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
For the first time in over seven decades, India has finally been able to identify its most menacing minority, thanks to a thunderous, viral speech by the greatest orator to come out of informal education. This minority is single-handedly responsible for eroding the edifice of Indian civilisation by having the first right of access to bigotry and corruption. You may not always be able to tell this minority apart from their clothes or food habits, but study their reproductive trends (of hatred, not children) and the picture becomes clear.
Meanwhile, with polling booths recording lower turnouts than most inter-caste weddings, the Election Colluders of India (ECI) declares that all registered voters who do not turn up to smudge their index fingers will have their votes automatically transferred to the party with the most social media penetration in their respective constituencies. As for the controversy regarding Electronic Voting Manipulators (EVMs) and their (in)accuracy, the same organisation has suggested sticking a photograph of the country’s most popular leader on every EVM to boost trust levels among the average voter.
Elsewhere, having successfully changed the colour of our national broadcaster, the champions of the One Nation, One Colour Movement have reached out to India’s leading ornithologists to do the same to our national bird.
Wondering what else happened as X made you look between the keys on your keypad knowing fully well there is nothing worthwhile between your ears? Here’s presenting the top stories from the week that should have been.
April 22
“I can’t believe he’d want to tell the world the most intimate things I’ve told him,” says Taylor Swift about Travis Kelce TT archives
- Taylor Swift, whose new album, The Vengeful Girlfriends’ Department, is causing more breakups than one-sided polyamory, is outraged to find out that Travis Kelce is planning to write a memoir about their relationship.
- An Australian political journalist has left India after being told that her visa will only be renewed if she writes exclusively on the IPL.
April 23
Elon Musk still wants Tesla to enter India, since “I’ll have to pay Indians much less than what I have to spend on robots for the same job” TT archives
- Elon Musk confirms that Tesla has delayed plans to open factories in India after “scrutinising Indian labour laws for six months and not finding an adequate number of loopholes just yet”.
- On World Book Day, a survey by Readers Who Never Write finds the five most common instances (in no particular order) when someone sits down with a book in 2024 — when they have not posted an Instagram story in three days, when their laptop has run out of charge in office, when they do not want to make eye contact with creepy strangers on public transport, when they are hours away from meeting their overqualified cousin, and when they need to check that they can still read full sentences with correct punctuation.
April 24
All tennis coaches who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 have been deemed ineligible to coach Novak Djokovic TT archives
- Moments after securing his fifth win as Laureus Cyborg Athlete of the Year, Novak Djokovic says that his next coach “must have the same body fat percentage as me to be able to optimise my performance”.
- Following 17-year-old Dommaraju Gukesh’s win at the FIDE Candidates tournament, thousands of middle-class parents in India have decided that their children should spend their weekends at chess classes instead of Aakash centres.
April 25
Boris Johnson intends to write his own book on the Russia-Ukraine war to “give myself the protagonism that I deserve in history” TT archives
- A new book called Explaining the Russia-Ukraine War Better than ChatGPT argues that former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was not responsible for scuppering a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, opposing theories by several foreign policy experts over the past two years. Having lampooned the book in his latest column, Johnson says: “Peace for Ukraine would’ve only meant surrender. And I told [Volodymyr] Zelensky that ‘we shall never surrender’ no less than 119 times in my best Churchillian voice.”
- Hundreds of rich students of richer Ivy League universities in the US, whose latest pastime involves protesting against Israel, have been arrested for ‘trespassing’ on their own campuses. Their not-so-rich Indian classmates, more worried about rising interest on their student loans than the rising death count in Gaza, have contacted the Indian PMO, requesting intervention to end the Israel-Hamas war.
April 26
Sonakshi Sinha accuses Sanjay Leela Bhansali of being the most ill-tempered man she has worked with, even though she has been cast opposite Salman Khan in the past TT archives
- Sonakshi Sinha stops promoting Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Heeramandi after realising that the showmakers spent more money on her costumes than on her.
- Therapists (also known as performance coaches) work overtime at some of India’s biggest companies after their employees cannot come to terms with a two per cent appraisal from bosses who paid hundreds of crores to buy electoral bonds.