To clear up the biggest identity confusion in the country since the one between chowkidar and chor, the government of the world’s largest demagogue has issued a circular on when to use the words “Bharat” and “India”. Bharat is to be used when talking about everything positive in the country (in other words, the government), while India is to be used when talking about everything negative in the country (in other words, the Opposition; pun very much intended). For all official and logistical purposes, citizens must opt for Bharat over India, unless they wish to leave for whichever part of the planet was the first to call Bharat as India.
Meanwhile, lecturing at Sciences Po in Paris, Rahul Gandhi declares that the BJP’s definition of religion is as difficult to relate to as its definition of achhe din, before proceeding to translate one of the core tenets of the Sanskrit scriptures as “eternal discrimination”. Nationalists back home, who have more gomutra than blood in their system, are irate at Gandhi and promptly file 33 crore cases against the Congress dynast, one on behalf of each party they feel Gandhi has offended.
Elsewhere, diplomats and civil servants in Brazil, the next host of the G20, have already started flattering their supreme leader as part of following their predecessor’s impressive footsteps.
Wondering what else happened as your search for a flattering Snapchat filter ended in vain? Here’s presenting the top stories from the week that should have been.
September 11
‘I think I can finally say what I feel about vaccines and equal pay,’ muses Novak Djokovic after winning the US Open TT archives
- Margaret Court, the owner of 24 singles Grand Slam titles, believes that Novak Djokovic winning the same number of majors does not make him her equal: “No matter how hard he [Djokovic] tries, he can never match my levels of bigotry.”
- WWE and UFC, the world’s two biggest combat-generating organisations (behind the CIA and the FBI), merge into one entity to make Brock Lesnar’s contract negotiations easier.
September 12
‘Obama’s sexuality is even more deceptive than his politics,’ reads a viral post on X TT archives
- Conservatives in the US, who spend more time listening to Tucker Carlson (a slightly more civil version of Arnab Goswami) than their bosses, cannot accept that Barack Obama, who was “man enough” to drop thousands of bombs on Iraq and Syria, could be into men.
- Apple, products of which change less every year than most couples in therapy, launches the new iPhone 15 series that comes with a unique socialisation feature. With the help of the new phones, iPhone users can now detect how many people in their immediate vicinity also own Apple devices, thereby determining whether they are worth engaging with.
September 13
‘I’ve done my speaking at Miss World,’ says Manushi Chhillar on what she told herself before joining Bollywood TT archives
- In keeping with the tradition of the Great Indian Family, Yash Raj Films’ upcoming release (with the same name) allocates only sighs and no dialogues to its female lead, Manushi Chhillar.
- Olivia Rodrigo’s latest album, Guts, rises to the top of every conceivable music chart after listeners struggle to decide whether Rodrigo loves or hates Taylor Swift.
September 14
‘The only thing he is guilty of is not putting the Kremlin on his speed dial,’ says Vladimir Putin about Donald Trump TT archives
- Vladimir Putin labels the ongoing prosecutions against his 45th best friend, Donald Trump, as “political persecution”, before adding with a smirk that the “US should focus instead on the real masterminds destroying their democracy”.
- Another professor with an unpronounceable name quits the only seat of learning in Sonipat after political data accumulated by his team proves that only 87 per cent of the credit for winning the 2014 and 2019 elections can go to the Prime Minister.
September 15
Elon Musk Googles his net worth every 16 hours, reveals the biography TT archives
- The 88th biography of Elon Musk, subtitled ‘Messiah and Maniac’, reveals several fascinating insights about the world’s most overworked billionaire — Musk sleeps less than the average giraffe, dreams of having more children than employees, has red soil scattered across all his apartments, and worries that the “woke virus” will kill humans faster than climate change.
- A joint survey by Bumble and Hinge shows the different reasons why women and men ghost each other on dating apps (Tinder did not participate because not replying to bots is not ghosting). According to the results, women mostly ghost on men who triple text or lie about their height. Whereas men mostly ghost on women once their favourite sports team starts playing well.