Joe Biden, Rohit Sharma and Dua Lipa headline the week that should have been

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

Despite correctly predicting the price of bread and visiting every Hindu temple in London, Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives have been trounced at the UK’s general elections. Keir Starmer, plonked between Sunak and Boris Johnson in the time-taken-to-set-your-hair spectrum, will be the UK’s next Prime Minister. Starmer’s first big move as PM will be to decide the exact texture and timing when kissing the right hand of Charles III. As calls for Sunak’s ghar wapsi resonate across India, three Indian corporate houses have offered him the role of CBO (Chief Bloviating Officer). Infosys, though, has rescinded a potential offer after Sunak clarified that he cannot work more than 129 hours per week.

Meanwhile, across the English Channel, several French politicians, including President Emmanuel Macron, will fight it out over the coming days to determine who gets to represent France at the newly introduced verbal gymnastics competition at the Paris Olympics (India and Israel remain favourites for gold). Before that, Macron, still unconcerned by the ascendance of cat-loving, immigrant-hating politics in his country, will have to recover from the body blow of finishing third (behind Kylian Mbappe and Jordan Bardella) in the latest poll of France’s most desirable man-child.

Elsewhere, Hindenburg Research (the second-most popular search topic among Indians on YouTube in January 2023, after Nora Fatehi) drops its allegations against the Adani Group, admitting that “we don’t have the capabilities to take on the structural might of the world’s fifth-largest economy”.

Wondering what else happened as you processed getting seenzoned by Meta AI on WhatsApp? Here’s presenting the top stories from the week that should have been.

• Inseparable since winning the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, the heightened bromance between Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli forces Ritika Sajdeh and Anushka Sharma to finally text each other.

• To reduce the stress on doctors and prevent constant pestering, sometimes harassment, from patients, this year’s Doctors’ Day sees the imposition of a pan-India rule banning hand-written medical prescriptions.

• The new laws of the land (dubbed the Indian Persecution Code by those who cannot pronounce its real name) have expanded the scope of ‘terrorism’ to include the following activities — owning more than one copy of The Communist Manifesto, listening to Coke Studio Pakistan in public, attending a Team India match without wearing an India jersey, ordering Chinese food consecutively for three days or more, and walking more than 1,000 kilometres across India with a salt-and-pepper beard.

• All those who have abandoned (physically ghosted) a romantic or sexual partner (married or otherwise) without consulting their partner’s parents/guardians (in keeping with the Indian understanding of ‘consensual’) are now liable for prosecution, unless they can prove that such abandonment has taken place in the noble pursuit of political office.

• After a debate performance that made all octogenarians throughout the US feel better about themselves, US President Joe Biden cancels a family retreat at Camp David, since his team did not get enough time to prepare him for it.

• A recent book on the Kennedy family makes the explosive claim that long before Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy had inaugurated the practice of extra office hours for presidential interns, whose hiring interviews would end with the reminder: “Ask not what the President can do for you — ask what you can do for your President.”

• Dua Lipa resolves to “never headline this sh*tshow again” after organisers at the Glastonbury Festival, based on in-depth, empirical research, request her to dedicate a quarter of her headline act singing Taylor Swift covers.

• The Annual London Fest of Strawberries and Cream (also known as Wimbledon) has started fining players for “frequent grunting or yelling” in order to “protect our status as the flagbearer of polite entertainment”.

• Tripti Dimri causes a media storm at the trailer launch of Bad Newz after accidentally revealing that she had shot the entire film under the impression that one of her co-stars, Ammy Virk, was Diljit Dosanjh.

• Ahead of Sunday’s show in the City of Joy, Vir Das announces a skit on the “Two Kolkatas” — “one that’s pulsating with conversation, creativity, co-mingling and compassion, and the other that’s blue and white.”