How to “Whatabout” Your Way Around Every Debate

“Why 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 Ravindra Jadeja’s career and his quick comeback was “But what about the windfall profit we made in 2006?” Well, dad, it’s no longer 2006. Mom is a lot subtler and goes for the emotional punch. “But what about all the years that I’ve sacrificed for you? They count for nothing?” All I had just done was pointed out that the dal was missing some salt. If I ask my sister to get me something, her automated response is “Fuck off! What about that time when I asked you to get me XYZ?”

There are no socially acceptable comebacks to any of these statements.

Whataboutery dates back to the 1960s, as this piece headlined “Due West: ‘Whataboutism’ Is Back – and Thriving” points out. “It was used to ironically describe the Soviet Union’s efforts at countering Western criticism. To those who lambasted their human rights record the Soviets would reply with something along the lines of ‘What about America, where they lynch blacks?!’ or ‘What about your unemployment rate? Ordinary people in the US (or the UK or Germany) are denied the basic right to work and pay!’” Of course, this line of logic is familiar to anyone who has spent five minutes on Indian Twitter.

Whataboutery can solve everything. There isn’t a problem you cannot avoid – in politics, social life, crime or history – by bringing up another problem. Everyone from a social media troll to Donald Trump is on it these days. Lately, however, we’ve entered the dark side, plunging to the depths of human decency and moral behaviour.

Asifa’s case breaks your heart? But what about the Hindu girl in Assam? What about rapes by Maulanas? Oh the Unnao rape was by a BJP legislator? How about all the rapes that took place under the last 70 years of Congress rule?

Security issues with Aadhaar? But what about the Facebook data leak? Did you stop using Facebook after that? Communal riots have been on the rise? But what about 1984? What about Muzaffarnagar? Fraudsters are flying out of the country? But what about 2G? What about Coalgate? Certain channels are peddling fake news? But what about NDTV and Barkha with their campaigns to defame India?

Whataboutery is not merely an argument anymore – it’s a competition. It’s my hashtag vs your hashtag, my online army vs your online army. The way to ace it is to be aware of all reference points through which you can bring down your opponent.

Accusing people of selective outrage is the hallmark of great whataboutery. It is practically impossible for everyone to be connected all the time and equally outrage on every single issue in a way that the other side deems fit. So obviously, it is fertile ground for a takedown. “Oh where were you on the third Tuesday of March in 2003 when Ricky Ponting was batting with a spring in his willow?” they ask.

When in doubt, turn to the classics.

“Why didn’t you speak up in 1984?”

“Well I was born in 1992.”

“Ugh, fuck off.”

A faithful companion to whataboutery is the strawman argument, or the spiritedly refuting an argument that wasn’t presented in the first place. “Oh so you want free speech for college students? Then don’t complain when these students destroy the country and we have to give up Kashmir!”.

Another great strategy is to discredit the other side with a counter allegation to insinuate that they have no standing or moral right to ask questions. I might have done something horrid but you also did something bad in the past, which means that you lose all credibility for all time and forfeit the right to question me? Instead, let us both celebrate our inefficiency and mislead the population.

“What about Nirav Modi?”

“But what about Lalit Modi?”

We don’t need intelligent debate and questioning because that runs the risk of exposing our shortcomings and failures. The whole point of whataboutery is to avoid a problem by pointing out a different problem. That way, neither problem gets solved and you win brownie points for your oratory skills.

Always remember, the goal of all whataboutery is to never get to the bottom of difficult questions – and to never ask the right ones.

I’m Hardik and I’m Not Always Aroused

“Sir, 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 in the world of my parents, it had a very different meaning in my world, a six-year old enrolled in an English-medium convent.

As children, our attempts at roasting friends begins with innocence, as we slightly twist names. Aman-Chaman, Hunny-Bunny, Bijal-Brinjal, Hardik-Hardisk. I’m guessing that would have been the rationale behind naming a baby Taimur, to save him from the menace. How the fuck do you roast a Taimur, or even come up with something that rhymes with it?

It wouldn’t take too long for things to change though, as Hussain Kuwajerwala fucked over my happiness, roaming around Indian toilets with that dreaded blue “Harpic” bottle. I was Harpic for a good number of years. After all, you could directly associate a human being with a sandaas. If you want to bring someone down in school, that’s the kind of banter you need.

In adolescence, the big guns were out.

