Hardik Rajgor

W hen you were a child, adults often treated you like a burden during New Year’s eve, like a home loan or indirect tax. Mom and dad would stuff you with pizza, put you to bed, and then have their share of fun, that could involve anything from drinking lime juice (because it was 1998) to partying at a hotel function (sorry, still can’t admit it,  getting naughty ). As you grew a bit older, they no longer had the choice to keep you out of the New Year’s party plan. You were in that phase of life where you had discovered  Pokémon , beyblades,  Roadies , and  porn . It was no longer possible to fool you into eating Chyawanprash by telling you it was chocolate. You knew there was something important attached to  New Year’s eve  as friends and relatives kept whispering about it in the month of December. Around this time, the family began to gather around the TV to watch Manikchand Filmfare Awards, while feasting on pav bhaji and sipping Thums Up and waiting f...

M onday is the worst day of the week, and reams of writing, posters, “thought catalogues” and listicles will hardly let you forget it. If you browse Instagram on a Monday morning, you’ll find pictures of dozens of coffee mugs with quotes battling “Monday blues”. Yes, the pain of going through this day has reached such gigantic proportions, that there is a phrase dedicated to it. You check Twitter and the top trend is #MondayMotivation, an internet phenomenon whose sole purpose is aiding people in dealing with the trauma of getting back to routine life, through memes and GIFs of course. Everyone from your doodhwala, to paperwala, to watchman to neighbour uncle seems annoyed and is one taunt away from losing his shit. You meet people at work and they have all decided that the world is coming to an end. After all, Monday signifies the return to normalcy, stressful and boring. Left to us, weekends would last through seven days. You sleep for two hours on a Saturday afternoon and sudden...

W orking from home is the Holy Grail of  corporate   life. It’s like the time teacher told you to “read” something for homework. It meant that there was no homework. It’s basically a  holiday  that hasn’t been explicitly declared as such. Just like a chutti, there is a sense of wonder associated with working from home. For starters, you can magically create time in the morning. On an ideal work day, you invest at least an hour in commuting, courtesy our amazing  roads  and the people on them. But when you work from home, you get to do in bed what you otherwise have to do at work – sleep. Don’t get me wrong — I am not the sort of person who advocates slacking off.  Which is why it is important to follow a routine and have the discipline to stick with it. It is very important to set the mood within the first few hours of the morning, by replying to every mail within 10 seconds (by adding people to the email thread, of course). An impression m...

E very  marathon  ever run has only ever had two kinds of participants – those who registered under guilt, and those who didn’t. The former is a core group of people who mark the entire year by the marathons they will be participating in, to plan the preparation and diet that it will require. These are the guys who will show up on race day with their  fitbits  and phones all charged up, liquids and food packed. These are the people who know exactly what they are doing. And at most marathons, these people number one in 10. The other 90 per cent are people like us. When you get the bib number in your mailbox a few days before race day, it dawns upon you, what kind of monster that you have unleashed. You are the guy who takes a rickshaw to station instead of risking a 10-minute walk, but now you have registered for a 10-kilometre run that flags off at 6 am sharp. The last time you woke up early on a Sunday morning, LK Advani was still gunning to be Prime Minister ...

W hat makes us laugh? I’m asking because as human beings we seem to love to laugh and to make other people do it too. Laughter is highly contagious and pretty much anything can trigger it. A joke. A fart joke. A fart joke involving a rabbi. A fart joke involving a rabbi who is bald. It goes on. There are places where we go and pay good money, just so we can have a couple of laughs. And then there are moments when your father insists on reading you a  WhatsApp  joke (instead of forwarding it to you) and laughter suddenly seems impossible. Generating a laugh takes work. It requires a coordinated effort from our faces, voices, and bodies. It is hard work and hard work has disappeared like grace from the Indian political  discourse . Which is why digital laughter, with its acronyms and emojis, is what passes for real laughter these days. The wide use of “LOL”, “ROFL”, crying-with-laughter  emojis , and funny faces gives you the ability to be insanely manipulative...

S igh. It’s been a rough few months. My good friend, Arnab Goswami who watched Padmavati (or Padmavat, even I can’t keep track of the names anymore) even before the censor board, played a clip on his channel. In it, a man announced a bounty of  ₹ 1 crore for anyone who burnt Deepika alive. Then the next guy came in and announced  ₹ 5 crore for anyone who beheaded me and Deepika. The next guy upped the bid to  ₹ 10 crore. It was like watching ISIS have an IPL auction. I was shocked beyond belief. Is that all my life is worth?! Jesus fucking Christ, the economy has indeed dipped over the past few quarters, but this is low! I still had it better than poor Shahid. After being ignored by the audience and award shows for his brilliant performances,  Shahid Kapoor  is now also being ignored by fringe groups issuing death threats. Nothing this man does is ever going to be enough, is it? The producers have been quite supportive of me in the media but I can sense ...