck was it?

So we begin with, okay you read it below:

Technology

Cell phones: The cute convenient thingies have completely revolutionised the grammar of modern communication system by empowering the poor and weaker sections of the society with compelling technology and innovations they absolutely have no need for or have no clues about. The beauty of modern cellular phones, which are enterprising tools in emergency, is that they come packed with so much facilities and functions that unfailingly don’t work in an emergency. With cell phones now even a humble, nondescript, son of the soil is acquainted with top-end technology terms like ‘no signal’ ‘battery charge nil’.

The arrival of cellular phones has also now made it possible to immediately reach an indigent farmer in a remote village in, say, Thanjavur, with the helpful information that the pizza outlet, which has no presence in the entire district, is making a special festive discount package of buy 2, pay for 4 offer. This is the power of spam messages, which according to precise scientific data called guessing, make up 543% of all mobile phone information traffic.

Laptops:  From the enigmas that filled the entirety of a room, computers have gone thin and nifty with laptops that are easy to carry and easier to lose. The power of technology is that laptop thefts are now a bigger industry than laptop manufacturing.

The humble PCs, which took roughly the time that a girl needs to reach puberty to just boot up, and which tied you down to a place, were this decade replaced by the handiness of the power-packed laptop that not only helps you to move around but also clamours for ‘tech support’ in remote locations. For, the first rule of laptop running is that it stops running the moment it realises that help is not nearby.  Luckily, help in the form of ‘Tech support’ is forever available in the form of ‘canned music’, which is what you will be forced to hear life-long if you happen to call Tech Support, who programmed to remain ‘busy attending other customers’.

Internet, email, Twitter, Facebook: When this decade arrived the internet was at its infancy, and now when the decade wounds up, the world wide web has grown in ways that were unimagined, but without in any manner affecting its prime purpose: Propagation of porn. The other core competency area of pointless email forwards has now become a multi-billion dollar industry in itself.

Emails, the quintessence of the internet, have helped shorten the distance between people, and it is now very much in the realm of possibility for an ordinary and unpretentious worker in Nigeria to pass on his talent, which is to casually con an over-eager gent in Pondicherry with bogus money transfer deals.

Shashi Tharoor would have been just another Minister with a portfolio and a siren-fitted car that kept him away from the masses and swine flu, but with social media platforms like Twitter, Shashi Tharoor is able to be directly in touch with democracy, defined as chaos and more trouble for himself.

At a plebeian level, too, social media tools provide the emotional space for an individual to unburden to a receptive world his or her inner-most personal ideas or deeply resonant private thoughts like, ‘I am feeling sleepy ’.

I-PODS: If you see the message ‘Unsupported Format’, it’s advisable to upgrade to the higher version of Cranks Corner and continue to enjoy your reading. This is roughly the larger theme of hand-held music players, which enable you to store thousands and thousands megabytes of music but can actually play just one and half song.
(For more details see Digital Music below).

24-Hour News Channels: People like Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt, Arnab Goswami who were just starting out on their careers as TV reporters in the 90s, have now risen to the high stature wherein their mere sight impels the nation to even think of migrating to Mars, despite the fact that it has no air, but because it has no TV channels to beam news 24 hours. This is the power and potential of modern journalism as represented by the motto: Breaking News: Anything that can be scrolled in letters across the TV screen is breaking news.

The last 10 years have also provided the conclusive proof that with more and more eager channels peopled by enthusiastic reporters around, corruption and cheating become that much more easy (Don’t refer to Madhu Koda, A Raja below).

Arts

Multiplex: Creative geniuses now need not suffer from the anxiety that their finely-honed offerings will be let down by the inferior facilities at the dingy cinema hall. Thanks to multiplexes they are now sure that howsoever insufferable the movie is, people can still be made to endure it as long as the popcorn is crunchy and tasty, and the parking lot spacious.

Multiplexes are here to stay and have spawned a sub-genre of movies, which deal with the agony and tribulations of an angst-ridden generation that is forever forced to subsist on credit cards and the humble diet of pizza and cappuccino.

