#TheDailyToast: All thanks to rock star Modi
With "Chak de" as anthem playing in the background, rock star Modi took to Facebook to talk about the glories of staying connected on Twitter. Never mind that the first Indian women's hockey team to bag an Olympic berth this August went completely unmentioned by the Twitter-savvy PMO who was too busy wishing Netanyahu on his birthday. That apart... The state of Jammu & Kashmir, Omar Abdullah in particular, also mentioned just how much he enjoyed the relay, saying it made for classic television viewing without the annoying interference of internet ad pop ups...
Oh the irony of listening to the PM talking about digital India while we in J&K spent 3 days totally disconnected due to his party & allies.
— Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) September 27, 2015Tears were everywhere: Single mothers and working mothers back home (cough, cough) in expectation of tax breaks and significant pay raises as reward for their motherly sacrifice... The tear-jerker of an evening was such a hit even by recently flop-churning Bollywood standards that Aamir Khan has ordered for a special delivery of monogrammed terrycloth towels. Of course this has the PMO a little worried because of late, Aamir Khan's tears have not necessarily been indicative of a good thing, just premonitions of disasters-in-the-making and wildly undiplomatic Katti Batti relationships. In a completely unrelated incident Sonakshi Sinha, she whose father Shatrughan has been rumouredly having rifts of his own with the home ground BJP, was also spotted wiping her tears, though she claimed this had to do more with onion prices back home.
Onion prices at an all time high. Its time to revisit my dialogue... "Thappad se darr nahi lagta sahab, PYAAZ se lagta hai" ????
— Sonakshi Sinha (@sonakshisinha) September 27, 2015Never mind that she is currently in Budapest and on a strict diet of online trolls.
Stupidity reaches a new high. After all the money ur parents spent educating u, THATS what u concluded from my post! https://t.co/m2w8q8IdeR
— Sonakshi Sinha (@sonakshisinha) September 15, 2015The NRI community in San Francisco has no such problems, given that those outside the SAP centre are Patels-fasting-unto-death-for-seats-they-already-have while those inside are the even-more-orthodox-than-the-orthodox-parents-they-left-behind-in-India Tam Brahms (Sundar Pichai) or Telugu Brahms (Satya Nadella) who don't eat onions anyway. While outrage focus has been on the Jain meat ban, the BJP's personal nemesis in power, the onion, is verily on the path to extinction when India becomes a superpower with a South Indian Avengers team in place. Idli as discus for insignia anyone?
Meanwhile, back home, Modi's writing "Ahimsa paramo dharma" on Facebook's wall is being seen as an act of violence, not only because this embarrassing Indian habit of defacing people's walls simply has got to stop... But the average Indian liberal has gone into a confused huddle because now it is, like an eclipsed supermoon too close to home, unclear if the sky is falling on our heads.
It has not helped that in a parallel universe, the Pope, head of the Catholic state, has been addressing the UN and America, that bastion of liberal liberty, to great secular acclaim. The liberals, now completely confused about which is more liberal-a religious head addressing a secular body or a communal party addressing a secular body - and anticipating articles on Vivekananda's Parliament of Religions and perturbed by Rupa Subramanya's vote for Sri Sri Ravishankar have gone into a silent huddle to deliberate on the guidelines for a new definition for unsecular, illiberal posing, religious affiliation now clearly lacking in tensile strength to hold up that bridge. New regulations to be released by the resistance this afternoon exclusively on Scroll.in.
Things are not going so well for Zuckerberg, however who had plans to cancel Thanksgiving trip back home this year. Buoyed by Modi's passionate mummy-daddy-ness, the parents have now insisted that he call every day and come home every weekend besides mentioning them, if not breaking down in all speeches and AGMs. Zuckerberg is now reportedly calling an emergency meeting to ditch the dislike button and come up with a parent-lock tool instead, which children can use to keep parents from commenting on their Facebook feeds.
In a rare collaboration, the chants from the SAP stadium are being set to music by Kailash Kher with the Pope lending the back up of his Frisco Gregorian choir, and will be released as an album on iTunes soon. That iTunes marketed by Tim Cook, who has been invited to manufacture Apple in India and who has said nothing about the BJP's nasty stance on Section 377 which might actually see him arrested, not just mocked by the ruling party that extended him that invitation, on Indian soil. The PMO has reportedly Facetimed with Baba Ramdev asking how he'd feel about going on a year-long worldwide tour to promote his noodles.
But for now, the kurta is the new sex symbol, the IT amphitheatre is the new stadium, and Make in India is the new chorus, bespectacled geeks the new band, and the onion-less meat-less internet-less chorus the new ticketed audience.
Rock on Modi. Someone must.