Arnoub, Alam and other Amusements

It appears that Arnoub Goswami, India’s insulter-in-chief, is getting more converts than poor Mother Teresa could ever dream of. Every single night, day after day, this outgrown schoolboy invites guests to his high-decibel show, only to put them out of countenance.

One wonders if there is wisdom in accepting an invite from a somewhat bizarre host, if you know that he might spit in your coffee. Still people flock to him. Whoever said that ‘sensation’ is intoxicating must be bestowed an Order of the Night Hour.

Not surprisingly, the very mention of the word Kashmir sends Arnoub on a hallucinatory trip, as if he was a grumpy farmer and Kashmiris, collectively, have stolen his cow. So this past week the insulter-in-chief was besides himself, delirious with rage, because Masrat Alam, a Kashmiri separatist leader happened to complete his jail term.

Along with his flunkey, a very sad-looking gentleman called Maroof, the anchor drowned his guests, as usual, in tons of pure nonsense. They got a hasgtag #ProPakCM trending on Twitter India. In the end the only take-away was this: If Arnoub has verbal diarrhea, Maroof has got mental diarrhea.

Since Kashmiris have forever romanticized anything that exhibits a degree of nuisance value, his show is a hit in the valley. Recently on a press trip to the island of Cyprus, I instinctively asked the concierge if they get Times Now in the hotel. ‘What is that, sir? A monthly magazine on watches.’

I smiled at the chap, who perhaps grew up around the Mediterranean Sea, and imagined him in front of India’s judge, jury and executioner – all rolled into one. “What? You don’t know Times Now. Isn’t that an insult to 1.2 billion Indians and viewers in 57 countries? You shameless little bugger. The nation demands that you should be lynched. Right away.”

Everyone watched in amusement as the anchor grilled, first a somewhat uneasy Zafar Mehraj of the PDP, and then Haseeb Drabu, J&K’s Fin Min, the next day. Both gentlemen tried to reason, unsuccessfully, with a man who has built an edifice of bullshit and who regularly talks down to people from its putrid balconies.

It is almost comical how he pontificates unsuspecting people not to get ‘worked up’ after launching a tirade against them. It is akin to someone dragging the ‘freedom of expression’ by its pigtails to the attic and molesting both freedom and expression, while a highly aroused audience watches on. Like reality TV on Viagra. Only that the host himself is a dick here.

As if we didn’t have a million worries already, now we have an ex-top cop, known for his notorious policing ways, saying that he was asked to ‘bump off’ Masrat way back in 2010. Strangely, the busy handle that just doesn’t stop tweeting, has fallen silent since yesterday. Let’s just hope, for the sake of Dastageer, that the Nuisance Merchant at Times Now doesn’t speak before our ex-CM does.

Sameer
@Mini blogs