In the late 90s, at a dank Ganpati Pooja celebration in Nagpur, people were sitting around all tensed up. The veriety entertainment night was stopped abruptly.
One person had just come running to the venue and screamed, "Chaddi Banyan Gang is coming!"
For us kids, this was terrifying. I mean sure we made fun of "Chaddi Baniyan" gang. That they rob people in their underwear, because wtf lol.
But on this night, the fear was very real. Soon, a colony-president-type uncle screamed, "TURN OFF THE LIGHTS!"
Darkness.
We cowered in that dark venue, only the diya in front of the Ganpati murti was visible. Some uncles and auntys crawled to the idol and started doing a silent aarti.
One of my friends had a genius idea: "Let's find this gang! I was to see if they really wear only chaddi-baniyan."
Influenced by heady adventures of Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew & Johnny Quest, all the dumb kids nodded in agreement & decided to investigate.
We set out. Every now & then someone would point to a dark figure and scream, "THERE THERE!"
But the person was always fully clothed. Dammit.
We ended up in a smol lane, it was still dark. Then, in the streetlight, curled up in a random gutter on the side, was a giant snake.
We all screamed and ran back to the venue, told the adults.
"A gang AND a snake!? We are cursed! Worst ganpati utsav ever!" they exclaimed.
One retired army uncle said, "I'll deal with the snake!"
He went into his house and came back armed with a double barrel shotgun. Everyone knew he had one, he showed it to anyone who cared.
We all marched together to the lane with the snek. Kaafi dramatic.
The kids are told to stay back, a group of adults went towards the snake in the lane.
Now there was a crowd outside, waiting to see the snek death. "BOOM BOOM", two big gunshots echoed through the colony, then silence. Then celebration, "We did it! It's dead!"
Snek was ded. But there was still no sign of the chaddi-baniyan gang. Some strange rumors started spreading in the colony that Ganesh Utsav.
The strongest one was: "The gang was about to enter a house. But then, they heard the loud gunshots & ran away. Army uncle saved us."
Every social gathering, the legendary story of how army uncle saved us all from a snek AND a gang, would be circulated.
Army uncle had a sudden rise in colony political scenes and he was the president for 5 plus years after that. Maybe more, I don't know because we moved away.
Till this day, people discuss the event and wonder if it was all a conspiracy so that army uncle could take over as president.
Or maybe he just took advantage of a situation where people were fearful, and emerged as a savior. Right place, right time.
We'll never know.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
In June 2020, while India was dealing with COVID-19 as the cases were ramping up, 9 top Ministers were holding meeting after meeting to discuss how gormint can improve its image better.
Priorities.
Here's the glorious list of the "prominent personalities" they met to take feedback on how the govt can communicate better.
This report is truly wild!
.@sighyush spoke to a few people in this list and they told him that the meetings were supposed to be a debrief on Galwan. They had no idea what was happening.
I mean, the kind of stuff attributed to some of them is quite bonkers, so I'm not surprised. newslaundry.com/2021/03/05/bog…
#EXCLUSIVE: We spent more than 2 months observing the Hindu Ecosystem group formed by Kapil Mishra.
And without us asking, were added to bigger splinter groups which work day & night to create misinformation, hateful content and fake Twitter trends. newslaundry.com/2021/02/15/we-…
These groups share PDF compilation files which are full of sharable hate content. Here are three titled "Sikh Terrorism" which were circulated last month.
"BestMediaInfo found that more than 40 of the country’s top brands (names withheld) had stopped advertising on Republic Media Network between October and December 2020."
"किसानो की अंतर्राष्ट्रीय षड़यंत्र का आज खुलासा हो चूका है. आइये करते है इसका DNA टेस्ट. आज हमने देखा की इंटरनेशनल सेलेब्रिटी Rihanna, जिसे गाना गाने के सिवा कुछ आता नहीं है, वो कैसे किसानो के बारे में बात करने लगी है."
"आप ही सोचिये. ये Rihanna जो की एक आलीशान बंगले में रहती है, जो की ऐसे वैसे गाने के वीडियो बनाती है, क्या उसे हमारे किसानो के पीड़ा का अंदाजा हो सकता है? ये जरूर भारत के खिलाफ एक षड़यंत्र की तरफ इशारा करता है."
"फिर चलते है Greta Thunberg की तरफ जो की महज़ एक बच्ची है जिसे पूरे विश्व ने सर पर चढ़ा रखा है. स्कूल जाने की उम्र में ये अलग अलग देशो में जाके गुस्से से 'How Dare You' कहती है, भाषणबाज़ी करती है. क्या इस क्लाइमेट एक्टिविस्ट की बाते हमें सुनने की जरूरत है?"
So there is a news channel, a new kid on the block, which is trying to get ads for itself. When it launches, they are ranked #5 on viewership.
All the channels are doing stories on govt corruption & how a minister colluded to give kickbacks to a company.
Now the marketing dept of this new channel is like, "Yaar, we need to do something different. We need to do a story that nobody else is doing so that we rise in the ranks."
So they come up with a plan.
They do a test story on the health benefits of cigarettes.
WEEK 1:
The marketing department gathers around as the weekly ratings come out. To their surprise, they're at #4 now.
Marketing chap runs to editorial and tells them, "This story is doing great! Youguys, up the ante. Do more!"