It isn't festival season in India until you've been kept awake by the amplified yodels of a Bengali man channeling Kishore Kumar (who, in turn, built his career channeling Julie Andrews channeling lonely goatherds), which - even though the singer is situated half a kilometer away from where you attempt to sleep - reach you through the turbo-charged surround sound system that's been expressly hired to simultaneously please the goddess Durga and drive you batshit insane.
The good news this festival season is that Orissa (Odisha, whatever the chick's name is) managed to survive yet another devastating cyclone, all thanks to tweets like this:
Yes, why should we not take this moment to pat ourselves on the back for being the bestest country in the world with the bestest disaster management that allowed us to have the bestest disaster-free 24 hours of our----what? What, Barkha...Barkha...I can't hear you...115 deaths you say? In a...in a...Navami-related stampede and bridge collapse in Madhya Pradesh?...
Dang. We almost made it.
But if you ask me, the best thing about this season (besides the results of my dengue test being negative) is how non headline-making-gangrapey this month has been. Of course, rapes will happen and what's a little ass-grabbery in a pandal once in a way? But by and large October, though only halfway through, has managed to be refreshingly rape-free in the newsworthy world.
The world celebrated one year of Malala surviving the Taliban's idea of tough love. She inspired admiration in the most cynical of hearts, when she went on The Daily Show and spoke about wanting to retaliate by throwing a shoe at her attacker but then rising above.
You're a better man than me, Malala, because here is my shoe and here it is being launched as retribution (for crimes far less severe than those committed on you) towards the skull of a yodeling Bengali man, whose time has come.
The good news this festival season is that Orissa (Odisha, whatever the chick's name is) managed to survive yet another devastating cyclone, all thanks to tweets like this:
This is the greatness of India. With all our seeming chaos & drift, our disaster management is better than any nation including the US!
— Malini Parthasarathy (@MaliniP) October 13, 2013
Yes, why should we not take this moment to pat ourselves on the back for being the bestest country in the world with the bestest disaster management that allowed us to have the bestest disaster-free 24 hours of our----what? What, Barkha...Barkha...I can't hear you...115 deaths you say? In a...in a...Navami-related stampede and bridge collapse in Madhya Pradesh?...
Dang. We almost made it.
But if you ask me, the best thing about this season (besides the results of my dengue test being negative) is how non headline-making-gangrapey this month has been. Of course, rapes will happen and what's a little ass-grabbery in a pandal once in a way? But by and large October, though only halfway through, has managed to be refreshingly rape-free in the newsworthy world.
The world celebrated one year of Malala surviving the Taliban's idea of tough love. She inspired admiration in the most cynical of hearts, when she went on The Daily Show and spoke about wanting to retaliate by throwing a shoe at her attacker but then rising above.
You're a better man than me, Malala, because here is my shoe and here it is being launched as retribution (for crimes far less severe than those committed on you) towards the skull of a yodeling Bengali man, whose time has come.
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