Disclaimer: All names, characters and incidents mentioned in this column, however believable, are entirely satirical. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, organisations and products is intended or should be inferred
With India Inc (also known as 2A+++) enduring its worst quarter since the pandemic, the Centre has comforted capitalists with the message that propaganda, not profit, is the cornerstone of business. India’s top 100 companies have been asked to ensure that all their employees memorise the latest circular on Viksit Bharat and add two lines from it to their email signatures. For its part, the government is going to pay more attention to the ease of doing business in India by re-evaluating the document on bureaucratic perks and privileges.
Meanwhile, the Handbook on Women’s Safety in India, formulated by an expert committee of 136 single men, has identified five path-breaking ideas for improving the security of women across the country — sharing women’s geolocation with their nearest police station, not allowing cab drivers to pick up women after 10pm, adding “no groping” to the “no spitting” notices on public transport, outlawing co-ed schools and colleges, and not promoting women to the C-suite so that they don’t feel threatened due to skewed gender ratios.
Elsewhere, the highest court in the land has taken suo moto cognisance of Indian men who are virtue signalling on social media for doing the bare minimum, warning them that repeated offences will result in the withdrawal of their fundamental right to mansplain.
Wondering what else happened as you searched for the next template on gender violence to post on your story? Here’s presenting the top stories from the week that should have been.
August 19
A health ministry report shows that 80 per cent of Indians are more concerned about finding hair in their food than plastics TT archives
- India’s health ministry has issued a statement saying that the detection of microplastics in salt and sugar sold throughout the nation is not a matter of concern, since Indian bodies are accustomed to dealing with far more harmful substances, such as pesticides.
- Elon Musk has paused the development of Grok, X’s AI chatbot that gets to spend more time with Musk than his own children, after Grok generates images of Musk as an obese beggar from Sudan.
August 20
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez agrees to follow every single Democratic donor with contributions in excess of $100,000 on Instagram TT archives
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez steals the show at Joe Biden’s farewell party (also known as the Democratic convention) in Chicago by laying down the blunt truth for American voters: “The Democrats are the only party capable of protecting the two most important things for liberals in the US — Palestine and pronouns.”
- Kamala Harris, who will soon release a podcast on how to pronounce her name, finally gets the approval of Financial Times after persuading the world’s sharpest generalists that she can think out of the box with her bespoke tan suit in Chicago.
August 21
Yuvraj Singh clarifies that the title of his film is not a jibe at anyone but a mathematical fact TT archives
- The first casting decision has already been made for the upcoming Yuvraj Singh biopic (called 12>7), with Stuart Broad brought on board to play himself for a fee that surpasses the money he made playing 167 Test matches for England.
- With the intense coverage that the sinking of a superyacht in Sicily has garnered across international media outlets, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is debating whether to include super-yacht voyages as an extreme sport in the Olympic Games.
August 22
Rhea Chakraborty reveals that she was attracted to Nikhil Kamath the moment she found out that he stopped watching TV news in 2019 TT archives
- Rhea Chakraborty and Nikhil Kamath have apparently started dating, having bonded over how the Indian middle class continues to misunderstand Rhea and Zerodha.
- Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck announce their divorce after publicly admitting that “both of us are in a toxic relationship with the paparazzi”.
August 23
“This is a national conspiracy,” alleges Imran Khan, citing how his fellow convicts were able to join their terrorist group calls without a hitch TT archives
- Imran Khan’s plans to become the next chancellor of the University of Oxford go up in smoke, as he is unable to attend his virtual interview owing to a shambolic WiFi connection in his Pakistani prison cell.
- Following a three-hour interaction with his opposite number from India, Volodymyr Zelensky is convinced that “nobody entered Ukrainian territory and not an inch of our land was lost”.