World Cup and Census of India in trouble

The World Cup organizers are in trouble. So is the World Cup, and quite possibly, the Census Commissioner of India. Mahipaleshwaran, from Karur district in Tamilnadu, demanded the school teacher who came home for survey, the World Cup. "Where is the Cup that counts?", he asked. The bewildered teacher tried explaining to him that she was there to take the head count on behalf of the Government of India, but that only enraged Mahipaleshwaran.

"Nothing in India does what it claims to do! Last week I had constipation, and the doctor prescribed me some pills. Since it was the first time I was using those pills, I decided to eat a few Cadbury Diary Milks for a 'Shubh Aarambh'. The constipation multiplied exponentially! Now even government agencies have started advertising tall claims! Why aren't these census officials coming with the cup which they claimed can count?" Mahipaleshwaran has demanded the Census Commission and ICC World Cup committee to declare public their activities using the RTI act.

In a bid to avoid fuss, the ICC sent a replica of the World Cup and a ventriloquist to Karur to convince Mahi that the Cup could indeed count. The move, however failed when Mahi snatched the Cup, went to a crowded bar and asked the Cup to count the number of people. "Blatant lie! They should've clearly mentioned in the advertisements that the Cup can count only one person!" His neighbor, Ponnambalam, had similar concerns. "I was playing Need for Speed on my computer. I wanted to switch to Prince of Persia. Hence I drank Pepsi. But the bloody game never changed! I even painted my body and did all those silly things that the cricketers did in the advertisement, but alas, PEPSI DID NOT CHANGE THE GAME!!" Mahipaleshwaran and Ponnambalam have jointly filed a Public Interest Litigation regarding the issue.

Veteran lawyers predict that the court might issue directives to the companies to add a few lines in the advertisements. "It could be something like: 'The Cup that counts, but not people or anything physical or quantifiable, and most definitely can't take a census.' Yes, that would mean few extra seconds in terms of ad length and a lot more money. But corporates must have a responsibility of being honest and clear with the people, which in the long run could bring loyal customers."

Meanwhile Opposition Party leaders have blamed the UPA government for poor planning. "How can you have a Cup that counts and the Census of India in the same year? It is obviously bound to confuse aam admi. Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi should personally take full responsibility for this."

2G SCAM MOVES TO CRICKET!

Protests by public, media and politicians to arrest "All" those involved in the 2G issue has now backfired, and has only escalated tensions between law enforcement agencies and general public. The Chennai wing of CBI has arrested several thousand gully cricketers across the city, and the exercise is expected to be followed in the rest of the country too.

Says Vicky, friend of Karthi, an arrested in the 2G scam - " We were playing in the apartment terrace. Karthi needed 2 to win off one ball. I bowled a full toss, and Karthi hit the ball hard on Ground Floor Maami's saree, which was drying on the clothes line and started shouting "DAI 2G 2G 2G winnu winnu winnu WINNERS FIRSTU". Out of nowhere, a helicopter landed, police mama came out, handcuffed Karthi and put him inside the chopper. They also made me bowl for around 10 overs, all police played. But they didn't bowl back and flew off in the chopper. Gaajadi pasanga!!"

Gully lawmakers of the game are now thinking of ways to implement the 'Granted' (G) runs system without attracting attention of CBI. "One option is to run the first run, and grant the batsman 1G. We're still thinking of innovative ways - to either rename that 2* shot, or come up with other alternatives."

With most of the city's cricketers arrested in the 2G scam, schools in Chennai now face a gender inequality problem. The Mayor has put forth a proposal to import boys from non-cricketing states like Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim at subsidized rates. The few remaining boys are also being forced to turn mahipals, with most of them being forced to play 'O pillar *tak-tak-tak* Cater-Pillar *tak-tak-tak* ' with the girls. "The future looks bright for us" said a smiling Gokulakrishnan, a veteran mahipal.

Meanwhile Shahnaz, a leading dietitian, who never sees patients but gives the diet angle for all newspaper-reported issues said 2G must be abolished since it makes kids lazy, doesn't make them run, and would lead to obesity at a later stage. Vijay Dahiya, a former cricketer from the city, however feels that 2G must be brought into mainstream cricket to facilitate the likes of Ashish Nehra and Munaf Patel.

