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Explaining India


How would I explain the latest happenings to an unexpected visitor to India? What do you know! There was a huge bang in the backyard last night accompanied by a bright flash of light which startled me and I woke up to investigate.
Of course I saw a nice little cute alien just like in that movie where Drew Barrymore is a baby. So I welcomed the trans-galactic visitor and offered him water. Slowly we got around to discussing the current state of affairs in India.
What a coincidence that an alien should visit me when the Pakistani President is visiting India too. I of course did not rake up the past with the alien … stuff such as some attacks in Mumbai or taking a percentage in deals.
I did mention that a baby died recently in AIIMS. All of two months old. She experienced a lot of pain in a short life. I didn’t ask ET if they believed in god in their neck of the universe.



We talked about the Chief being offered a bribe. That happens where ET came from as well.
I mentioned that the Supreme Court had cancelled all the 2G licenses issued during a minister’s tenure. ET and I talked about how they distribute exploration licenses to interested parties to explore different regions of the galaxy.
We talked about the prospects of the different teams in IPL 5. ET didn’t look into the future and reveal the winner to me. They have both male and female cheer-persons. Nude.
I mentioned that India had too many people and too little electricity. Everyone was immortal in ET-country but they have spread to many planets.
I proudly proclaimed that India is on the verge of becoming a member of a rather exclusive club of nations who have nuclear powered submarines. ET said that they don’t have any nuclear weapons at all!
With the number of people growing like it is, I talked about the tigers being endangered. ET can help with ensuring that tigers endure and dinosaurs come back to life and roam the jungles like they used to. ET can help with finding an appropriate planet where the wildlife can prosper.
I told ET that he had come at the right time since Sachin has now completed his 100th century. ET was mesmerized by Sachin’s batting style and thought Sachin can easily make it into their cricket team as well. With immortality and eternal youth guaranteed, Sachin can easily score a hundred thousand centuries on ET’s planet.
I told him that when he happens to be in this neck of the woods the next time, Rahul Gandhi will probably be the prime minister. ET hastily informed me that he is barred from interfering in the political arena on any planet he visits. It’s not because of some ethical constraints or anything that ET wished to remain neutral. It’s simply that whatever he does will leave an imprint on his indelible brain memory and when he goes back home and his brain memory is scanned, folks will find out that he had interfered in a planet’s politics.
I mentioned about the Naxal problem in some parts of India … what with an ongoing kidnapping in Odisha being in the headlines. ET said they have problems with rogue elements and lone rangers and the crazy dreamers too.
ET said: ‘People have to realize that everyone can’t be Steve Jobs.’ Those were ET’s exact words. So I said: ‘But I didn’t mention Steve Jobs. How did you know about him?’ Clearly, Jobs’ reputation has spread far.
The Naxals in ET’s land sometimes try to destroy a planet or two. But they have backed up everything on multiple hard drives. So when a planet gets blown to smithereens, they recreate the whole planet and restore it to the position it was in.
ET liked Manmohan Singh and asked me if I was sure he was just an ordinary human like the rest of us Earthlings. ET thought Mr. Singh looked like an ET himself.
I proposed to ET that we could go to a mall and watch a movie if he could promise to me that he won’t fall asleep. He said he could not give me an honest assurance in that regard. So I am downloading all the Bollywood (and some Bengali and Tamil) movies which I’ll gift to ET on an external hard drive. He can watch them on the long journey home.
Of course I asked ET how come he was here on Earth in the first place. It was predictably an accident. He was headed to a different planetary system in the Milky Way. He had fed the coordinates of the destination into the GPS (Galactic Positioning System) but apparently the Earth came in the way of the spaceship unexpectedly and so he crashed into my backyard.

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