The Third Slip: Issue 41 - A friend in needy is a friend in Modi
Hello, Slippers! Welcome to The Third Slip - the weekly newsletter that puts the tire in satire, the sub in subscribe and the chi in archive. This is issue 41 - 41 was the jersey number worn by Roger Bannister when he beat the 4-minute mark for running a mile. He wore this number and not the glorious 42 because he hadn’t read Douglas Adams’ masterpiece on account of it being published 25 years later. Four-One is also the saddest or happiest phrase in English depending on your degree of extroversion - “Sir, you can pick any table, which would you like?” “For one, please”.
2017 has definitely not been just another year, and the last week like the rest of 2017 has been… interesting. On with the news...
AT HOME
Good ol’ days of India-Pak fransip are back! Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was arrested by Pakistan on charges of being a spy and is on death row (subject to what the International Court of Justice thinks) was allowed to meet his family briefly. Strangely, Jadhav was thankful to the Pakistan government (er, who captured him?) for arranging the meet. His mom and wife were apparently badly treated by security folks, which led to predictable outrage among politicians hoping to get votes. In particular, some nutjob from the Congress asked why the BJP doesn’t care about other Indian prisoners. A nutjob from the BJP retaliated by saying such statements were anti-national.
In the meantime, nothing has improved on the Indo-Pak front, including a number of soldiers dying (maybe we should have stood in ATM queues longer?). This is something Modi vowed to fix in 2014 (and will no doubt do again, as 2019 is around the corner). Basically, somewhere in a Pakistan prison, lies a poor Indian guy who acts as a proxy war for elected officials in India trying to get votes. Well done, democracy!
The Third Slip and Mr. Modi find common ground: Short time readers of this less than esteemed weblication (the ones who unsubscribe immediately on discovering the issue-based criticism of incumbents) have always complained that we are unfair to the PM and constantly criticise him. Since this is the last day of the year, we will be nice 😇 It has happened, we have found that Mr. Modi and TTS are not all that dissimilar. In a BJP parliamentary meet this week, Modi complained that apart from a few MPs, no one responded to his Good Morning messages on the Narendra Modi app. We feel you Mr. Modi. Week after week we send news to our readers and except for a few, no one responds. The PM has asked for validation, now it’s your patriotic duty to write to us.
Symptoms you don’t need WebMD to clarify: Oh hey, people suddenly caring about mother tongue. It must mean elections are around the corner as lazy politicians stir up easy ways to get votes? Correct - Karnataka this time.
NOTAble: A BJP candidate in #KnowledgeableCrowd Chennai won fewer votes than NOTA.
Unrelated TTS Schooltime Nostalgia: The sentence “A notable doctor was not able to perform an operation as there was no table.”
Keep a watch in 2018 for...: How State parties perform. That’s the actual threat to the NDA, not Rahul Gandhi. And whether ‘secularism’ remains in the freakin’ constitution, some BJP ministers aren’t fans of the word.
Padma Shrimati: The CBFC, no longer headed by that uncle whose name we could never spell correctly without Google and we don’t have to bother with anymore (yay), has never faced so much pressure in recent times as with the movie Padmavati and all the typical idiotic Indian level drama around it. Finally, in a bid to placate both sides they have hit upon an ingenious solution: Change the name of the movie from Padmavati to Padmavat. Say vat? To those clamouring for major changes, the removal of “i” is an 11.11% cut of Padmavati and to the rest of the sane universe, this makes us chuckle. Someone give the CBFC a Padma award.
TTS Russian Roulette - 5 bullets, 1 blank
“Yogi govt issues order to scrap case against Yogi Adityanath” seems like an Onion (or, if you’re more kvlt, Son of Bosey) headline, but… Alas.
As the BJP comes to the end of its epic 2017 concert, “Live From Hindustan”, its fans beg for an encore and what better way to sign off than by replaying one of its biggest hits from the year - Meat Ban. This time, the South Delhi Remix version.