I received sex education long before the rest of my classmates, when a senior pointed out what my name “actually” meant. “Oh! My parents don’t know! Those gullible cuties,” I thought. They might have just accidentally ruined my childhood. But I was wrong, it wasn’t just going to be my childhood.

Dick references became an integral part of my life like diabetes in a Gujarati meal. Every picture I click is a dick-pic. My go-to sexting line is “Hardik swagat hai.” De Kock is my favourite cricketer. My best friends are Dixit and Sukhdeep. Some people call me Hard, others call me Dick and I’m yet to figure out which one’s worse. I get a Hardick birthday cake every year just for a laugh. The same cake, every year. I get more penis enlargement spam mails than the average person. Every person I meet, wants to show me that Russell Peters set about how I should be working in porn.

While having an inappropriate name is all fun and games in teenage years, it can get tense and awkward at the workplace. When I sent a “Hi, Diana” to a colleague from Spain on the office messenger, I only got a terse “Hi” back. She didn’t mention my name. After all, it could well be a prank. What person is named Hardick?

Skype conference calls with foreign colleagues have a tricky ice-breaker as you introduce yourself and watch the colour drain from their face. Nope, it’s not a screen glitch. You want to die of guilt for something that isn’t your fault. On a bad day, you’ll get a formal email addressed as “Dear Hardick”, because auto correct isn’t necessarily politically correct.

The only thing worse than travelling abroad with a funny name is travelling abroad with your family. When you visit distant relatives and their kids, you can notice how they are all judging your family for being ignorant but don’t want to say it out loud. Well fuck you Randy, I look forward to your visit to India. In an attempt to fit in with the Europeans, you start making up nicknames like Hardy to avoid embarrassment. If your family couldn’t come up with a great name, they sure as hell didn’t come up with a decent nickname either. Hardu? It sounds like a sour fruit that no one wants to eat.

While my world changed at school, college, and work, it never collided with my parents’ world, who are still blissfully unaware. Every time my name is on a political hoarding in Maharashtra or Gujarat, they brag about how popular my name is. Or when Shahrukh Khan does a “hardik swagat” for some presenter at IIFA, my dad will jokingly congratulate himself. Ironically, my dad has a pretty good eye for funny names. “Ye Butler, Billings, Drinkwater, aisa koi naam rakhta hai kya?” he comments while watching sport.

Oh dad, if only you knew. You are that person.

I have made up my mind about what I’ll name my kid. If it’s a boy, I’ll name him Mulayam so every time he enters his full name on a form i.e. Mulayam Hardik Rajgor, he’ll be reminded of what an arsehole his dad was. And that’ll motivate him to do well in life. I do believe names shape your personality – because they are itself so fundamental to life, it’s a unique word that everyone associates you with. Your entire life. Well, mine happens to be a synonym for boner and it certainly helped me deal with uncomfortable situations and taught me to laugh them off. To never take myself too seriously. After all, even the people laughing almost never say it in a demeaning tone. It just happens to be a funny name and there’s nothing wrong with a laugh.

If your neighbour had a cute baby named Tipu, would you ever guess that he’d grow up to conquer territory, win multiple wars, and build a summer palace in Bangalore with tiger skin hanging on the wall? I think it was the rather silly name and people looking down at him as a child that inspired his success, and helped him become the Tiger of Mysore.

What’s in a name? A lot. Even in a funny one like Hardik.

Fake News and the Case of the Internet Police Gone Rogue

“Ibelieved 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 even fake news. There is a long history of Iraq-like interventions, where elections are swung and panic is spread around, with help from what were outright lies. Make no mistake, presenting lies and falsehoods as credible truth isn’t a new phenomenon. It has existed for over 350 years.

But suddenly there’s huge fuss about it. And it’s a big problem, because anyone with an internet connection and Photoshop can manufacture news. The internet democratised the flow of information, but every silver lining has a cloud. The internet also democratised and paved the path for the cancerous propulsion of fake news. Even as the watchdogs of the internet act as fact-checkers and lie-busters, there are thousands of individuals and websites involved in creating and distributing fake WhatsApp forwards and false news articles.  

That fake news is a nuisance is to say the sky is blue and grass is green. It has become a slur to shut down debate, with Donald Trump going around town, branding anything he disagrees with as “fake news”. It has also become a convenient excuse, for a lot of his critics, to justify certain events they cannot explain or debate with rational argument. “Oh, the electorate was influenced by fake news,” they parrot, without understanding the definition of that argument. It’s like the liberal American version of “soldiers are fighting at the border!”

