Childless cat ladies

Do they deserve the bad rap they get?

Thanks to the American presidential election and vice-presidential hopeful, J.D. Vance, the term ‘childless cat lady’ had become a part of the political lexicon. It has been used to attack presidential candidate and the current Vice-President of the United States, Kamala Devi Harris, for not having biological children. This ‘failing’ – as the Republicans would have it – means that Harris has no real stake in the future; that she has no one in her life to ‘keep her humble’; and no understanding of the lives of everyday Americans who are raising families of their own.

 

There are so many things wrong with this view of childless – or childfree, if that’s the word you prefer – that it is hard to know where to start. It is absurd to suggest that just because you haven’t birthed babies, you are willing to let the world go to hell in a handbasket. And those who suggest this don’t understand either the concept of empathy or that of extended and blended families. As for the idea that women need to be kept ‘humble’ so that (presumably) they don’t try to rise above their stations; well frankly, this is a risible goal in the 21^st century. 

 

As the party of Christian values, surely the Republicans know that the progenitor of their religion, Jesus Christ, had no biological children of his own – which is why he regarded the entire world as his progeny. And nor, for that matter, did the mother who birthed him (the Virgin Mary – the clue is in the name), and yet she is revered as a universal mother figure in the Christian canon. So, maybe – just maybe – it is not imperative to have a child who shares your DNA to care about the wider world.

 

I can’t help but be thankful that this sort of narrative hasn’t taken hold in Indian politics – well, not as yet, at least. Our Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has no children and that fact has never been used to suggest that he is not concerned about the future of India. Instead, he is commended for this because it means that he is doing everything for the betterment of the country as a whole and not to improve the lot of his kids. Similarly, the Prime Minister In Waiting, Rahul Gandhi, doesn’t have children, and that isn’t seen as a failing either; rather people appear to be thankful that this fact could signal the end of dynastic politics in this country.

 

It helps, of course, that both Modi and Gandhi are men. And we do not have similar expectations of men as we do of women. Perhaps, if there was a childless woman asking to be Prime Minister of India, the same objections would be raised about her as well. Meanwhile in America, the Democrats and Harris’s own family are trying to defend her by saying that she does have children – step-children, who she has helped raise, and whose lives she is involved in.

 

But if you ask me, this is the wrong response. The right response would be to say that a woman doesn’t need children (biological, adopted, step, foster, whatever) to have her existence validated. Just being a woman – in herself, by herself, for herself – is enough.

 

Kitchen politics

Do we really need to peek into the personal spaces of politicians to judge how they will perform their public duties?

Do you know what Narendra Modi’s kitchen in his Race Course Road residence looks like? Or even the one he left back home in Ahmedabad? Have you any clue what brand Sonia Gandhi’s kitchen stove or mixer-grinder is? Have Arun Jaitley or Rahul Gandhi ever given you a tour of their kitchens? Has Sushma Swaraj invited the cameras in as she rustles up a mean phulka?

Of course not. Our politicians would never dream of doing any such thing. You may well argue that this is because our politicians on the whole don’t have much to do with kitchens (unless you’re talking of kitchen cabinets). As is common in most Indian homes, the kitchens are probably the preserve of cooks and maids. And the reason they don’t show off their pots and pans is because they have no clue where they are stored.

And you are probably right about all of that. But that said, it is also true that private lives – and personal spaces, for that matter – of politicians are still treated as off limits by the Indian media. We may ask an actress or a model to cook spaghetti Bolognese for the benefit of the cameras. We may request a sportsman to pose with an energy drink in front of his refrigerator. But we hardly ever seek to peer into the homes of our politicians.

Well, consider yourself lucky. In the run-up to the UK elections, the poor British electorate has had more kitchens thrown at it than it knows what to do with. Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader David Cameron kicked off proceedings by inviting the cameras into his kitchen at Downing street, where he was photographed combing his daughter’s hair to get her ready for school, while wife Samantha bent fetchingly over the kitchen stove in the background. He followed this up with an interview conducted in his constituency home, as he rustled up a salad and some cold cuts for the family.

So, what could the Labour leader do but follow suit? Except that, being Ed Milliband, he couldn’t help but start a controversy in the process. Ed and wife Justine Thornton were pictured standing awkwardly in a tiny, forlorn kitchen, bare surfaces all around, sipping on mugs of tea. Cue, much chortling about how Milliband’s characterless kitchen was a metaphor for his own personality, not to mention his campaign. To add injury to insult, it was then revealed that this was not the main kitchen of the Milliband home, but a tiny kitchenette used by their live-in nanny. Cue, many jokes about ‘Two-kitchens Ed’!

