One-on-one with 2014 - Hindustan Times
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One-on-one with 2014

Hindustan Times | ByVikramdeep Johal, Chandigarh
Dec 28, 2014 10:32 AM IST

With Twenty-Fourteen ready for its last lap, BoW (Bit of Wit, yaar) caught up with the outgoing year for an exclusive chat. Excerpts. BoW: What’s the best word to sum you up? 2014: Horrifying, thanks to the Islamic State, the Taliban and Farah Khan. Writes Vikramdeep Johal.

With Twenty-Fourteen ready for its last lap, BoW (Bit of Wit, yaar) caught up with the outgoing year for an exclusive chat. Excerpts.

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HT Image

BoW: What’s the best word to sum you up?
2014: Horrifying, thanks to the Islamic State, the Taliban and Farah Khan.

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BoW: F-F-Farah? The one who produces triplets and three-word movie titles?
2014: Yup. Such was the third-degree torture she inflicted on viewers that I’m scared of saying ‘Happy New Year’ to 2015.

BoW: Sir, this is a humour column. We can’t afford to be serious, unless our payments are delayed. Let’s keep the unpleasant things out and focus on something bright and sweet.
2014: Sweet like Rampal’s kheer?

BoW: Yuck! That ‘dessert’ was made from the milk he bathed in, and his followers lapped it up like honey. But I won’t have it, even if the baba-behind-bars offers me a vaastu-friendly 12-acre plot.
2014: Ok, forget it. How about an ice candy, straight out of the Nurmahal dera deep freezer?

BoW (teeth chattering): Brrr… can’t you let a frozen godman rest in peace? What we need is something piping hot.
2014: No probs. I now present the beverage of the year: Modi’s saffron-labelchai.

BoW: What’s so mighty about this high tea?
2014: Just one cup’s enough to make your chest expand to 56 inches and your waist shrinks to 28. Two cups down, you pick up the broom and try to make Bharat Swachh single-handedly. With three cups, all the bure din appear achhe. Four down, you feel like coming home (‘ghar wapsi’).

BoW: This chai seems to have turbo-charged Navjot Sidhu. He went all out against the powerful Badals this year.
2014: Who can match this multilingual motormouth? Even Isro can’t come up with such a ballistic missile. I tell you, the day he masters Mandarin and delivers a Sidhuismic speech, China will instantly apologise for the 1962 aggression and also return Aksai Chin to India.

BoW: Talking of apologies, don’t you feel sorry for taking away from us the one and only Khushwant Singh? What was the hurry? He was just 99.
2014: I know he loved well-rounded figures and would have preferred number 100. But it was God who wanted to settle an old score with the ‘son of a gun’.

BoW: The drug menace in Punjab and other parts of India was a major issue this year. Do you agree with the view that Pakistan is the main culprit?
2014: Absolutely. The most potent cross-border drugs are the Pakistani TV serials aired on Zindagi channel, which have got so many Indian viewers addicted. Breakfast, lunch or dinner, these intoxicating dramas have become a staple diet in Hindustani homes.

BoW: Now here’s a tough one. What are your three big predictions for the new year?
2014: Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’s much-awaited ‘MSG: The Messenger of God’ will win the Golden Palm at the Cannes film festival; Mrs and Mr Modi will reunite after decades and click selfies at the Taj Mahal; and India’s most eligible bachelors, Rahul Gandhi and Salman Khan, will get married, though not to each other.

BoW: Thanks for sticking your neck out. Let’s see whether you hit the bull’s eye (or get bulldozed). Goodbye (and good riddance).

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