But if there is one thing that is clear, it is that the elite institutions of government and traditional media outlets appear to have lost their monopoly over the masses in the domain of distributing information.

Today, it is the Facebooks and Googles of the world – along with governments across the world – who crave that monopoly over the flow of information. GAFA is striving to become the class monitors of the internet. Whether it is through the power of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, or in the garb of letting users decide, they want to act as filters to decide what is true and what is fake. They want to be the gatekeepers of information on cyberspace. Post the Cambridge Analytica scandal, users started downloading their Facebook data and were shocked to find out that Facebook had been collecting call records and SMS data from Android devices for years.

That proposed solution to fake news is an even bigger problem than that of fake news. It’s like ordering a lobotomy to treat a cold. It suggests that we can trust a few institutions with knowing what’s best for everyone. And as we all know, “knowledge is porridge.”

The reason we avoid concentration of power in any administrative structure – ideal world scenario, i.e., no relation to IRL – is because when power is restricted to one, two, or even a few entities, the moment they become corrupt, the entire system collapses. There is already enough evidence out there to suggest that the likes of Facebook or Google have no moral right or objective expertise to carry out the function of being the internet police.

We have seen quite recently in the Cambridge Analytica exposé, how criminally negligent Facebook has been with sensitive data. They may now potentially face a federal investigation. Google was fined €2.42 billion by the EU for manipulating search engine results to favour its own shopping service. Do we honestly believe these companies are capable of making moral judgments, capable of deciding what is true and what is false for us?

The simple answer is, we don’t know. We are in a fairly nascent stage of dealing with these arresting questions that have wider consequences on society – we’re only at the start of our online lives.

It will require a whole lot more study and research; it will require a whole lot more debate in the public arena. But we must tread carefully, because it is always easier to make a problem worse than it is. And my fear is, that we’re on that path already.

Always be worried when people tell you to give them all the power, so they can do good for the world. Blair did it in ’99. If history is any indication, it never ends well.

Welcome to the North Korea of Happiness: Be Cheerful or Die Trying

Are 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 at work or when thinking about something. I figure that’s how most people are.

But it’s not a mindset that is acceptable anymore. One is bullied into being happy and ragged about life choices and decision-making – as if there is one giant conspiracy that is keeping me from reaching a state of constant delight and I must be rescued from it.

And this manufactured sense of happiness is pervasive: At work, at home, among my peers, friends when we go for a beer. But more than anywhere, it’s on my social media. On Instagram and Facebook and Twitter in the form of #HeartReactsOnly and #MyHappyPlace and #LoveMyLife. It is like a friggin’ rash that I can’t seem to lose.

Ironically, it is this constant reminder of how I’m not leading a happy life, that is making me… unhappy.

It’s no longer enough that you have to score 99 per cent at school, go through a gruelling college course, a tricky relationship and end up at a stressful high-paying job. You now also have to carry around this additional weight of being happy while you go through the entire ordeal, parts of which are pretty horrifying. This existential-meltdown-inducing question is quite often invoked by a close friend who’ll ask you at the end of a detailed story, “But, are you happy?”

Whether it’s your childhood, education, relationship or career, everything must be defined in this simple yes or no binary of happiness. We love binariness in this country: People we disagree with are anti-national, news we don’t like is paid for, and politicians we don’t like are liars. Well, one of the three is actually true. Binary judgments about happiness though, aren’t.

If you’re not happy with any aspect of your life, just quit it and find the next greatest thing that will change your life forever. After all, you can only either be happy or unhappy. If you’re unhappy, it’s a problem. And if it’s a problem, you must fix it ASAP. There’s no place for other feelings, emotions and different states of mind, fuck psychologists and their 100+ years of research and study. You are either operating at Dan Bilzerian level of ecstasy, or Kumar Sanu level of perpetual disappointment and sadness. There’s no middle ground.

Of course, there is a market feeding and supplying this idea of eternal pleasure. You can instantly go from unhappy to happy by applying a cream on your legs that makes you look younger by 10 years. After all, it is that dark spot beneath the knee that’s keeping you from being happy. Every fear, every insecurity can be addressed. Every third person has written a self-help book and there are more TED talks about how to be happy than there are actual happy people in the world. Yale University now has a course, teaching students how to be happy. If advertisements are anything to go by, you could literally buy yourself happiness. Maybe someday Amazon will sell Happiness as a product with same-day drone delivery; maybe Alexa was laughing for sheer joy.