With Cameron and Milliband in the fray, how could Nick Clegg be left behind? The Liberal leader dutifully turned out for kitchen duty with his Spanish wife, Miriam Gonzales Durantez, each of them clutching a glass of white wine, while a pot of paella simmered away in the background. Probably not the best subliminal messaging but then this is Nick Clegg we are talking about.

To be fair to the British media, they have entered the personal spaces of politicians only by invitation. And that’s because every politician worth his sea salt wants to prove to the British public what an ‘ordinary Joe’ he really is. So, they all line up to show how they can fix meals in the kitchen, get their kids ready for the school run, supervise their homework, and then relax with a glass of wine just like any other knackered parent. I guess this is supposed to make people like them, to see them as ‘one of us’, to appreciate that they perform the same ordinary chores like everyone else. Except that they also run the country (or would very much like to run the country, if only people would see the light).

Honestly, are these staged photo-opportunities the best way to decide who is the best man for the top job? Does David Cameron become a better candidate for PM because he knows how to comb his daughter’s hair into a high ponytail and stick a scrunchie on it? Does Ed Milliband think he can endear himself to his Labour base by preening in a tiny kitchenette that they could presumably identify with? And does Nick Clegg… Actually, scratch that. I have no idea what Clegg thinks he’s trying to achieve – and it’s beginning to look as if he doesn’t either.

But what all of this malarkey does achieve is make me so very thankful that I live in India, where I don’t have the kitchen sink thrown at me every time a politician stands for election. I would much rather judge politicos on the basis of the soundness of their ideas rather than the softness of their idlis. I don’t need to know what kind of pressure cooker a politician uses to decide if he can stand up to the stresses of a high-pressure job. And I really don’t need to peek into his personal space to judge how he will perform in the public sphere.

As the saying does not go, if you can take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

Wage-ing war

Why does the concept of ‘dignity of labour’ escape us completely?

I don’t quite know why, but for some reason most Indians seem completely unacquainted with the concept of ‘dignity of labour’. It could be because we are so used to paying other people a pittance to do our dirty work for us. It could be a hangover of the caste system, in which manual labour was the province of those way down on the sliding caste scale. But whatever the deep, sociological or even anthropological reason, the truth is that most of us have scant respect for those who do menial jobs, and certainly no intention of granting them any dignity as they try to earn a decent wage.

You only have to see how even the most educated Indians behave with their domestic staff to know this to be true. Or just observe how people behave with waiting staff in restaurants or even with flight attendants on an airplane. There is no attempt at even minimum courtesy; instead there is an imperial insistence on being served, and right away if you please (and no, there is no question of appending a ‘please’ to that demand).

It is hardly surprising then that the same attitude has spilled over into our public discourse where the worst insult you can throw at someone is to accuse them of having performed some sort of menial job in the past.

It started off with Sonia Gandhi, who was dismissed as a ‘waitress’ and an ‘au pair’ by right wing trolls. The suggestion was that while she was a young student in Cambridge, studying languages in a college, she had supported herself by working as a waitress or an au pair (depending on which version you believed). And how could such a woman – who had been a waitress for crying out loud! –  expect to rule over a billion people? Surely, India could do better? After all, why would we want someone who worked hard for a decent wage to put herself through college as a leader? Right?

That kind of rhetoric was all the rage until a certain Narendra Damodardas Modi came on to the national political scene. He announced proudly that he had grown up selling tea at his father’s stall near a railway station, and told us what an enormous tribute it was to Indian democracy that a simple ‘chaiwallah’ could aspire to become the Prime Minister of the nation. Of course, he was completely right. And from the moment he made this statement, the right-wing attacks on the ‘waitress/au pair’ avatar of Sonia Gandhi began to die down.

But then, it was the turn of the Congress to get into the act. The charge was led by the redoubtable Mani Shankar Aiyar, who proclaimed grandly at a Congress session that while Modi would never get to be Prime Minister of India (talk about famous last words!), the party would be glad to set up a tea stall for him so that he could sell chai to all the Congress delegates. Of course, this boomeranged on the Congress when Modi, embracing his chaiwallah past, announced that he would be holding ‘Chai pe Charcha’ meetings all over the country to get to understand the needs and aspirations of the people.

