Janhvi Kapoor, Vladimir Putin and Novak Djokovic headline the week that should have been

Now that India’s most colourful festival is here once more, research shows that yellow and blue remain firm favourites, with pink, purple and gold not far behind. As always, the combination of red and black is set to inflict more trauma than anticipated, while orange may spark a surprise or two. Unlike Holi, this festival of colours is celebrated in every single household, regardless of affiliations or allergies, and is better known as the IPL.

Meanwhile, those struggling to fund Holi parties have taken to Dream11 in the hope of making millions overnight, since they are confident of knowing IPL players better than their career prospects. As for the players themselves, Indian stars such as Rohit Sharma, M.S. Dhoni and Hardik Pandya will be fined 10 per cent of their match fees for refusing to perform at the opening ceremony despite ample footage of their dancing skills from the Ambani pre-wedding finding its way to the BCCI.

Elsewhere, the Supreme Court reprimands the Stale Bank of India (SBI) on learning that the documents linking buyers of electoral bonds with the parties they made contributions to have been smeared in a certain shade of orange.

Wondering what else happened as colours refused to touch you for another year? Here’s presenting the top stories from the week that should have been.

March 18

For the first time, the Malleable Code of Conduct (MCC) necessitates that all eligible voters refrain from criticising the incumbent government on social media TT archives

• As the election fever builds, political outfits have stepped up efforts to recruit full-time makeup artists with at least two years of experience in action or war dramas.

• A survey by the Degrees and Depression Collective of India (DDCI) finds an overwhelmingly positive relationship between applications for PhDs in humanities and loneliness.

March 19

The final results show that Vladimir Putin was re-elected with 93.97% of the votes, a figure US mathematicians have described as impossible considering the number of votes cast TT archives

• Following Vladimir Putin’s re-election as the President of Russia (also known as Tsar), leaks from the Kremlin suggest that hundreds of voters will receive subsidised food and travel after being forced to vote for candidates they had never heard of in order to maintain “the spirit of democracy”.

• In his latest moment of brain fade, US President Joe Biden promises to be as “unrelenting in providing aid to Gaza as we are in arming Israel”.

March 20

“I was dreaming of Aditya [Roy Kapoor] and suddenly found myself in the middle of the ramp,” reveals Janhvi Kapoor, further antagonising Ananya Panday TT archives

• Janhvi Kapoor becomes the most viral celebrity at Lakme Fashion Week after sleepwalking onto stage, leaving Ananya Panday irate that nobody noticed how her Manish Malhotra gown is embroidered with 114 different fonts of ‘ARK’.

• Having made the fans of Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) smile for the first time since Vijay Mallya left the franchise, Smriti Mandhana and her WPL-winning team are going around Bengaluru start-ups delivering motivational talks. The subject line of their most popular talk reads: “How women take 1/8th of the time to do what men can’t.”

March 21

“My aim is to offend Kolkatans more in two hours than their parents have offended them in a lifetime,” declares Daniel Sloss Wikimedia Commons

• Therapy appointments in Kolkata plunge to their lowest mark since last year’s Durga Puja ahead of the visit of comedian Daniel Sloss (the most ‘savage’ Britisher to arrive in the City of Joy since Robert Clive). For Sloss’s part, he may be intrigued to know that Kolkatans top his Indian fan-following in terms of loving his accent, hair and jokes. In that order.

• India witnesses the arrest of its first sitting chief minister, highlighting the perils of muffle(r) overuse.
  

March 22

“I realised something was wrong with me the moment I accidentally signed an online petition for equal pay in tennis,” complains Novak Djokovic TT archives

• Unable to win a single tournament so far this year, Novak Djokovic checks into the headquarters of the Association of Cyborg Athletes (ACA) in Geneva fearing that he may have been secretly injected with a Covid-19 vaccine.

• Barack Obama, who has only been reading Sudha Murty’s books over the past month, makes an “informal visit” to 10 Downing Street to advise UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on how to charm reporters so that they forget to ask him tough questions.