Digital Music: See I PODS above.

Digital Camera & Photoshop: The art of photography has been democratized, in that anybody who has the basic talent to see can make it as a talented photographer. With digital cameras and Photoshop applications, quite conceivably your roadside gutter can be shown to be a grand tributary of the gushing Amazon. For instance, I have come up with dramatic pictures of Eiffel Tower at night despite the fact I have never been to Italy (which is where I believe Eiffel tower is) and never owned a camera at night.

Sports

IPL: IPL has done to cricket what Silk Smitha did to Tamil cinema: Bring bedroom glamour to mainstream. IPL not only lifted cricket from the dusty, dirt-ridden surroundings of the stadium and transported it to the comfortable and cool settings of banks, but also brought exciting new talents to the game in the form of busty cheer girls wearing dresses that are deliciously deficient. As long as they are showing those impish girly gaily cavorting around, people can be forced to forget that they are amidst the encompassing miasma of Ferozshah Kotla.

Virendera Sehwag: When he is on song in Tests, T-20s seem plodding and dour like a Minister’s speech at a labour conference. Sehwag’s sublime skills of celerity underscore what MCC coaching manuals can achieve if they are unread. Sehwag, more than Ponting or any other player you can think of, has to be the player of the decade, as his name is more pun-worthy for newspaper writers. Say Wag, I say! Try this pun on Ponting, you will look like a dork.

EPL: India has a national football team that is probably rated just above Outer Mongolia because there is no football team in Outer Mongolia and there is no country named Outer Mongolia as well. Still, EPL is a huge success in India. Why? Well, anything else on the telly is agreeable to Barkha Dutt. People will not mind patronising any channel even if it is showing total strangers kicking a ball amongst themselves in distant lands at odd times here!

Tiger Woods: For long, the weird jargon of golf had the humanity puzzled. But all along the noble sport of golf was waiting for the exalted ability of Tiger Woods to unravel its myriad mysteries. Now we know, birdies, putts, hole in ones have to belong to a golfer, especially if he is Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods take a bow. But mind you, you have to still a long way to go before you can catch with the undisputed leader in these matters — N D Tiwari, the unofficial Minister of Union Mining in the Republic of Raj Bhavan.  

Politics

Manmohan Singh: This humble bureaucrat turned PM has brought a rare dignity to the highest office of the land where even a bureau of rats can aspire to be part of the Union Cabinet. If this is not empowerment, I don’t know what is.(See A Raja, Madhu Koda below).

A B Vajpayee: This mild-mannered genial gent was the silver-tongued orator of the BJP, even though he is still to complete the sentence that he began speaking in 2001. Now you know why the BJP is in such a huge disarray.

Sonia Gandhi: For many she has to be the leader of the decade, devoting herself to relentless rectitude and probity in high office. But since she has not ‘officially’ held any high office, she still has not got the opportunity to observe the rectitude that she has devoted her entire life to. Some of her silly detractors have tried to make a case that she cannot be a member of Lok Sabha. But as far as we know, there is no clause in any Italian laws that prevent her from holding an Indian post.

A Raja, Madhu Koda: Whenever people talked of corruption in the top echelons, many kept silent, mainly because they did not understand the meaning of ‘echelons’. But with the likes of A Raja and Madhu Koda, corruption has got a new dignity as the public are not stirred into pointless furore over pittances below Rs 1000 crores. (For more: See Defamation Laws).

Telengana: Now the entirety of Andhra Pradesh is split in the middle with two sets of people, one who spell Telengana as Telagana and the other who write Telagana as Telengana. The Central government is fully scarred on its posterior as it is sitting on the sharp horns of dilemma as to whether Telengana or Telagana deserves separate identity.

