Nominations for the first Haris Pilton Awards

Welcome to the first Haris Pilton Awards. In the following minutes we will read about some of the leading controversies that have made or broken 2006, and they form the coterie for the nominations for the first Haris Pilton Awards. So here comes the countdown in random order.

At number five we have Gulp Power. The genesis of a generation of dietary problems that our fathers have long warned against, multiplied when we suddenly found that certain pesticides were essential ingredients to make them yummier. To make matters worse a movie and a guru added fuel to fire. While the movie was far from being “Madhur” to the cause, the guru made Porter proud by finding a substitute in toilet cleaners. Potboiler stuff!!

At number four we have Two Hangs and one Ouch. The righteousness of capital punishment was questioned for the umpteenth time when one of the Parliament Bombers was awarded one, and negated when stains of conspiracy were found all over and for once our “favorite” Booker winner wrote for a cause which touched our hearts whatever be the motives. The other was for our dearest homicide friend who found his way to the galleys quite surreptitiously simply because our newly found “Nuclear” dad did not want the world to go into raptures. And, yes you were welcome with your mobile phone cameras to telecast to the world what actually the cliamx was. Hedonic!

At number three we have Delayed and Denied. In the manifold tales of Justice that never came and that which came when it was too late, there were quite a few climaxes. And the message that went out was party hard, shoot harder and never mind, Dads will settle matters. So people rampantly drove on sidewalks, shot at bars (never mind that these days even Bollywood movie stars do not understand Hindi!! blink! blink!) and even settled "big" deals at the expense of tax payers money. Eat, drink and be merry, as simple as that…

At number two we have the Land Band. Where industrialists suddenly looked upon poor Bengal to squeal in delight and say Hell this is just where we want to be. And the government found playing broker, a better occupation. The result was a huge furore and poor old "Agnikanya” (daughter of fire) going without food for 600 hours. The share of theatrics would not be forgotten with people trying to provide solace to “victims” even in an autorickshaw. The fact that generations to come would not find these in their Modern History textbooks is a pity.

At number one is undoubtedly Train Bang, the after effect of a dastardly act on train commuters in Mumbai. The 11th of July saw a series of blasts on the heart of the Mumbai commuting system. And the government retorted back with an equally defeaning response when it banned blogs all over India as being the “round table” where delirious rounds of devious destruction are strategized. I almost fell from my chair!

At number zero obviously is the Mother of all. Now we need to protect interests of our brethren who had not got their due for the last fifty years prior to independence. Not that we have been rather step motherly towards them, but, people in the echelons feel that we have not been caring enough. And hence we need to empower them with protective rights, and not only them, we need to be caring to the “better” ones since they are equally important in the vote battery and even the foreign ones, since they bring in the cash.

The nominations could run on and on but, this is a very select omnibus of incidents we could very well do without. You can chose your own set...