You would think that by now everyone would get with the programme and understand that there was nothing wrong with working at a menial job if that was what it took to raise yourself out of poverty or to get yourself an education. But clearly expecting that people would begin to appreciate and value the dignity of labour was asking for far too much.

And so, we had the sorry spectacle of the national media and the Congress party attacking the newly-appointed Human Resources Development minister, Smriti Irani, for working in a MacDonald’s during her early youth. Flipping burgers, they sneered, could not be a qualification for a job that involved overseeing the education system of our country. It is a different matter entirely that Irani never did, in fact, flip burgers. From interviews she gave at the beginning of her television career, I remember her saying that she swept the floors to get a minimum wage that would pay some of her expenses.

If anything, we should be crediting Irani for having the spunk and grit that got her from a job of sweeping floors to becoming the best known television actress of her generation; for taking a plunge into politics and shining brightly as a star spokesperson in record time; for taking on a no-hope constituency in Amethi and giving the entrenched MP, Rahul Gandhi, a run for his money; and now becoming the youngest-ever Cabinet minister in charge of a high profile portfolio like HRD.

But no, we can’t see beyond the ‘flipping burgers at a MacDonald’s’ image. And instead of appreciating it as a measure of Irani’s guts and determination to make it on her own, we deride it as a symbol of her inherent mediocrity. In our eyes, only the inferior take on menial jobs. And once they do so, they should just stick with them instead of trying to get above themselves.

Well, that’s not how things work now. And the sooner we come to terms with this change the better.

Wear your attitude!

Decoding the dress codes on the campaign trail…

Now that the elections are done and dusted, and we have a new government in place, I thought it might be fun to look back and see how some of the most high-profile candidates presented themselves to the public. No, not in terms of policies and political statements; that’s been done to death by leader writers in all the newspapers and by anchors on every TV news channel. But in terms of visual image: how they dressed on the campaign trail, and what they hoped to subliminally communicate by their wardrobe choices.

So here, in no particular order of importance, are just some examples:

• Narendra Modi: As he confessed on television recently, our newly-minted Prime Minister has a great feel for colour combinations and what works on him. And on the campaign trail he seemed to have taken a leaf out of the style book of Queen Elizabeth, who always appears in strong primary colours to stand out in a crowd. Working colour blocking like a fashion pro, Modi went from one public meeting to another, resplendent in green, orange, pink, yellow, and every other colour you could think of. And then, towards the end of his campaign, he reverted to the symbolic purity of white, wearing a large kamal ka phool on his kurta, so that his supporters knew exactly which button to press on the EVM.
• Rahul Gandhi: He decided to go for the scruffy, unwashed look, with crumpled kurta pyjamas and a perma-stubble, perhaps to indicate that he was far too busy campaigning to bother with personal grooming. And his sleeveless jacket achieved international acclaim thanks to British comedian John Oliver’s spiel on the Indian elections. “Look at that vest!” exclaimed Oliver about Rahul, “He’s like an Indian Han Solo!”
• Smriti Irani: Pitted against Rahul in Amethi, the country’s favourite bahu, Smriti Irani, made saffron her calling card, wearing saris in the colours of her party’s flag (though to the disappointment of many, she did not adopt the seedha pallav as her character Tulsi had done in Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, in deference to her leader’s Gujarati roots) as she went from village to village canvassing for votes, and giving Rahul Gandhi a good scare in the bargain.
• Priyanka Gandhi: Running her mother and brother’s campaign in Rae Bareli and Amethi, Priyanka seemed to be channeling the spirit of her grandmother, Indira, in her handloom saris, half-sleeve blouses, and tousled, curly, close-cropped hair. Did the sartorial messaging work? Well, both candidates won, in the face of a ‘Modi wave’.
• Arvind Kejriwal: I can’t have been the only one disappointed by the fact that the weather did not allow the AAP leader to sport his patented look of muffler plus cap in the style of Emirates air-hostesses. Instead, he had to content himself with playing the aam aadmi in a white shirt-brown trousers combination and the standard-issue white cap that announced that he wanted ‘purna swaraj’. But, as it turned out, the voters wanted ‘Modi sarkar’.
• Mamata Banerjee: She stuck to the tried-and-tested crumpled cotton sari look which proclaimed her as a woman of the people (or peepuls, as she would have it), even as she spewed fire and venom against her opponents (read Narendra Modi). And when the votes were finally counted, the people proved to be the woman’s.
• Moon Moon Sen: She put a healthy dose of glamour into the campaign, resplendent in her chiffon saris, with darkly-kohled eyes and an oversized bindi large enough to put Usha Uthup to shame. And even as everyone was dismissing her as a lightweight airhead, a complete misfit in electoral politics, she had the last laugh, winning the Bankura seat with ease.
• Nandan Nilekani: True to form, the IT whizkid refused to conform. Not for him the regulation white kurta pjyama, the uniform that all politicians willy-nilly adopt. Nilekani stuck to his lightly-starched white shirts paired with loose trousers on the campaign trail. And even though he lost the election, his fresh, unconventional approach to politics won him many admirers.
• Shashi Tharoor: Even though he is, like Nilekani, a recent entrant into politics, Tharoor chose to stick to the classic simplicity of a white kurta, though he teamed it with the Malayali mundu rather than the north Indian churidar in a nod to local sentiments. Topping it all was a tricolour shawl, to reference both his party colours and the Indian flag.
• Gul Panag: She was my personal favourite, bravely refusing to give in to the politically correct demand of wearing traditional Indian clothes while on the campaign trail. Panag stuck to her blue jeans and short kurtas, though she did drape a dupatta around her neck occasionally to keep the more conservative folk happy. And best of all, she went campaigning on her Enfield motorbike, helmet and aviators firmly in place. What’s not to love?

