Dheeraj Kalgutkar

  There is uproar on social media right now over the Beer biceps joke at Samay Raina's popular show India's Got Latent. Ranveer asked the guy on stage "If he had to choose between watching his parents have coitus the rest of his life or to join one time and end it, which one would he choose?". The episode of the show is now pulled down by youtube after notice from the I&B ministry of the Indian government. One, he has said far more objectionable things on his podcast and elsewhere that did not tip the scale for social media patrons to object. I'll revisit this point. Two, why do you think is his latest joke objectionable? And yes, I'll still call it a joke because he meant and thought it was a joke. We can then classify it as a bad joke, obscene joke etc but it is a joke nonetheless. But why was this objectionable? The premise or foundational basis of the joke is a belief that children don't like the idea of their parents having sex. The joke is b...

The plant that we so diligently watered and cared for has grown into a big banyan; full of flowers and fruits. Own it now. 53 people have lost their lives in the Delhi riots. You have heard this already. But do you see the problem here? Riot? Was it really a riot? Is it a riot if the state machinery and police take sides; forget keeping silent while mobs went on a rampage but Delhi police took stones in their own hands and threw them at the other side, they directed and aided one side of the mob (as if there was another side anyway), they climbed and destroyed CCTV cameras . Yes, police did all this. It’s all on record. There are videos after videos that prove all this. How then can we call it a riot? It was a pogrom. As Rana Ayyub called, state-sponsored anti-Muslim pogrom. Let’s call it what it was. Now that we have settled on the calling business, let’s get on to our language. The 53 dead bodies, actually in some cases, there were no bodies, only a limb which police...

TL;DR Flipkart says, they understand my problem, that I have received a used phone and how they are sorry about it but won’t exchange the same.   So like many on the big day (Thursday 16 March, 2017) I placed my order for Moto G5 Plus. I was told it will arrive after 5 days. Disheartened but I told myself to wait like everyone else. Fast Forward. I received my set on Monday 20 March, 2017. I used the set for a while and in the process noticed that there is some fault from the manufacturer. It was making the unusual ‘click’ sound if you press the section beside SIM card holder. Clearly some error from assembling unit. I then started cautiously checking other parts and noticed how power button was loose as well. It was a mess of sort. I then gave the handset into a friend’s hand who is more familiar with electronics. He was quite sure there was some hardware issue and suggested me I raise the replacement request. Following day, on Tuesday 21 Ma...

If you are living in India, you for sure know how Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s late night speech of November 8th changed the daily life of every resident (okay, probably not all but most). That was the night when PM announced to the whole nation about demonetizing rupees 500 and 1000 notes. Government said its implications were huge. Demonetisation, announced by Modi on November 8, that made currency denominations of Rs 500 and 1,000 — Rs 14.1 lakh crore, or USD 211 billion, in circulating cash — illegal tender overnight, is undeniably a good idea, if one believes that citizens and their transactions must incur tax, that is. Only one per cent of Indians pay tax. Black economy makes up as much as 20 per cent of India’s total GDP, amounting to USD 1.74 trillion in PPP terms. Anand Ranganathan wrote in Newslaundry . He further wrote, The denomination made illegal tender in 1978 by Morarji Desai made up just 0.6 per cent of India’s circulating cash. Wha...