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
Unable to resist the geopolitical tension of their intercontinental situationship any longer, Israel and Iran have at last jumped into the battlefield, answering the biggest will-they-won’t-they question for this month after Netflix’s Nobody Wants This. Joe Biden, who slept through five alarms for an emergency call with Benjamin Netanyahu, has assured Israeli citizens that the US “will waste no time in shifting the headquarters of Israel’s biggest start-ups to San Francisco”. In a stern message to Iran, Biden has warned that “we’ll show you that our proxies are better than yours”.
Meanwhile, in relation to the far more important face-off between Durga and the forces of corruption in Bengal, dozens of Puja pandals are embroiled in a copyright struggle owing to their portrayal of Mahishasura as a disgraced principal with a cancelled medical licence. Some of these pandals also feature in the Bengali Instagrammers’ List of the Best Pujas for 2024, open only to those celebrations that have installed a dedicated space for protests.
Elsewhere, in a rare instance of top-down solidarity, employers across Kolkata have finally paid heed to their employees’ cries for justice by boycotting Puja bonus this year.
Wondering what else happened as you realised that your closest friends will all be enjoying probashi Pujas? Here’s presenting the top stories from the week that should have been.
September 30
Reddit users have also joined the Maggie Smith cancellation bandwagon, pointing out how Smith never publicly called J.K. Rowling transphobic TT archives
- TV channels across the UK suspend tributes to Maggie Smith after the internet digs out a clip from one of Smith’s interviews last year, which shows her calling AI assistants a “babbling bumbling band of baboons”.
- The New York Times publishes six separate explainers in a desperate attempt to prove that its description of Israel’s pager attacks against Hezbollah as “a logistical coup reflecting collective genius to mark a decisive triumph in an existential clash of civilisational values” was not translated word-for-word from an account of the 9/11 attacks in Jannat, the Taliban’s internal newsletter.
October 1
“Say, ‘I’m the best thing that can happen to America’ and keep saying that” was Donald Trump’s advice to JD Vance before the latter’s vice-presidential debate TT archives
- In the wake of a mediocre performance in the US vice-presidential debate against liberals’ new-favourite grandpa (also known as Tim Walz), J.D. Vance sacks all first and second-generation immigrants from his team, claiming that “being around them is lowering my IQ”.
- Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, How I Became the World’s Greatest Mansplainer, is butchered by critics, with the Economist writing that “Gladwell wrote a 400-page tome for what should have been a 10-minute TED talk” and the Financial Times rebuking Gladwell “for not spending at least 10,000 hours researching his theories”.
October 2
Thousands of villages in India now have more toilets than jobs, shows the Quit India report TT archives
- On the 10-year anniversary of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, an independent report by Quit India, a Dubai-based NGO, explains how “modern India has successfully cleansed itself of Gandhism while breaking the Guinness world record for building the most number of toilets without running water”.
- Following the public expression of its disdain for “yeah”, the most sophisticated court in the land has identified a list of words that will be expunged from records (with immediate effect) if pronounced in front of it. Salient among them are — “quid pro quo”, “laddoo”, “Umar Khalid”, “judicial activism” and “transfer”.
October 3
“I’ve sacrificed my personal image at the altar of WWE’s brand image,” admits an emotional Vince McMahon TT archives
- A Netflix documentary on Vince McMahon reveals that the wrestling mogul spent years aiding and abetting sexual abuse in WWE just so that he could make his return as an even bigger villain (‘heel’ in wrestling terms) at the main event of WrestleMania next year.
- Encouraged by events in Kanpur between India and Bangladesh, the Indian Cricket Council (ICC) is considering experimenting with two-day Test matches for the 2025-26 season in order to open up more days of the cricketing calendar for IPL ad shoots.
October 4
“Can we please stop naming things and people Wankhede in India?” requests Shah Rukh Khan in his IIFA award acceptance speech TT archives
- Shah Rukh Khan wins the 142nd award for best actor in his career, this time at the annual IIFA gala in Abu Dhabi, for his stoic portrayal of a compromised father against the Nepotism Control Bureau (NCB).
- Ahead of the release of Ctrl, Ananya Panday shares why the film is the most surreal of her career so far: “I had no idea how and when the shooting was done. Once I signed the contract, I went about my life normally for two months, before my director said that the movie was complete!”