On the campaign trail...

In this election season, some free and unsolicited advice to our politicians

Election season is upon us in all its maddening glory. Newspapers are heaving with poll-related news, telling us the caste breakdowns of constituencies, how they voted the last time, and what chances the principal political leaders have this time round. TV news channels have suspended regular programming to bring us live speeches from Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal whenever they speak at party rallies (which is pretty much every day). And even in the real world, all conversation seems to revolve around the elections, and what kind of result they will throw up.

In this season of poll-mania, it is hard not to get caught up in the madness. And so yes, I have succumbed as well, mainlining the news reports, following the social media accounts of politicians, and yes, watching the endless reports on the electoral fights in Varanasi, Vadodara, Amethi, Rae Bareli, Amritsar, Gandhinagar, Bhopal, and other key constituencies.

Which is why, this Sunday morning, I feel compelled to offer some free and completely unsolicited advice to all the candidates in the fray. 

• First off, a quiet word for the men. No matter what the provocation, do keep your shirts on. Or your kurtas. Or even your banians. Nobody needs to see those man boobs or jiggly bellies even if you are taking a ‘holy dip’ in the Ganga (yes, Arvind Kejriwal, I am looking at you). This nation has suffered enough. It doesn’t deserve to be traumatized any further. 
• Ladies, please be advised to post a cordon of heavies around you to keep away the gropers, especially the ones that belong to your own party. Congress candidate from Meerut, the film star, Nagma, learnt this the hard way. She was first filmed being manhandled by a Congress MLA, who later claimed that he was only trying to say something in her ear above the din of campaigning. Nagma brushed that off but a few days later was seen slapping a man at a rally when he got too close for comfort. Maybe next time, she should keep the pepper spray handy. (As indeed should all the women candidates out there.)
• Remember, this is the era of electronic media and social media. You may be making a speech in one state but it is heard across the country. So, don’t use arguments that don’t travel well. Narendra Modi, for instance, made a vow at a rally in Jammu to free the state of J&K from dynastic rule. Chief minister Omar Abdullah was quick to respond. “I dare Namo to make exactly the same speech against dynastic politics in Punjab or Maharashtra. Come on, money where your mouth is,” he tweeted. 
• This should really go without saying, but it makes a complete mockery of the election process if you make speeches threatening to kill your political opponent. This is an election. You are supposed to beat him by the ballot not the bullet. But nobody sent that memo to Imran Masood, the Congress candidate from Saharanpur, who was filmed making a speech in which he threatened to chop Narendra Modi to pieces. He has since been booked for hate speech. And we can only hope that this serves as a salutary example to others.
• Say one controversial thing every day to keep in the news. Better still, time your statement so that it makes the primetime TV news bulletin. There is no better, or cheaper, way of staying in the limelight. Arvind Kejriwal and his AAP colleagues have perfected this art. It’s time other political leaders played catch-up.
• Use social media to bypass traditional media and get your message across to the voters without any intermediaries. Shashi Tharoor has first mover advantage in this regard. But since then, other politicians have also seen the endless possibilities of this strategy. Narendra Modi, Shivraj Chauhan, Sushma Swaraj, Digvijay Singh and RPN Singh have accounts on Twitter, and Arun Jaitley is fast becoming a presence on social media as well. 
• It may be a good idea to hire stand-up comics to write your lines for you because – let’s face it – you are really not that funny or witty on your own. There are, of course, exceptions like Arvind Kejriwal who came up with this classic: “If Advani wants Modi to listen to him, he should drop the ‘v’ from his name.” 
• And if you do make a witty remark in the course of an interview, then don’t get too over-excited. And for God’s sake, don’t look off camera and smile proudly at your support staff, even if they are applauding you from the sidelines. (Yes, Amar Singh, I do mean you!)

