Hardik Rajgor

“W hy did you fail in Geography?” the questioning would begin, with me in the hot seat like  Mark Zuckerberg . My parents and relatives were everyone else, taking turns to destroy me. “But dad, what about the fact that the entire class  failed ?” I would ask. I had no clue where oranges were growing in  Maharashtra  but even as a 10-year-old, I had mastered the classic Soviet tactic of “whataboutery”, or deflecting the problem by raising another problem, that the New Yorker labelled as “a strategy of false moral equivalences”. If everyone failed then it became acceptable for you also to fail. You don’t have to deal with the larger problem of being poor in the subject if you can raise suspicion over the evil Geography teacher itself. How could she fail everyone? Make no mistake, I wasn’t the only one in my  family  doing it. We engage in whataboutery every day, all the time. The other day I was pointing out how dad’s stock investments were tanking like...

“S ir, is your name… Hard-dick?” By the age of 14, I had lost patience to correct every person who got my name wrong, so I just nodded at the immigration officer at Jerusalem  airport . She showed my passport to her colleague sitting nearby and they both shared a giggle. I thought the horror show was over but I soon heard my name pronounced incorrectly again. This time, over the loudspeaker because I’d forgotten to collect a document. Some people around started laughing and my  mom  looked at me with a confused face and asked “Beta, kem hasse che badha (Why is everyone laughing?)” My parents and relatives all studied in Gujarati-medium schools and in the language – as well as in  Hindi  and Marathi – Hardik has a sweet meaning. It means “from the heart”. I won’t go into the specifics, but let’s just say  Gujarati  is a deceptive language. Gota is a deep-fried delicacy and muthiya is a breakfast snack. So while my name had a positive connotation i...

“I believed it was the right thing to do,” said Tony Blair about the  Iraq War , because self-righteous belief is more important than fact and reality. He had kept repeating to the British public that there were  Weapons of Mass Destruction  in Iraq. As it turned out, there weren’t. The fake news was further spread out by large sections of mainstream  media , as they cheered for military action. Thousands of British troops lost their  lives , and many others wounded on account of the “intervention”. Iraq’s education system – considered one of the best in the region at the time – was in tatters. Sanctions and blockades were introduced and instability was created in the entire region from which they struggle to recover even now. WMDs, however, were never actually labelled “fake news”. For decades, it was institutions in the form of governments and traditional media that had the monopoly over the circulation of news, information, rumour, gossip, and eve...

A re you happy? It’s a burdensome question. If “happy” is your constant state of mind, hop on aboard, you’ve made it, you’re a champ, pass the  joint  and please remember that sharing is caring. But if you are not, you should be ashamed of yourself. If you don’t shit sparkle and radiate glee, you are “doing life wrong”. Welcome aboard the  North Korea  of Happiness, where the ultimate goal to everything you do is a nuclear explosion of joy. I would call myself a fairly cheerful person, who loves to laugh as much as the next guy. I am  happy  in certain moments, but then also sad, hopeful, anxious, disappointed, fearful in others. I live in the polluted hyper-city of  Mumbai , last went on a date when  LK Advani  ran for Prime Minister, and have to travel in jam-packed  trains  every day, so there’s only that many things I can be happy about. At times, I’m neither happy nor unhappy, in a fairly even state of mind, especially ...

I grew up in simpler times, in the town of Mira Road, a place that merely existed as a banter point on whether it was a part of Thane or  Mumbai . Mira Road received water at the same frequency I got a beating from my mom, i.e., once every three days. Plus, my forefathers came from Kutch. Clearly, my  family  was attracted to places with water problems the same way United States foreign policy is attracted to places with oil. Water was so precious to us, that our minds went into  Marwari  mode when it came to spending it. Showers were alien to us, and the only accessories in our 4×4 bathroom were a red bucket and a blue mug. In Mira Road, water was heated by my mom on a stove. In Kutch, on a chulha. Most kids my age received  pocket money . I, instead, received half a bucket of water and could use it any way I wanted. And my only friend was a green Medimix bar. Medmix was the superhero of the soap world. It was all the  Avengers  rolled into...