Shah Rukh responsible for Eden Gardens cancellation

Here's the latest twist in the Eden Gardens fiasco: CAB has squarely blamed Kolkata Knight Riders owner Shah Rukh Khan for the World Cup venue cancellation. Says CAB chief Jagmohan Dalmiya - "Ever since SRK didn't retain Saurav Ganguly in Kolkata IPL team, there's been growing dissent in West Bengal, more particularly among the construction workers in Eden Gardens. They have stopped working, and are threatening to blow up completed portions of the stadium, if Saurav isn't offered a place in KKR. They have taken up jobs in hartals and strikes elsewhere in the country, and won't return till they hear a positive result about Dada."

Says Bhattacharya, a worker - "This is atrocious! Dada underperformed in the IPLs deliberately, out of concern for Bengalis. He didn't want us to see the gory sight of Shah Rukh Khan dancing naked on the field. Dada was even under tremendous pressure from Karan Johar to win the IPL for KKR. But being the true Bengali that he is, he dropped catches and scored ducks to save the nation from obscene embarrasments. Saurav Ganguly must be awarded the Bharath Rathna for what he did!"

When mediapersons questioned about Ganguly's omission from KKR, here's what SRK had to say. " I really cannot comment on why the other teams haven't chosen Dada. Everyone has their own plans, and its upto the owners to choose or not to choose a player. All I can say is that Saurav is a fantastic player and a sportsman." When irritated mediapersons again questioned SRK about why HE didn't pick Saurav, they got the same answer. Apparently, Shah Rukh's PR hasn't returned yet from Christmas holidays.

Meanwhile, the bottling industry in West Bengal has hit an all time low. Anticipating a huge turnout for world cup, several bottles were being manufactured for throwing on players' heads. With the match being cancelled, orders have been withdrawn and severe losses have been reported. Reports have it that an attempt to loot all bottles by Tamilnadu CM Karunanidhi, for free distribution in his state, have been thwarted.

Interestingly, Yuvraj Singh seemed very happy at the cancellation of Eden Gardens venue. He has even suggested alternate venues like Dharmasala and Goa. Says Yuvraj - "Its a nightmare for any cricketer to be called 'waterboy' by an 80,000 odd crowd. Hence I've suggested alternate venues with lesser crowd capacity, where a collective 'waterboy' chant will sound like a hymn, rather than a boo." As the saying goes, one's loss is one's gain.

IIM-CAT's new quota from 2012

While the rest of the country is analyzing toppers and trends of CAT 2011, IIM has announced some major changes in its admissions policy, which will be implemented next year. A visibly excited IIM-A Director Samir Baruah spoke to media persons.

"The Cabinet has Kapil Sibal. Cricket has Ravindra Jadeja. Bollywood has Shahid Kapoor and India has Arindham Chaudri. Incompetency is everywhere. It is the very foundation on which Indian work culture lies. Every business unit has incompetency, and every organization has incompetent managers. To facilitate the smooth gelling of IIM graduates with incompetent peers, we have decided to bring in diversity into our classrooms by admitting incompetent students."

Mr. Baruah continued explaining to a shocked gathering. "From next year onwards, we will have a separate quota for those under 1 percentile. There will be separate GD and PI for these people, and those who manage not to talk inspite of heavy persuasions shall be admitted. The emphasis will be on sleeping and burping, two qualities that define an incompetent manager in boardroom meetings."

When we raised the issue about someone who would know all the answers but deliberately mark the wrong answers to get into the incompetent quota, Mr. Baruah smiled satisfactorily to himself. "Ahh... There's the IIM touch. We're not just looking at wrong answers, we're considering the wrong approach too. Students will have to type their methodology with which they derive answers. We're looking for candidates who can apply Pythagoras theorem on Profit & Loss problems to arrive at a choice."

Kumar, an incompetent aspirant spoke to us. "This is great news. I will play Minesweeper during next CAT. Or Pinball maybe. Prometric should ask applicants their choice of games while filling out the application!" Meanwhile, several corporates have shown interest in sending their managers for the Executive Incompetent degrees. The ideology behind this is to keep incompetent professionals away for sometime while devising ways to improve company performances.