Climbing the ladder

How you define success depends on the kind of person you are

Success. One word; with a hundred different ways to define it. Some measure it in terms of money: how much they take home every month or how much their business is worth at the end of the financial year. Others find it in the quality of life they have managed to create for themselves: how often they can take their kids on holiday, the kind of cars they drive, or even the size of the home they live in. Some define it in the context of happiness, in how much pleasure they have managed to extract from everyday, humdrum living. And others see it in more intangible terms; in whether they have succeeded in living life on their own terms, and enjoyed themselves while doing so.

How you define success in the end depends on the kind of person you are. If you are the kind who sees the world in purely materialistic terms, then you measure success by money and all the stuff that it can buy. And the more money you earn, and spend, the more successful you feel. But if, on the other hand, you define success on the basis of emotional, even spiritual well being, then you only feel truly successful if you achieve some measure of it in your own life.

And then, there are those people who are so driven that they never feel truly successful no matter how much they achieve. In their view, success is an ever-moving goal post that recedes further and further away the more they try to close the gap. And no matter how far they get down that road, they can never quite grasp that glittering prize.

Just take a good long look at L.K. Advani. Anyone else would feel that his was a life well spent. Here is a man who single-handedly revived the fortunes of his party with his Rath Yatra and the Ayodhya movement. He stepped back at the crucial time to allow A.B. Vajpayee, a more conciliatory figure, to form the government, but became the second-most powerful man in the country nonetheless. After the NDA was voted out of power, you would have thought that he would accept that his time in the sun was over and make way for a new generation. But no, the dream of being Prime Minister survives even a decade later, because anything less than that seems like an anti-climactic end to a political career.

Not that Advani is the only one to measure his success in terms of the top job. Narendra Modi, his erstwhile protégé and current bête noire, is also not content with just being a three-time chief minister of Gujarat – quite an achievement in itself for a man who began his political life as a humble RSS pracharak. But no, Modi too will only feel truly successful if and when he becomes Prime Minister of India.

So, in that sense, success is linked to ambition. The more ambitious you are, the more it takes for you to feel like a success. Lesser beings may be content being chief minister or home minister. But for some nothing less than being sworn in as Prime Minister will spell success.

Ambition, though, is only part of the story. Your peer group also plays an important part in determining what you see as success. If the rest of your friends are high-powered corporate honchos, then you probably won’t feel much of a success if all you’ve achieved is a middle-management role. If your college mates are being courted by the best companies with six figure compensation packages, you won’t be content with any less. If you are surrounded by two-car households, then one car – no matter how fancy – won’t feel like a totem of success.

Which is why I often feel for the friends of high achievers like Shah Rukh Khan. No matter how hard they work, no matter how much money they make, no matter how high they clamber up the ladder of achievement, can they ever feel truly successful when they measure themselves against their superstar friend? I think not.

Unless, of course, they have mastered the art of contentment, the ability to be happy in their own skin and find pleasure in their own lives, no matter how ordinary, and resist the temptation to judge themselves by the achievements of others. Now that, as far as I am concerned, is the true definition of success.

But what about...

No matter what the subject, social media wants to know why you haven’t outraged on that ‘other’ matter

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there is a new malaise infecting the netherworld of social media. I like to call it ‘whataboutitis’. Others prefer the term ‘whataboutery’. But whatever you choose to term it, this is an insidious disease that is steadily infecting the universe of our social discourse. For the moment, it is restricted to the virtual world but like all things trite and less than wonderful it will soon be an IRL (that’s ‘In Real Life’ for all you newbies out there) phenomenon as well.