World Affairs

George Bush & Barack Obama:  The impact of George Bush is so enormous that they decided to award the Nobel prize to Barack Obama simply because the brilliant minds of Nobel Committee quickly grasped the fact that Obama is a separate individual not answering to the name George Bush. But Obama, in the manner he is going, will soon surely bring a good name to Bush. And who knows, one day George Bush may get the Nobel peace prize or the Oscars for not having been the Obama of his times.

Islamic Terror:  Sorry, no fun and levity here. Jokes, in this terrain, are attached to an explosive circuit and can trigger blasts.

Middle East: In the 80s, the entirety of the Middle East was raven with conflicts. But by the 90s, the leaders of this region along with responsible global powers and the UN had the good sense to involve themselves in warm talks. And now when the first decade of the 2000s is about to end, we are in a strategic situation where the continuing talks have ensured that the entire area is not only conflict-ridden but also chaos-filled.

Middle-East has provided the maximum number of headlines for newspapers (across the world) that enable the readers to conveniently skip the underlying news and move on to reports that feature photos of nubile girls.
Don’t be surprised if Uganda and Czech Republic are engaged in talks at Guatemala to ensure peace in the Middle East. One day, they will realise that they have nothing to do with Middle East, and that Middle East itself does not lie in the middle of the east to them.

Pakistan:  India’s North-Western neighbour has quickly relapsed into anarchy and the dawn of every second brings with it new possibilities for strife and blasts. In Pakistan everyone is at war with everyone else, and hell has seen nothing like this before. And so, naturally, the intelligent minds in India want to have talks with Pakistan. Pakistan is a Middle-East in the making. So newspapers better get ready for more news reports with accompanying glamour pictures.

Global Warming: This has been the topic of this decade. I would want to say that the threat of Global Warming hangs like a Damocles’ Sword over the planet, but refrain from doing so because I can’t decide on the spelling of ‘Damocels’. Global Warming impacts human lives in many ways, leading to the melting of Polar Caps and other words spelt in Upper Caps.

Considering the calamitous nature of the threat that Earth is faced with, the world leaders, in a rare of show unanimity, met in Copenhagen recently and laid out what collective will can eventually achieve: Total absurdity. At Copenhagen, they debated on whether they agreed on what they thought they agreed on at Kyoto, a similar gathering held several years ago. If my reading is correct, I think they all have come to the conclusion that Kyoto is somewhere in Asia, which could be in, well I don’t know.

Surely, in the fullness of time, the talks will gain momentum and progress, and eventually lead to a quick solution to all the perils that face this world, by pleading with Barkha Dutt to quit her job as a TV anchor. But that could well be in 2100.

For the now, well a Happy New year to you all. And may 2100 come soon. I’m waiting for salvation through resurrection — of YK bug, that is.

©2012 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.

Take the Norwegians for example who manfully brokered a deal between the Sinhalese and the Tamilians in Sri Lanka notwithstanding the simple fact that they can’t understand even a single word of either Tamil or Sinhalese. The bloody turmoil in Sri Lanka witnessed a short burst of ceasefire as both the sides felt extremely distracted and took time off to wonder why the hell Norway was trying to involve itself in the mess.

The only reason why Norwegians willingly applied themselves to this thankless work could be that life in Norway was as tranquil as a seer’s mind, which shorn of diplomacy means, way too boring.

Norway, last heard, has set out on a peace mission between Honduras and Burkina Faso, despite the fact that the two countries (Honduras and Burkina Faso) exist in two different continents, don’t share a boundary and have actually not heard of the other. But Norway, being a torchbearer in such matters of global importance, has not allowed minor matters of reality to impede its unflagging quest to champion the cause of giving room to dense prose that nobody bothers to read and hence quickly jump to the next paragraph in the hope that it at least contains sentences that can be comprehended by lay persons.

But how much do you know about the vital universe of diplomacy and foreign affairs? Not that you want to. But here is a handy primer on the world of diplomacy and international relations prepared with the sincere thought that it is extremely stupid and in bad taste, and that it goes against the Geneva Convention or some such international fancy rule and offends a lot of diplomats so that they can haul me up before some heavy-duty forum that is located in Switzerland or any other chic destination. This is the only way I can possibly visit those trendy places.

