Hardik Rajgor

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 ...

C hildhood is just like an opinion: Everyone has had one and everyone thinks theirs is the best. Coloured by the vintage filter of nostalgia, viewed through the shattered kaleidoscope of adulthood, our childhood sticks deep, like religion. Look no further than when your parents start a sentence with, “When I was your age…” Grab a cup of coffee, because it is going to be a lecture in how this generation has lost the plot, and you’ll need the caffeine to stay up. “Ye koi gaane hai? Gaane to Kishore Kumar aur Mohammed Rafi ke hote the. What is all this crap that you guys listen to, Honey Singh and  Badshah ? ‘Blue hai paani paani paani.’ What nonsense is this?” This is how every  road trip  with my family begins. The person sitting next to the driver, playing the role of the car DJ faces more pressure than  Virat Kohli  in a big run chase, as he tries to acutely balance the melodies of the ’60s with the beats from 2017. Movies are another bone of contention a...

I n 2003, the era before T-20, watching a game of cricket for eight hours straight wasn’t considered “boring”. The Indian team at the time was a batting masterclass. Sehwag, Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Yuvraj – you name it. But as good as the batting was, the bowling and fielding was equally lacklustre. You never knew what score would be enough. Our bowling unit never inspired much confidence. Whether it was 300 or 350, it could make any score look mediocre. At age 10, this lacklustre bowling was my single biggest worry. (Yes, I’m that uncool.) The England-India game at Durban was a must-win World Cup game and we put on an average 250 on the board. I had as much faith on the Indian bowling line-up as I had in Santa Claus showing up for Christmas. England lost a couple of quick wickets but a partnership was beginning to take shape. In came Ashish Nehra, moving the ball both ways at a serious pace and he ran through the English middle order in a breath-taking spell of  6-23 . It ...

E very group of friends has that one guy who keeps track of every single calendar (including the Hindu, Umma, Chinese, Attic, Mayan, etc) and unleashes havoc with the three most dangerous words in holiday history: “Let’s plan something!” “Let’s plan something!” opens a Pandora’s box that could mean anything from a night out to a stressful four-day trip to Ladakh in the middle of October where the temperature drops (on a good day) to -1 degree. One can tell how excited someone is in the group based on how quickly they reply to the message, “Let’s plan something, bros.” The person who replies first is the only one really looking forward to it, while the rest just don’t want to be spoilsports and play their role in passive agreement. The occasional “Awesome” and “Let’s do it” need to be dropped to indicate you are game but may later back out due to unavoidable excuses. Planning always begins big because planning doesn’t factor in reality. “Why don’t we all just take a holiday on Frida...

I was watching  Harry Potter  on a lazy Sunday afternoon when my dad said, “This is so stupid, no one flies on a broom.” Now, I’m no Potterhead to take offence, but I felt like I just couldn’t let it go. “Well, it’s fiction. I know it’s not real.” I then paused for a moment and with a lower tone let this zinger fly: “I’m not the one who believes that a monkey flew with a mountain in his hand.” My dad stared me down until he exited the room. Born in a Gujarati family, I was raised Hindu, but I went to a convent school and lived in a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood. My upbringing was so secular that if I were in politics, the Congress party would have already offered me a ticket by now. My mum must have done some “paaps in her previous life” (her words, not mine) that I turned out to be nastik. Being an atheist in India can be confusing. There are multiple religions, hundreds of prayers, crores of gods, and millions of controversies surrounding us. I know only the Gayatri...