People of the Year 2005

It has been over a year since I began to write unadulterated, Grade-A rubbish for this blog of mine. As I trawled through my blog, I discovered that I rang in 2005 with a list of the people of the year 2004 . It is therefore in keeping with tradition that I continue this year by presenting the Siddhu Persons of the Year 2005 – a list of people, organizations and animals that made 2005 an unliveable, intolerable and painful experience for those of us at the bottom of the pecking order.

In the year that went past, hurricanes, tsunamis, torrential rains, obese chief ministers and equally obese female police officers gave stiff competition to American soldiers, George W Bush and Osama bin Laden in entertaining the populace.

So, without further ado, I present the Siddhu persons of the year 2005.

1.Air India

Air India has contributed more to providing me with my share of pain in a year where the usual suspects continued their good work in Guantanamo bay, Abu Ghraib and King’s Cross.

I travelled five times on Air India in the year that has just passed us by. The first flight was to Singapore. The flight taught me the value of patience and meditation as I spent eighteen hours waiting for the plane that would take me to that well-loved dictatorship next door (a distance of three thousand kilometres, by the way), and two dollars writing about my experiences at an uncomfortable and slightly smelly Internet cafe in Chennai Airport. Before anyone tries to blame Air India for its inefficiency, one would do well to remember that an airline cannot do much else when one of their forty-five year old lumbering leviathans decides to go on strike, and the only other available fifty year old replacement is currently on safari in a Kenyan jungle (which, by the way, o incredulous reader, was the reason given us for the delay).

The second flight was from Heathrow to Bombay, via Modiland. Due to a conspiracy of right-wing Hindu nationalists conspiring to establish a Hindu Rashtra (while merrily massacring ethnic and religious minorities on the way), one of the engines of another Air India plane – a veteran of a hundred thousand sorties during World War II, and a witness to the Hindenburg fire of 1936 – decided to take a break. Before anyone tries to blame Air India for being manned by a bunch of incompetent nincompoops, one would do well to remember that our average public sector airline cannot do much else if Narendra Modi decides to start another merry orgy of communal rioting – precipitating it, this time around by engineering the failure of an Air India engine.

Apart from these delays, Air India worked assiduously to being selected in this list by hiring obese air hostesses who cannot help brush huge rear ends on unsuspecting aisle seat passengers and disturbing their sleep and recruiting baggage handlers who have done their utmost to lose my luggage – twice!

2. The Moral Policemen

The moral policemen that one saw spreading misery in 2005 were not all clad in the reviled khaki. One of them even called himself a Vice Chancellor.

They worked day and night to prevent the corruption of Indian culture, and ensure that India begins to look more and more like a bombed-out armpit named Afghanistan did when under the Taliban. They protected the lecherous male Anna University student from the desire to rape a desirable young lass clad in a (gasp) tee shirt and jeans by instructing women not to wear western clothes any more. They protected the easily blinded Anna University lecturer from the harmful effects of the colour red on the female body by banning red altogether. (Note: All female Red Indian students would have been expelled, if there were any.) They protected young women who allowed themselves to be corrupted by embracing a male by getting policewomen to beat the young women up. The policewomen, it is worthwile to add, were of a kind that no right-thinking straight male would touch with a ten foot pole.

Gay rights groups the world over have lauded the moral police for the curbs imposed on heterosexual activity in India. As Elton John, five-time recipient of the prestigious Faggot of the Year award, stated, “Right thinking individuals in Indian polity realize the folly of men and women getting together. This is a major step in the direction of a homosexual world.”

Mr. John went on to add that he would be happy to demonstrate the joys of homosexuality to the Indian male, in order to cure him of his disturbingly heterosexual taste. Gay rights groups attribute these moves in the recent past to demonstrations of a similar nature by Elton John and his comrades-in-arms on the persons of the Anna University vice-chancellor and certain individuals of indeterminate sex enforcing the law in Uttar Pradesh.

3. MMSi

MMSi (or MMSes, if the reader so wishes) have definitely been the hero(in)es of the year 2005. The intrepid DPS girl started it all when she performed facial contortions while her mouth was full. It will be remembered that she was much appreciated by this author last year for her lucidity and clarity of expression, even as she worked energetically with hand and mouth.

And India's beautiful (and not-so-beautiful) women have not looked back ever since. Riya Sen followed in her illustrious footsteps, as did India's answer to push-up bras and Pamela Anderson, Mallika Sherawat. It was but a short while before Sania Mirza purportedly made a release of her own - a release which unfortunately turned out to be one of Sania Mirza's look-alikes.

MMSi have done a good job bringing cheer and joy to desperate, under-sexed (and extremely available) men like the writer of this tome. Until the Vice-Chancellor of Anna University banned all forms of heterosexual activity (including heterosexual pornography) on-campus, engineering students across its campii entertained themselves through several boring classes by means of these MMSi.

Scientists suggest that these MMSi have contributed greatly to an increase in the frequency and duration of visits paid by the young Indian male to the toilet. As an evidently virile engineerin gstudent on the way to one said, "The Taj Mahal is no longer man's biggest erection for woman.".