What’s the main role of a diplomat?
A diplomat’s life is one ridden with protocol and rules that involve giving life to many useless French words like attaché, consul, envoy, emissary, chef-de-mission.

Describe a typical day in a diplomat’s life?
Wake up. But have to skip breakfast, as it is already time for lunch. Attend a ceremonial lunch with a variety of people who are known for their sterling quality to ceaselessly talk and prolong over their meal till it is actually time for the next meal of the day to arrive.

But even after such a hectic and packed morning, a diplomat can hardly have the leeway to relax his overworked tummy. He or she has to be ready for the evening party, which is all about sipping variety of beverages and talking their way to expand their (foreign) affairs and scotch rumours. Diplomats, by training, scotch even truths. They are experts in scotching, especially well-brewed ones.

What is the chief requisite of a career diplomat?
He or she has to possess the ability to wake up in the morning without any apparent hangover after a night of never-ending party, which a diplomat has to subject himself or herself day in and day out for the cause of world peace and order. It is as a true tribute to the ways of diplomats that the whiskey industry has thoughtfully dedicated a classy Scotch in their name.

How does a diplomat help a government?
For example, there is a problem of racial attacks on Indian students in Australia now. Naturally India is concerned. Logically, it should simply mean the Indian Prime Minister lifting the telephone and calling up his Australian counterpart to get cross his message. But that will amount to diplomatic gaffe and a breach of protocol. And it is also not known whether there is an international call facility in the PM’s phone. So the Australian ambassador is summoned by the Indian government and delivered a message. This he will immediately take it to his country, from where he will carry the response to India. By this way both Indian and Australia not only cut costs on expensive international calls but also can re-route the money gainfully to uplift diplomats who don’t know where their next Scotch and Caviar is going to come from.

Explain the Middle East peace process
In school you would have encountered this typical arithmetic problem that made you to give up on mathematics itself: ‘5 people work for 5 hours a day for fifty days to complete task. How much will it take for 50 people working for 20 hours a day to complete the same task?’ The question is a no-brainer as the five people have already completed the work, why should 50 people be employed to do the same job? The 50 people obviously would gather around and talk endlessly, enjoy themselves and eventually claim that they have finished the work.

This is roughly the philosophy behind the Middle East peace process, or for that matter, any other diplomatic initiative.

If all those countless number of people and all those efforts that went into travelling and talking on the Middle East peace process had been channeled elsewhere a parallel universe, without the modern blights of terrorists, global warming and Barkha Dutt, could have been created by now.

Has the Middle Peace process helped anyone?
Yes. It sure has. It has been an inspiration for the telecom companies for their pre-paid cell phone schemes: Guaranteed lifetime talk time.

What is the role of the UN in ensuring world order and ushering in lasting peace across continents and countries?
That’s a very good question asked with an insightful understanding of the world and its affairs. The question requires special mention and acclaim.

What’s the art of diplomacy?
Providing answers that don’t even begin to match the question.

Why did India dispatch two top officials to Sri Lanka immediately after Prabhakaran’s death?
So you think you are smart? Well then answer this: Which came first egg or chicken? It beats you, right? So get the heck out of here and let us in peace so that we can resolve the conflict between El Salvador and Cayman Islands. Diplomats have already trudged to to the resort town of Monaco to discuss in detail the whole issue.

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©2012 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.

Take for instance something called Pager, which was introduced to us as cutting edge technology, a sterling breakthrough in communication that was to deliver to us 21st century in 20th century itself. So we morons all went out and shelled wads and wads of rupees acquiring that little thingie which we were all sure would stand us in good stead for the rest of our lives. And now, don’t even try to remind us what happened after that. All of us who bought them are now trying to create a picture that we never owned them in the first place. The little thing is now probably tucked in some forlorn corner in our closet, sharing space with those Discmans, Polaroid cameras and VCRs, all that were once shining symbols of our sharp intelligence and refined taste but today reduced to being simple scars of our stupidity. We shudder the thought that we once owned them with unlimited pride. Technology, as we agreed, keeps proving what we essentially are: Fools of the highest order.