Why Ravindra Jadeja was bought for $950000

Kochi IPL franchisee has defended its $950000 bid to buy Ravindra Jadeja. After an exciting auction, Vivek Venugopal, one of the owners of the consortium spoke to reporters from near the BCCI notice board. Asked about the odd location for an interview, Vivek said he checked the notice board every evening to see if his franchisee had been forwarded any show-cause by BCCI.

“Sreesanth has been the longest serving Kerala cricketer. Our brand value would be greatly increased with Sreesanth as our captain. Having said that, we needed someone miserable on the field to make Sreesanth look like Wisden Cricketer of the Year. The obvious choice was Ravindra Jadeja, and we went all out to buy him.” Mr. Venugopal’s lips tweaked at odd angles every time he mentioned Jadeja’s name.

“The rest of the auction room obviously didn’t know of our strategy, and we were met with hostility after winning Jadeja. The waiters in the hotel stopped replacing our water bottles. The auctioneer stood paralyzed, and we had to inject steroids on him to hit the hammer one final time to confirm Jadeja’s bid. We even received condolence messages from Kochi and other parts of Kerala like Dubai and Bahrain.”

Ravindra Jadeja, buoyed by his auction prices, has reportedly negotiated a deal with Manchester United. Sources have confirmed that IPL new boss Chirayu Amin has already slapped a show-cause notice to Manchester United, and is considering extending Jadeja’s IPL ban to one more year.

Meanwhile, corporates and general public who searched for IPL Kochi’s website on Google were met with dismay. Said Omanakuttan from Allepey – “This is atrocious! First, Sashi Tharoor disappears from Twitter. Next, we find no website for our IPL team. This must be a collaborative work of Lalit Modi and Pakistani hackers!” Others, who managed to find sites kochiipl.com and kochiteam.com were confused which was the official site, though they maintained that both sites looked equally awful and comparable to bcci.tv.

Moving on to other related news, Sony Max has confirmed that it has got premium sponsors for the Pune vs Kochi match tosses. With Smith’s name being on the rounds for Pune IPL captaincy, and Sreesanth almost having been confirmed as Kochi captain, the match tosses should be more interesting than the matches themselves. Sreesanth is expected to invite Graeme Smith’s family for the toss.

How Nira Radia made 300 crores in 9 years

Retired CBI cop Subbiah, who heads the secret committee formed by the government to probe into how Nira Radia amassed 300 crores in 9 years, has submitted a simple, one paragraph report to the Prime Minister's Office. As is usual, journalists read the report even before the PM did. Writes Subbiah - "It is astounding and a matter of utmost shame that the CBI couldn't crack such a simple case. Nira Radia had been using a Virgin Mobile SIM, and she had been getting paid for incoming. Considering that her clientele include Ratan Tata, Anil Ambani and other top-shots, it is no surprise that she received incoming calls of long durations. It was just a matter of applying logic. I would strongly advice the PMO to look into the falling standards of CBI officers." Subbiah, a 1970 batch IPS officer, is also an alumni of the first batch of "Vendan All Pass Tutorials".

Meanwhile, several entrepreneurs, taking a cue from Nira Radia, have started making crores of money. Their strategy involves sticking "Earn 1 lakh per month. No investment required. Call 9001002010" posters in trains and buses. When called, they simply respond by asking the caller to purchase Virgin Mobile and stick similar posters all over the city. It is being rumored that the wallpaper of all Tamilnadu State Transport Corporation employees has been changed to such posters.

In business news, Airtel has announced that it will rename its "Call your loved ones @ 10 paise per minute" plan to "Nira Radia-Ratan Tata" night time calls plan". The move is expected to offer customers more clarity and connect with the rate-cutter plan.

Mallya's hackers, oil spills & more

The Pakistan Cyber Army(PCA), which recently hacked Dr.Vijay Mallya's website, has decided to diversify & go one step further: lay underground pipelines from Islamabad to Bangalore, and suck 1 crore barrels worth of Kingfisher rum from United Breweries plants. This was brought to light by a TIMES NOW expose, with a special correspondent swimming through the yet to be constructed pipeline with a hidden camera. Dr. Mallya, when contacted, said he wants to take things one at a time, and that his first priority is reviving his website from the hackers.