So, what is ‘whataboutitis’? Well, this is basically how it plays out. You express an opinion about a political party/current event/celebrity/politician. And no matter what the merit of the opinion itself, you are instantly called out because you omitted to express an opinion about that other political party/current event/celebrity/politician. That omission, apparently, makes the opinion you did voice completely and utterly invalid – pretty much useless, in fact. (Never mind if you did, in fact, have your say about that ‘other’ matter; if people don’t remember it, it doesn’t really count. Not on social media, anyway.)

The classic example is that of the 2002 Gujarat riots. You only have to mention them on social media and you will instantly have to do battle with an army of ‘whatabouters’. What about the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, then, eh? Weren’t they as much a case of genocide? Did anybody apologise for them? Did anyone go to jail? Isn’t Rajiv Gandhi as guilty as Narendra Modi? Why are you just picking on Namo, then? Are you ‘paid media’? Or just ‘sickular’?

And what about Godhra? Did you shed any tears for the people who were killed on that train? Did their deaths not count? Wasn’t that a pre-planned conspiracy? What about the Nellie massacre? Do you even know how many died in that? Do they not matter because they happened in faraway Assam? What about the Muzzafarnagar riots? Isn’t Akhilesh Yadav guilty for letting them happen?

The questions just pile on, as ‘whataboutitis’ flares into an virtual epidemic, with nobody stopping to think just how distasteful and vile it is to play partisan politics over the bodies of dead Indians, no matter what their religion (or political affiliation) may have been.

But this ‘whataboutitis’ is not restricted to riots, either. It extends to most discussions about feminism, sexism and women empowerment as well. It is impossible to stand up for any one woman without being harangued about how you didn’t stand up for that other woman. (The honest truth is that you did. But public memory is even shorter on social media.)

In my own experience, every single time I have tweeted against an instance of sexism against a woman in public life, the ‘whatabouters’ have struck back with nary a care for the truth. When I attacked Sanjay Nirupam for making sexist comments about Smriti Irani on television, the Congress brigade hit back at me with squeals of ‘whataboutery’. ‘What about Narendra Modi’s sexist comment about Sunanda Pushkar? How come you weren’t outraged about that as well?” (Well, actually I was, and I tweeted about that too, thanks for asking.) On the other hand, whenever I comment on Modi’s sexist remarks, the right wing brigade gets its knickers in a twist about the fact that I hadn’t defended Smriti Irani against the smarmy comments of Sanjay Nirupam. (Er, I wrote an entire column about it; you can Google search it once you’ve stopped frothing at the mouth.) And what about the fact that I hadn’t defended Sushma Swaraj when she was derided as a ‘nachaniya’ by such Congress leaders as Digvijay Singh. (Only, of course, I did.)

Call Tarun Tejpal out on his Alchemy Of A Liar and you are asked why you didn’t condemn Assaram Bapu in the same breath. Express your anguish about the Delhi gang rape victim and you will get ‘what about all the tribal women who get raped’. Comment on how long Sourav Ganguly took to finally retire and the ‘What about Sachin?’ question will inevitably follow. Stand up for Shah Rukh Khan’s right to air his views about what it means to be Muslim in India and the ‘whatabouters’ will bring up Salman Khan and his celebration of Ganesh Chathurti (now, isn’t that what ‘true secularism’ is about?).

Complain about right-wing trolls who call you names and threaten to rape you and you will be asked ‘What about the Congress trolls who do the same thing?’ (Answer: please name and shame them all; report spam; get their accounts blocked. I have zero tolerance for abusive people on social media, no matter what their political affiliation. The reason I outrage about the Sanghis is because they are the ones trolling me. The moment Congress handles do the same, I will call them out as well.) Say you like pizza and people will want to know what’s wrong with chaat. Talk about loving Delhi and people will want to know what’s wrong with Mumbai. Praise Peter and you will be asked ‘But what about Paul’?

I have to admit that despite my best efforts to Stay Calm and Carry On, this epidemic of ‘whataboutitis’ is beginning to get me down. I am seriously thinking of putting a disclaimer on my social media feed: Please feel free to assume that I am outraged about everything, unless I declare otherwise.

Do you think it would serve as an antidote to ‘whataboutitis’? Well, a girl can dream, but I kind of suspect that this nightmare has only just about started.