Hardik Rajgor

A rtificial Intelligence  will soon be out there to take our jobs. But as the popular Internet  meme  goes, machines can’t take our jobs… if we become machines. And so,  working crazy  is primed and stress has become a currency to flaunt. Taking a breather is for losers, real men take a paracetamol and email the project file at 3 am on a Saturday night. The gulag-like slavery and peanut-sized paychecks are so mainstream that if you leave office at 6 pm, people ask you if you’ve taken a half day. And do you dare ever ask for leave? Going on leave is so demonised in  Indian office culture , that employees feel guilt and shame even asking for a few days off — about as stressful a question as asking your boss for his daughter’s hand in marriage. He looks at you with the same level of love  Arvind Kejriwal  reserves for  Narendra Modi ; the tension could be cut with a knife. Every leave application turns into a leave negotiation that would...

T he Indian women’s cricket team is on an absolute tear in the ongoing Asia Cup, demolishing opposition with an authority that rivals world-beating sides like Viv Richards’ West Indies and Steve Waugh’s Australia. Despite proving for the umpteenth time that the quality of their game is on the same level as their male counterparts, a yawning gap exists when it comes to how they’re rewarded. The prize amount for winning Player of the Match, an honour bagged so far by captain Mithali Raj and Harmanpreet Kaur, is a paltry 250 USD. In comparison, the Man of the Match in the 2016 men’s Asia Cup final, Shikhar Dhawan, took home 7,500 USD. When it comes to getting a slice of the monetary pie, women cricketers are still getting the stepchild treatment from the BCCI. In March this year, BCCI announced new contracts for both the men’s and women’s cricket teams. A few of Kohli’s boys would be earning  14 times  more money than Mithali & Co. To sum up the irony, they decided to mak...

W hen you are the tender age of 15, you will be asked a question that will define the rest of your life: Science, Commerce, or Arts? To expect to know what you want to become at an age when you are still following  Dragon Ball Z  and  Pokémon  on Cartoon Network, is like taking the  host of a reality show  and asking him to run the most powerful country in the world. Oh wait…   To say that the pressure is immense is an understatement.  Justin Bieber  and  Prithvi Shaw  would probably be the only teenagers who can deal with that kind of pressure at that age. The cluelessness and anxiety you have about making this decision is the kind that the BJP government had before making the  demonetisation  announcement. So I did what desi kids do, turn to my  parents . Big mistake. “I scored 77 per cent, which was pretty good in the ’70s, but we didn’t have a clue what to do. So I submitted my form in a Science college, a...

E lon  Musk  has managed to float an electric car in space, we’re transplanting animal organs into human bodies, and we have even achieved recreating  meat  in the laboratory. We have all of this technological progress and finesse at our feet, but there is a final problem we still don’t have the solution for: the office air conditioner. That seven people in a co-working space can’t agree on a mutual AC temperature must surely be one of the biggest questions of this age. In a world where  Google  can provide the answer to every question, why does the air conditioner stand in the way of complete collegial harmony? One reason could be that we can’t get the language right. If you really look at it, “temperature kam karo,” is an ambiguous command, open for interpretation. Does it mean yanking up the warmth? Does it mean that your colleagues could do with more chill (they almost always do)? Lloyd has come up with an  AC that has WiFi  and AC remot...

E very desi kid has been told three things, growing up: “Paise ped pe nahi ugte”, “Shor karoge to bhoot aa jayega”, and “Abhi mehnat kar lo, baad mein aish hai”. While the first is just a plain hard fact, the second is a sly tactic to get you in order that neither party believes, while the third is a sadistic, evil, and dangerous trap. Everyone vividly remembers the first time they fell for it: the big 10. Your tenth grade board exams is the first big test of your life and it’s hyped up like an end-of-the-world war which will determine whether you live or die.  Teachers  are blunt: “If you don’t score well, how will you ever make anything of your life?” Parents are a little more subtle. When you’re watching TV and a nariyal wala, a thelawala, or any blue-collar worker shows up, their response is, “Dekho padhai nahi karoge na to ye sab karna padega,” delivering a dual blow: One to your ego, and the other to the dignity of labour. Fuck  Pokemon ,  WWE , and  c...