Hardik Rajgor

I f a rupee was donated to the  Reserve Bank  of India every time someone said “Virat Kohli is such a great batsman,  if only  he controlled his aggression a bit…” we could bail out all the struggling public sector banks in the country. Twice. Virat Kohli is not the best batsman in the world, across formats, despite his aggression and combativeness, he is the best because of it. Like all elite sportsmen and sportswomen at the very top,  Virat Kohli  hates to lose. He hates conceding even an inch, or being bullied on the pitch. The relentless and unending desire to win every single moment in the game, to dominate every ball with the bat, to stop every single run on the field, to encourage his troops every single minute on a hot day of a  Test match , to constantly be performing at 100 per cent, is what makes him Virat Kohli. With great success comes greater criticism, and this is true for all sports. From the ranting John McEnroe, to the short...

D ear Government, Congratulations on the  Statue of Unity , it’s a marvellous structure. While I appreciate you building a statue for one Patel, I am uncomfortable with the idea that you wanted to turn another Patel (me) into a living statue. Accuse me of overreacting, but how did you expect me to feel when so much happened in the last couple of months? The independence of the  RBI  was under so much threat that I had to change the subject line of my resignation mail to Preserve Bank of India. I preferred our arguments over those long mail threads with half the office marked, but when  Arun Jaitley  decided to make the feud public, I had no choice but to awaken the Gir Lion inside me. On purpose, I chose a  guy named Viral  to issue comments on my behalf so that the message would be loud, clear, and… viral.   I get it, this is  election  year and you want more money so you can roll out some schemes and campaign across the country...

I s it an  Apple  product launch? Is it an award show? No, it’s Isha Ambani and Anand Piramal’s sangeet. This is Gujarati Coachella, the sangeet of the century, one that will set #LaganNaGoals for years to come.   Ordinary  Gujaratis  have a three-hour sangeet celebration where everyone first dances to garba and then the DJ plays “Gangnam Style”, “Despacito”, and other songs from his 2016 playlist and you once again break into a garba. But not the  Ambanis . For one, it’s not called a “function” (so middle-class); it’s called a pre-wedding bash. And secondly, they don’t play songs from a pen drive on a music tape like us mere mortals from Malad. They get  Beyoncé to sing for them and the whole of Bollywood to dance for them. The Ambani sangeet is nothing like what we’ve seen in recent times. The  Virushka  shaadi created history – this is the first time someone used an ad to announce their wedding. The  DeepVeer  wedding was f...

D ear Prime Minister Modi/ Vikas Purush/ Renaissance Man, How do we address you? During the 2014 general elections, all you spoke about was development. Vikas was the only word you heard on the radio, TV, or the internet — so much so that my friend Vikas refused to step out of the house. Along with that word, you were omnipresent, like watching  Shah Rukh Khan  trying to promote  Ra.One . India had been waiting for a long time, for the divisive politics of caste, class, and religion to be replaced by that of development, economics, and governance. And you had caught that pulse. You are a master orator and the microphone brings out the best in you. When the opposition spoke of caste, you spoke of  Digital India . When they mentioned  religion , you spoke about how Hindus and Muslims should work together to alleviate poverty. You even went on to win the social-media game, that would later be taken to the next level by your good friend Donald bhai. The people...

W hen one of the first  McDonald’s  outlets opened in Mumbai in the ’90s, there was a lot of excitement in our middle-class home. And though today we feel stupid like those guys who were excited about Google Plus, back in the day, all my sister and I wanted was to get hold of the toys –  Toy Story  was a rage then – and have a burger. We had no idea what it tasted like, we’d just seen Americans eating a lot of it in the movies. Fast food was a concept alien to my roti and daal-chawal-eating family and we have never set foot inside a eatery that did not have pure veg plastered outside its entrance in a tacky font.   Taking a leap of voluntary faith into the world of cancer-causing food, we set aside an evening to have dinner at McDonald’s – the place where teenagers now go when they run out of pocket money. While I was enjoying the novelty of the  Pizza  McPuff (it looked more appetitising than a McAloo Tikki), all it took my mom was a bite of one f...