But don’t lose heart and stop reading the column further (This does not apply to all those not reading this piece. They have to lose heart). The smart thing is to be ahead of the technological curve. For this, we have to figure out what this damn ‘technological curve’ is. It is quite simply one of the usages that tired journalists resort to whenever they want to show off some verbal hi-jinks. The same sentence will read all right even without the term ‘technological curve’: ‘The smart thing is to be ahead.’ See, I told you nah?

But now we have to tackle this ‘verbal hi-jinks’ and understand what the hell it tries to mean. Remember the first principles: Remove the words that don’t make any meaning. So the sentence will make perfect sense even when it is read: It is quite simply one of the usages that tired journalists resort to whenever they want to show off.

This is also the roughly the same idea that make up much of modern technology: All that is difficult and impossible to figure out is not worth figuring out in the first place.

Let’s take internet for example. Internet, as we all know, is that branch of technology that has become such a rage across the world as because it allows for the usage of symbols and keys that we wouldn’t otherwise have known why they were featured on the keyboard.

Till internet came about nobody in the world would have felt the need to use ‘@’. Nobody knew what it was and how it was pronounced. And then internet came and gave a new life to ‘@’. Now, if you take out ‘@’ from the keyboard the entire internet industry will come crashing down. This is the power of technology!

Ditto with other hideous hieroglyphics (don’t worry, the last two words don’t make much sense and just ignore them) like #, ^ and * . Now, not only we use #, ^ and * with authoritative gusto, but whenever we feel that our vocabulary needs enhancement we delve into the rich panoply of emoticons that come handily attached with any application for writing.

Emoticons, if you don’t know, are the leering faces not dissimilar to the ones painted garishly on pumpkins that the superstitious use to ward off the evil eye in these parts. Somebody seems to have photocopied those pumpkin faces and put out on the internet. Naturally such things become an instant hit on the Web.

If you are happy and for some reason want to announce to your friends that you are happy, you should not just tell that you are happy. On the internet, the written rule to write such sentences is: hey guys, I am feeling happy () !!!! (Internet people, needless to say, use lots of exclamation marks. Shakespeare in his entire career perhaps used 33 exclamation marks in today. Today that it is roughly the supply to compile a single paragraph on an email).

And your friends will know exactly how to decipher your message: They will disregard all the words, and from the emoticon, which infuses the sentence with all the meaning and grammar, will comprehend that you are indeed happy. But if you had written: hey guys, ‘I am feeling happy () !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!,’ your friends will understand that you are actually unhappy. As you can say, it is a strict no-no to say anything directly on the internet.

Let me amplify with another example: If you say ‘Barkha Dutt is a moron’ and attach an emoticon to it, like this: ‘Barkha Dutt is a moron ()’, all the world will understand that Barkha Dutt is a moron but you are just saying that in jest without any malice. By this way you escape being slapped with a defamation suit, which is a distinct possibility if you had just said ‘Barkah Dutt is a moron’ without the pithy presence of the wide and senseless smile that this () mug stands for.

‘http://’ was another of internet’s fixation not long ago. What those ‘://’ stood for is anybody’s guess. Probably they were the semiotic substitute for an emoticon. You never know. Anyway, now nobody knows where it has gone. Probably it has taken an VRS or something similar.

If you are still wondering whether we will get to the point of this article, which is to understand technology, well, we will: In the new upgraded version of Crank’s Corner, which shall be named Crank’s Corner Plus.

If you had understood technology by now, which is all about introducing the same product in seemingly new versions, what you will find next week is an announcement for Crank’s Corner Supreme Plus.

So see you next week () !!!!@#!!!!!!!!!!! (Lol).

(This is the column I wrote for my publication this week).

©2012 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.