But before we can bottle and package happiness, there’s always the quick fix. Let’s get high on LSD at Calangute beach, make a bike ride to Ladakh, attend the Jaipur lit fest, go trekking in Himachal, attend the music fest in Pune, or visit Comic Con in Delhi. These are all pursuits that are meant to make us happy, and we must not miss out on anything. It’s a competition of happiness between you and your friends’ Instagram account to be around all the “cool” events happening in town.

There is only one problem, however. And it’s not me, it’s you.

This mad dash for happiness is based on two faulty presumptions. One, that happiness is the sole barometer of judgment for the worth of all life, and secondly, that happiness should continuously exist, every moment, until the end of life.

It’s equally important to be hopeful, sad, disappointed or anxious, as it is to be happy. It’s only when you are sad, that you can know what’s it like to be happy. The more one consciously tries to attain happiness, the more elusive it appears. Trying to make life more meaningful might perhaps be a more noble goal to aspire for, and you deal with everything that comes your way, happiness or otherwise.

Happiness is like an orgasm, it lasts a few moments. And you feel really good. And you can have one every now and then. But to expect life itself to be one long orgasm, is to be a little insane.

Kyunki Shampoo Bhi Kabhi Simple Tha

Igrew 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 one. Not only was it a soap, it also doubled up as a shampoo and anything else that you wanted it to be. There was just one soap to rule them all and it was all you needed to get rid of “dhul, mitti, ya daag”.

Shampoos had not made a grand shiny entry into our lives. I wasn’t even familiar with the concept of shampoos until my early teens. Back in the day, my innocent mind would judge the quality of a soap based on how much foam it could generate, and Medimix was just nailing it.

In the hierarchy of soaps, Medimix was the standard of the time, the vanilla equivalent in the ice-cream pantheon. If you were the upper middle class, you could afford colourful Nirma bars endorsed by Sonali Bendre roaming with lions. And the really rich would go for milky white Dove, or at least that’s what my social barometer told me.

As my parents started climbing up the social ladder, my morning rituals started getting complex. The first to penetrate our tiny cabinet was the shampoo that came along with the soap, the original OnePlus One of the world. I rationalised the thought in my head, “Fair enough, the soap is for the body and the shampoo is for the head.” But it wasn’t going to end at that, was it? Capitalism was at its peak and you were bombarded with choices, whether you wanted them or not.

Soon the generic shampoo had a sibling – the straight-hair shampoo. My sister purchased a special thingamajig that promised her hair without waves and I was warned to stay six feet away from it. I was more worried about accidentally using her shampoo than popping a casual paracetamol.   

My sister was not the only one falling for all this froth and farce. Dad switched to  a hair-fall shampoo. I found it ironic, at first, that he believed he could fight the Gujarati genetics of a balding patch with a yellow fluid that looked like pus. Mom purchased one for keeping her hair “black and strong” (whatever that means) and before I realised it, there were twelve types of shampoos, eight types of conditioners, four types of gels, and six types of body washes overflowing from our humble sunmica cabinet.

Our changing tastes in shampoo called for a change in the cabinet – the only bit of renovation our one BHK apartment has seen. Today the shampoo cabinet is overpowering the shoe cabinet, and we’re considering a menu to keep track of what’s what.

Now every time I go for a bath, it feels like I’ve entered an examination hall of cosmetic care. The other day, I spotted a “Lux Strawberry and Cream Silky Shampoo”, which caused a minor existential meltdown. Is that meant to be eaten or to be used on the hair? What if I use a shampoo that is not for my hair type? Will I ruin it forever? I don’t want to end up like Donald Trump. What are the steps to be followed? Is it soap first, then shampoo, and then conditioner? How much time do you have to wait between using the two products? What if you mistakenly use the conditioner before the shampoo? Will I have to spend a minimum of 45 minutes in the shower? Am I even allowed to use Halo, which is an egg-nourishing shampoo? I’m a vegetarian, what does the Gita have to say about this?

I needn’t have worried so much.

Eventually, it took me only a few days of getting used to when I finally succumbed. Yesterday, I was all set for my luxurious Sunday shower – body wash, shampoo, and conditioner all lined up… when the tap ran dry. I’d to make do with half a bucket of water and frantically started searching for my beloved Medimix. Sadly, it had already been replaced by some fancy bottle of gunk.