Category Archives: Miscellaneous

How to organize a TV debate in India…

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Step 1: Take one obnoxious self-centred anchor who talks more than he or she listens and loves pissing everyone off.

Step 2: If it’s a political debate, then take two politicians from opposite parties and two journalists affiliated to the very same parties for variety. Don’t forget to keep out sane, neutral and erudite voices. For non-political debates make sure you use the Usual Suspects. All TV channels tap exactly the same Speaker Talent Pool.

Step 3: In the ticker below, display yesterday’s Twitter messages of the same ole 5-6 accounts that you are aware of. Repeat this collection a few dozen times.

Step 4: Stick to the golden principle of: He who shouts the most speaks the longest.

Step 5: Never forget that the anchor has more powers than a football referee. He or she can cut anyone in mid-sentence as many times as he or she wants and take the discussion to any ridiculous level that he or she pleases.

Step 6: Let the shouting continue till the dying seconds of the programme and cut it abruptly giving the impression that this debate had so much substance that it could easily have lasted a few more meaningful hours.

© Sunil Rajguru

Faaltu differences…

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…between MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) and MMS (Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India)

∙ Mobile MMS allows for unlimited exchange of messages between two parties.
Political MMS allows for absolutely no exchange of messages, with one party always being on mute or silent mode.

∙ In the Mobile MMS scandal, the MMS was directly responsible for the scandal that affected the many lives around it and cost only a few Rupees.
In the Political MMS scams, MMS was not directly responsible for the same which involved the whole nation and cost thousands of crores of Rupees.

∙ Mobile MMS is barely 10 years old and has a bright future.
Political MMS is 79 years old with an uncertain future.

∙ Political MMS is based in India and does occasional global roaming.
Mobile MMS is based everywhere in the globe and is also on roaming.

∙ Political MMS liberalized India.
Mobile MMS liberalized the world.

∙ Political MMS is an economic wizard.
Mobile MMS is a technical wizard.

∙ LK Advani hates Political MMS.
LK Advani is too old to love or hate Mobile MMS.

∙ Political MMS can use Mobile MMS.
Mobile MMS can include content related to Political MMS.

∙ Political MMS rules India.
Mobile MMS rules large sections of the youth in the world.

© Sunil Rajguru

Still waiting for that Miracle, eh?

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All of us keep waiting for one big miracle to change our lives.

We pray, hope and wish desperately for it.

Are you one of those people?

Consider some facts…

1. The chances of intelligent life being formed is so low in the universe that one scientist calculated it to be “less than 0.01 per cent over four billion years”.

There are billions and billions of stars in this universe. What are the chances that we have landed up here on this perfect planet next to this perfect sun?

2. If you look at the history of the world, then it has been plagued with global wars, epidemics, famine and the like. The last major catastrophic event for the whole world was of course World War Two.

It is estimated that 70 million people died. (The population of the world was under 3 billion)

You do the math on how many were injured, displaced and scarred for life. Two nuclear bombs were also used, which affected hundreds of thousands for decades.

Imagine the fear of the nuclear holocaust in the 1940s and 1950s!

While there have been many localized conflicts, nothing like WW2 has happened for 66 years. Most of us were born after that event.

We are extremely lucky in that aspect, much luckier than the billions who lived directly under the spectre of death and destruction before us.

3. We are lucky to live in the Internet Age. But not everybody in the world has access to a computer. Depending on which statistics you quote, about two-thirds of the world’s population has either never seen a computer or has no access to the Internet on a regular basis.

You are automatically in the top one-third of the human population.

So the chances of anybody like me writing such a blog in the peace of my home or anybody like you reading it in the universe is probably a miraculous one in a zillion!

And you and I are still waiting for a miracle!

© Sunil Rajguru

Words and terms India needs…

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• TVial: Absolutely trivial stuff shown by 24X7 news channels which they usually label breaking news or exclusive. (TVial=TV+trivial)

• Backfrog: The ability to make an unexpected and uncanny huge leap backwards, the opposite of “leapfrog”.

• The 2-1 Step: When the country takes one step back for every two steps forward. Some totally backward areas experience the “1-2 Step” and hence get steadily worse.

• Plasticky New: The tendency for an Indian to keep a product new by keeping it in the original plastic covering for as long as possible.

• Clean Politician: Someone who is corrupt and communal but at the same time does a lot of development on the side.
Note: It is impossible for any politician to be 100% clean in India.

• Conventionally Corrupt: “I don’t ask for bribes and just go about doing my job. But if someone gives me some extra money to do something, then I don’t decline.” To be contrasted with someone who is “Totally Corrupt”.

• Parental Destiny: The tendency for most Indian parents to play God and dictate the college, course, job and even the spouse of their child.

These versions by Sunil Rajguru

Just because you didn’t call or message…

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Indian telecos apply for bankruptcy due to greatly reduced calls and SMSes…

Telecallers seek counselling over rising feeling of loneliness and worthlessness…

Indian mobile consumers feel strangely unwanted too…

Family discord sets in as consumers yell at their families in the absence of telecallers to vent steam…

Minister of Health and Family Welfare steps in to request the Telecom Ministry to reverse the decision to limit spam calls and SMSes in the interest of the health and welfare of all families in the country…

The Sensex tanks due to negative sentiment and the reverse domino effect pushes the global economy further into recession…

© Sunil Rajguru

5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays & 5 Sundays in a month as common as your birthday!

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July 2011 has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays.

So let me jump on the table and dance on one leg with joy!

Why?

Because I am told by many people that for some obscure reason, this wonderful event happens only once in 823 years!

To burst the bubble right away, March 2013 also has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays!

Don’t believe me? Just click the time/calendar on the right hand bottom of your computer screen and check out March 2013.

Also, 5 Fri-Sat-Sundays would have hit you roughly that many times as many birthdays you have celebrated on this planet.

Don’t believe me again?

The Maths…

Every year has 7 months that have 3 days which come 5 times in that particular month.

(If a month has 31 days, then every day is repeated 4 times by the 28th of the month.

So 29th, 30th and 31st are extra or “5th” days.

Seven months have 31 days: January, March, May, July, August, October & December)

The chance that those 3 days are Friday, Saturday and Sunday is exactly 1/7th of that, which works out to be once a year!

(If you pick 3 days randomly from 7 days a week, then there are many permutations and combinations.

However, since the days only come in sequence, there are only 7 possible combinations: Sun-Mon-Tue, Mon-Tue-Wed, Tue-Wed-Thu, Wed-Thu-Fri, Thu-Fri-Sat, Fri-Sat-Sun & Sat-Sun-Mon)

Now this event may be skipped in some year and may happen twice in another since 364 days form 52 weeks and the extra 1-2 days shift the day-date matchings randomly.

Also, in 823 years, 3 days coming 5 times in a month will happen a whopping 5761 times!

A simple thumb rule to check on the calendar…

Any 31-day month on which Friday falls on the 29th will have 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays.

Now the person who started this might argue that what he meant to say was that July being such a month will happen once in 823 years!

To answer that, in July 2016, the phenomenon will be repeated.

And you thought that you could say TGIF followed by a same-month weekend five times in a month only once every 823 years!

Call it a “5TGIF-Weekend Month” (5TWM or Fitwem) and it comes regularly 0, 1 or 2 times a year depending on the year.

But anyway, Internet virals ki Jai Ho!!!

Any Falsehood repeated 10 million times by a million people over thousands of networking and email service sites just has to be True!

This (Correct or Incorrect) Calculation by Sunil Rajguru