Indian song of the year vocal or instrumental
It’s been a great year for awful music. The competition for song of the year, therefore, was stiff. The great Yo Yo Honey Singh had an entry in the top three, which we cannot name since this is a family newspaper. The runners-up spot went to Honey Singh’s Lungi Dance, a song so widely popular that no religious festival or ceremony is complete without it, anywhere in India. There is a danger that it may start playing even at funerals. It is also a direct threat to the national anthem, since even people who are reluctant to stand for the anthem in places such as Kashmir and the Northeast leap to their feet at the first sound of Lungi Dance. However, they do not stand to attention, it must be admitted.
Remarkably, Honey ji and Lungi Dance song were bested, in relative if not absolute terms. This singular feat was achieved by the one and only Mallika Sherawat, singing a song we all know, for the one and only Narendra Modi.
Mallika’s rendition of Happy Birthday To You, accompanied by heavy pouting, lisping, and batting of eyelashes, took the country by storm in less than a day. It took much longer for superstar Shah Rukh Khan, star Deepika Padukone, an army of musicians, and major PR for Lungi Dance to achieve that kind of popularity.
For this solo feat, Mallika’s rendition of “Happy Birthday Narinder Modiji” is our pick for song of the year. Hopefully, she will sing “Happy New Year”, too.
Best unrequited love
Mallika’s loving song got no response we know of from the object of her adoration. Even her public statement that Narendra Modi is the most eligible bachelor in the country drew no known response from the eligible bachelor in question. She was asked at a press conference, “What would you do for him?” Her answer, after dramatic rolling of eyes, was, “What would I NOT do for him?” Wah! Wah! Mallika’s affection for Modi, therefore, makes our top three in the category of “unrequited love of the year”.
The runners-up spot in this category goes to a mysterious “saheb” from Gujarat, rumored to be a very powerful eligible bachelor, who allegedly deployed senior IPS officers of the Gujarat police to keep tabs on an unnamed architect who he fancied. His efforts have resulted in a nationwide outcry, an enquiry, much political brouhaha… and zero return on romantic investment. The young lady is apparently Âinterested in an aam aadmi. Poor Mallika, and poor saheb.
Before you start to imagine that it’s been a great year for the aam aadmi in love, let us declare our winner for the “unrequited love of the year” award. And the award goes to… Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal, for his very public expressions of love for Anna Hazare. The crotchety old Gandhian has only responded with snub after snub, even evicting Kejriwal’s envoy from the venue of his latest fast. Not only will he not dine with Kejri, he won’t even starve with Kejri…or his envoy!
Bird of the year
There are very few contenders for the title of bird of the year; birds are rare birds in news ecosystems. Jailbirds are the first, and obvious, flock of contenders. They are not, however, all birds of a feather. Great dissimilarities and disparities exist between celebrity jailbirds and the rest.
The second contender is a steady favorite for the past three years. This is the flock of “angry birds”, whose tribe is thriving on phones around the world. The addictive video game birds have spawned look-alikes in every medium, from Âcushion covers to mugs to T-shirts to earrings. Indeed, many humans on news Âtelevision have come to resemble them.
The winner, however, has to be the caged parrot. This was a bird that rose to national and international fame after the Supreme Court of India likened the Central Bureau of Investigation to it.
The caged parrot had a roller coaster of a year. The entire flock in Parliament remained in terror of it, as it went about investigating leader after leader. Massive accusations of gargantuan scams quickly transformed into words that rolled easily off the tongue, such as Coalgate, for the coal scam in connection with investigations into which the Supreme Court bestowed the title of caged parrot on the CBI.
However, the fearsome parrot itself nearly came to grief, when the Guwahati high court passed a judgement holding that its very existence was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has stayed the Âoperation of the judgment, but the caged parrot may yet find its goose cooked.
Meanwhile, it has company. There’s a new Lokpal-bird hatching.
Person of the year
One person who did well to keep caged parrots and other threats at bay in 2013 was Narendra Modi. The Gujarat Chief Minister, despite his romantic non-adventures, has risen from strength to strength in 2013. He first took on his mentor L.K. Advani, and managed to emerge ahead of him as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. Modi then embarked upon a series of very well-attended rallies, and has rounded off the year with a clean chit from an Ahmedabad court on his role in the Gujarat riots. He has followed it up with a Âletter of much sorrow for the tragedies that befell people during those riots. His star is on the ascendant.
The only person who has managed to make even more progress in the country’s political firmament?— in even less time?— is Arvind Kejriwal. Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party have come from nowhere to rule Delhi. They are now expanding into all corners of the country, and inspiring hosts of ordinary middle class people to take an active role in politics.
Modi and Kejriwal are therefore two of the top three contenders for Person of the Year. In all seriousness, the title ought to go to one of them, but this list is not all serious. Which is why, our Person of the Year title is shared by diplomat Devyani Khobragade and her maid Sangeeta Richard.
Between the two of them, these ladies have managed to undo years of efforts of two American presidents, George Bush and Barack Obama, and Indian prime Âminister Manmohan Singh, to improve relations between India and USA. The household tussle between the two has grabbed headlines worldwide, and will have direct consequences on diplomats from both countries.
While Indian diplomats in America can start washing their own dishes and ironing their clothes, American diplomats in India will soon be forced to buy alcohol locally like the rest of us. Most of the embassy circuit in Delhi used to run on liquor imported by the Americans. Now, with their alcohol import passes gone, sobriety, expensive imports, and local liquor are the options.
Given how much Indian Âdiplomats hate doing their own dishes, and American Âdiplomats hate sobriety and cheap liquor, we Âpredict a further deterioration in Âbilateral ties. Hurrah, Non-Alignment 2.0!
Place of the year
There’s one place that is close to the hearts of both fasting Anna and the quietly furious Kejri. That’s the place that pitch-forked both of them into national renown: Delhi’s Ram Lila Maidan, location of the unlikeliest coronation of a ruler of Delhi in modern history. It is the place where Kejriwal took oath Saturday as the youngest chief minister of Delhi… a feat no one, including Kejriwal himself, had believed possible a year ago. For being the location of history being made, the Ram Lila maidan is among our top three choices for place of the year. It pips to third place another maidan, or field… one where a different kind of history was made. This was the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, where Sachin Tendulkar, the cricket legend who ruled the hearts of millions, bade farewell to the game. For the five days of his final Test match in a career of “24 years between 22 yards”, the country had eyes for Âlittle else. And yet, despite their places in history, the fields were bested by another kind of place: jails. This was the year when some of the high and mighty landed, after years and decades, in jail.
Filmstar Sanjay Dutt wound up there for possession of illegal arms in a case related to the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts.
Lalu Prasad Yadav, former Bihar chief minister, landed there for his role in the fodder scam, which first came to light in 1996. So did cricketer S. Sreesanth, for his alleged role in match-fixing in the Indian Premier League. This was a case of far more recent vintage, like the one against former Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal, who was arrested after being accused of sexual harassment by a young woman from the same magazine.
It wasn’t only people entering jails that had major impact. One man’s exit from jail is creating Âripples too: Jagan Mohan Reddy.