The days of medical admission scams might be behind us, with a new bill being proposed. Which means if you find yourself injured in Bihar somewhere, you can rest assured your ortho will give you actual medicine instead of, say, divine bovine excreta.
Andhra Pradesh launched a project where, by 2019, everyone in the state would get super-cheap, super-fast fiber internet. It was inaugurated by a man who still largely remains just a GK Quiz answer, President Ram Nath Kovind.
The saddest piece of news in any democracy - a content creator has to shut down because of death threats. Humans of Hindutva, that hilarious Facebook page which took on right-wing stupidity, finally bid us goodbye. Sigh!
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AROUND THE WORLD
2017 was Europe’s best economic year in a decade - Despite Brexit and the fact that Greece is still a part of it.
Thankfully, Trump didn’t do anything much in the last week of 2017, but here’s a good summary of all that he did this year (TL;DR: Nobody takes the USA seriously anymore). As a result of which, the new leader of the world is… (Groan) China.
Apocalypse Update: One of our most beloved sections on TTS couldn’t have ended the year on a finer note - North Korea is not pleased that the US has imposed sanctions and that the UN security council has said ‘yes’ to said sanctions. So they’ve threatened to nuke all 15 members. Fun! Happy 2018!
Trump 1 - 0 Logic: 2017 was the year when the two great enemies of our time squared off in an epic battle - In the blue corner, Artificial Intelligence made rapid progress, but then from the red corner, Natural Stupidity came out swinging like a windmill, trumping everything in sight. This week, The Donald said possibly the stupidest thing yet - that the US was having an abnormally cold winter and could use with some global warming. This nonsense doesn’t surprise us anymore but never fails to make us laugh and facepalm simultaneously.
Other things
We have many branches Did you know the department in charge of Home security in the US is present in… 70 countries?! Maybe that’s the US’ way of saying the world is its home?
Just when we thought ISIS was done and dusted, here they come back with a blast in Afghanistan that killed over 40. Like we needed that as well, heading into 2018.
Swedish workers heart automation. No fear of job losses via AI here. And Scandinavia’s kickass social system (which, by the way, has taxes approaching 60%) and open-mindedness are to thank.
BIZ & TECH
There was this old saying about the 70s Australian bowling attack - if Lillee don’t get ya, Thommo will. A similar thing is playing out for physical retailers in the US: If Amazon don’t get ya, rent will.
Troll award of the month: An Italian jeans outfit realised ‘Steve Jobs’ isn’t trademarked, so they’re calling their company that - and there isn’t a damn thing Apple can do about it.
Snapchat copied Facebook Stories :O This is Deep Purple taking inspiration from Anu Malik.
You: I had a bad year.
Uber: Hold my drink.
Uber’s 2017 report card reads like a south Indian kid expected to get centum in math going up to their parents with 35 on 100 #drawFromYourOwnExperiences #ColdSweatNightmares
TTS Trivia Section: Guess who now owns 20% of Uber? (when in doubt, answer Softbank. Eventually, the answer will be right).
LinkedOut
On one year of Trump: the American Dream is rapidly becoming the American Illusion.
A fabulous, touching account of one Indian parent’s fight against junk food - also, why Indians are more prone to diabetes (take care, folks).
How someone made his shed the top-rated restaurant in London, on Tripadvisor.
How the real pirates of the Caribbean may have hijacked America’s bid to adopt the metric system.
That’s it for this week month year. Next week, we take a break (what do you call it when a mallu takes days off work to go to Kerala? Banana Leaves.) but bring you a very special best of 2017. Is there anything from the last 41 issues of TTS that you loved? Anything else that you want to share with us? Reach us on Twitter (Tony | Chuck), or better yet email us!!! The best emails will get mentions (if you would like them) and a banana leaf full of love from us. For the last time this year, if you love like don’t mind reading The Third Slip, why not share it with a friend? Here’s wishing you all a very happy and, more importantly, interesting 2018. Bye!