Meanwhile, the cyber police haven't begun looking for the hackers yet, as they are busy searching for Shashi Tharoor's long lost Twitter account. Down south, Kalaignar Karunanidhi passed a law in the State Legislature to rename all websites in Tamil. Kalaignar cited the unfamiliarity of Pakistani extremists with Tamil as the reason. TIMES NOW informers inside PCA revealed startling informations though: The Pak Cyber Army is working closely with Pakistan based, Tamil fluent Vijaykanth-movie villains to recognize and hack Tamil websites. M.K. Azhagiri is on top of the hit-list. Hearing this, a furious Captain Vijaykanth has stationed his DMDK cadres equipped with machine guns at all major browsing centers.

Petroleum Minister Murli Deora has surprisingly requested InterPol not to bust the pipelines, as they can be used to form a Pan India petroleum grid, thus reducing the transportation charges on petroleum. Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has his own plans though. He says the pipeline can be routed to the Mumbai coast, so that the oil spill can be re-directed to Islamabad. British Petrouleum CEO, hearing of this latest development, has requested participation of BP in this project, to clear spill off the Gulf coast.

The Indian Government wants to pursue this matter tactically and diplomatically. New Delhi is pushing hard on Pakistan to award the pipeline contract to Suresh Kalmadi. This has two advantages, sources close to the matter say. There would be a steady revenue from the contracts, but at the same time the pipeline won't cross the borders of Islamabad. Very clever indeed!

Indian skipper M.S. Dhoni meanwhile has said that Dr. Mallya's web hack has deeply affected the morale of the team and that the boys are mentally tired. This, he says was the reason the team got 88 all out. (When confronted with the question that the match happened before the hack, a miffed Dhoni said: "Well if it had happened after the hack, the team would have been 8 all out". None understood the logic, of course! )

After a lot of goading, Dr. Mallya chose to speak on this matter. But what he spoke remains unclear because Arnob Goswarmi "Mr Mallya I'm asking a direct question I want a direct answer"ed even before Mallya opened his mouth. A frustrated Mallya shouted Oo La La Le Lo before splashing Whyte & Mackay on the camera.

Greetings to all on our 64th Independence Day. While so many articles have been written about our proud history, here is my attempt at giving you a glimpse of our near future.

Very soon, all keyboards in the world will have the ` symbol. Every apparel shop across the globe will have I ♥ ND (I love New Delhi) T-shirts. The filthy rich American kid will pester his parents for Siyaram's Jeans and Manish Malhotra jerseys, and will wear his jean low & bend down at every opportunity to show off his original, imported-from-Tiruppur Anand underwear.

Very soon, HPS© (Hindi Prachar Sabha) will be conducting Test of Hindi as Foreign Language exams worldwide. The Washington Post will have a full page ad, a testimonial from James Bloom (rank 456, IIT-JEE), thanking Brilliant Tutorials for its part in his success. The brightest minds will get into ISB or IIMs. (and the ones content with just an India MBA shall join IIPMs)

Not far from today, a mother will be withdrawing cash from Manappuram Money Transfer, Melbourne, sent by her son, working as a specialty chef in Muniyandi Vilas Group of Hotels, Kumbakonam.

There might be uproars in our Parliament, to limit the number of work permits to Europeans & Americans. And you won't realize that the Airtel customer care executive you are talking to is actually from a call center in Buffallo! (They speak so fluently, its difficult to differentiate between Indian Hindi & American Hindi!)

Will Smith and Pamela Anderson won't mind dancing for an item number to promote their latest movie to their Non Resident American fans in Mumbai. (Of course, we won't stop by to watch, we won't have time to bother about petty issues.)

Soon, Canada might ban its CEOs from using Micromax smart phones, owing to security reasons. And SUN mobiles (yes, of the Sun TV Network family) will make the most out of this opportunity and shall make customized sets for Canadians.

Vikatan Naanayam will publish the list of world's top earning sportsmen. Tiger Woods will be ranked a distant 156 and Kobe Byrant 92, just 2 ranks away from Ravindra Jadeja's rank 90. French and German football fans might get into a brawl in one of our TASMAC outlets and their embassies will plead with the Indian government to let them off without charges.

Those days aren't far off. No country is perfect. It has to be made perfect. Proud to be born an Indian =)

[P.S.: This is my first attempt at writing. Feedbacks will be greatly appreciated]