Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Fundamentals, Women Empowerment and RTI

These are Rahul Gandhi's three favorite words of all time. I just finished watching his interview on Times Now with Arnab Goswami. I have no idea why I sat through an hour and 20 minutes of completely pointless bullshit, but I did. Never have I heard a politician throw around the phrase "women empowerment" as loosely as Rahul Gandhi did in this interview.

The entire interview felt like Rahul Gandhi was given a sheet with phrases he needed to incorporate into every single answer. His favorite phrases/words, hands down, were fundamental, women empowerment, and RTI, change the system. Good job using every single word you were asked to use in the interview multiple times by your PR team.

He also mentioned Congress believes in the Panchayat Raj. Someone should ask him if its the same Panchayat Raj that girls shouldn't wear jeans and carry cell phones and that Chinese food sends your hormones on a roller coaster ride. Or even better, is it the same Panchayat Raj that sentenced a girl to be gang raped by 8 Panchayat members on a raised platform while the rest of the village watched.

Someone also explain to him that decreasing gas cylinder prices is not the sole path to women empowerment. Actually that is absolutely not the path to women empowerment. He probably didn't realize he contradicted himself by using women empowerment and Panchayat Raj in the same conversation. Shouldn't the Vice President of one of India's most powerful political parties be slightly more intelligent than this?

Neither could he agree to a debate with Narendra Modi nor could he give a direct response to Modi taunting him by calling him shehzada. Either he's incredibly stupid or so apathetic he's stopped giving a shit. I'd go with the second, considering his interview, the first in 10 years, was an absolute failure. Maybe he should have stuck to "concentrating my energy inside the party" or whatever excuse he gave.

I have never wanted to face palm so hard in my life. You'd think his first interview in 10 years, and he'd at least make an effort to sound intelligent, having gone to Trinity and all. But nope, he made a complete and utter fool of himself.

But what really bothered me was that  he kept on saying "Gujarat happened, people died". The emphasis on this statement isn't going to change anything. And if you're giving an interview on national television, shouldn't you be armed with facts if you insist on saying the Gujarat Riots of 2002 and the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 were different. If repeatedly saying the 1984 riots were different than Gujarat riots would change anything, wouldn't we all be repeatedly chanting about things we wanted? You'd think a grown man, who's been involved in politics for 10 years, would understand the power of facts. Clearly, he is like a child who thinks repeating things will make them come true.

Any intelligent person might have taken this opportunity to dispel any doubt there is of him being an incapable leader, by giving clear, to-the-point answers which make sense and not answers that seem excessively vague. So is he just incredibly stupid or dodging every single question on purpose?

All Rahul Gandhi managed to accomplish in this interview was to give more reasons for BJP to mock him at every turn. He's definitely not going to be allowed to forget this disaster of an interview for a long long time to come. 

Sunday, January 26, 2014

The club is ready to handle you right nowww!

First year of college, our song was Club can't even handle me right now. It still is. When the song comes on, we both think of our first year at college and how we became friends. To celebrate these 3.5 years of friendship and my amazing roommate's 21st birthday, here's a post entirely for her!

Happy Birthday Baby Kumarrr! (The curious name comes from her being the baby among all of us and a little khichdi reference which is out favourite tv show of all time).
Very often we say to each other that if people saw us in our natural environment, they would be horrified by the kind of jokes we crack, the songs we sing and oh god the hysterical fits of irrational laughter we have at 2 am. More often than not, a lit of friends have caught is in one of those moments and wondered, why do we know them? Good question. Because we are awesome. Duhhh!

We are both in denial that it is our last semester at college, and yet I keep writing about it. Smh. But I have lived with her for 2.5 years, known her for 3.5 years and there is no one else I'd rather have dormed with at Rutgers. We both share a mutual love for everything gujju, Bollywood cuties, watching Aiyya and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham any number of times, clothes jewelry, shoes and bags and anything pretty. No wonder we work together so well.

My greatest achievement by far is transferring my cleanliness OCD to her, bit by bit, day by day, through the last semester. She knows I like the counters to be so shiny I can see my own face and doesn't think I am completely crazy for doing that, just a little bit crazy.

Congratulations on finally turning 21! and welcome to the old people club :D Paro and I have been waiting forever and ever. Like I keep saying, we are all turning 21 again with you.

Time to go flash that ID (specially to that bouncer in Stuff Yer Face!! ) and tell the club that it has no choice but to handle you tonight ;)

Happy Birthdayyyyy!

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Hello old friend

Hello Polar Vortex, old friend. How absolutely delightful of you to celebrate the beginning of my last semester at school with me in such manner. So marvelous!

I scream internally every time I leave the apartment as the cold, brutal wind smacks me right in my face, hands and legs. I'd scream externally if half my teeth wouldn't ache because of the cold, nasty wind. Nevertheless, I scream enough internally to more than make up for it. In the past couple of days, I have come to realize that none of my clothes, no matter how many layers I wear, are effective against this cold. Maybe I should blanket myself in fleece and step out. My phone takes great pleasure in telling me when the temperature is a single digit. The font somehow becomes bigger. Smh.

My philosophy for this last semester is to treat it like any other semester so as to panic a little less than if I would if I kept reminding myself it was my last semester.

Just lost all my inspiration for writing this post since panic has set in.

On a side note, my roommate and I began the new semester by having a hysterical nervous breakdown at 12 am the night before. #SeniorProblems