I've been meaning to write about this for quite a while but somehow I always forgot.

Lately, I've been going through a lot of bollywood critic's videos on YouTube and one thing that most have is how, even people like R D Burman, copied western music.

I don't watch TV because it mostly consists of drama. But, there are some comedy shows. I know a few Hindi ones and one Marathi show and I'll admit, all of them are funny. But, there's a difference between PJs and actual jokes.

Most of the comedy shows are reality shows that have partners who present sketches or so. Comedy nights with Kapil is one show I know that has a bit of stand up comedy and sketches too. And when I first heard from a friend that it has stand up comedy, I was pretty surprised. And by the way, this show is pretty much the only comedy show that every family watches and it makes me sad that this is their idea of funny.

If you've ever seen stand up comedy, you'll know that it's basically telling jokes, without props or anything of that sort, with hand gestures and voice changes etc. and the world's #1 stand up comedian right now, Russell Peters, is Indian. Of course, these jokes are to be told in a proper way, you can't just memorize a bunch of random jokes and tell them.

And what I've seen in a lot of stand up comedy shows, Indian and otherwise, is that it has a lot of audience participation. Its not like the audience is called on the stage, but they do speak to different people in the audience and make jokes on them etc.

But this show, it's as if the entire thing was set up just for "Paaji". There is no improv comedy based on the audience, it's entirely scripted.

And there's another show. I haven't really seen it on TV but I saw a few videos on YouTube. It was Rising Stars of Comedy on NDTV. That show had actual stand up comedy with Indian comedians from various laughter clubs across the country. All they put on YouTube were 10 minute clips and yet there are so many videos of that show. That means, there's no shortage of stand-up comedy in India.

And all of them are funny. And they talk about the life of Indians, maybe a few racist jokes, political jokes but all of that is much funnier than the sketches of Comedy Nights with Kapil. Why? Because the entire show is based on cheap jokes. The show is based on really bad puns, and the kind of shitty jokes that are popular on Whatsapp.

And I still don't understand how this show is so popular, and an actual funny show, with real stand up comics is still unknown to the majority. And the worst part of Comedy Nights with Kapil is "Paaji" laughing. We get it, you're getting paid to laugh. But enough, he laughs at the most absurd things. It's as if his sense of humor is so messed up, he'll even laugh at "hello". And what's worse is that they have a mic near him. Which means, the viewers have to put up with this guy laughing for no reason.

If you want to laugh, check out Russell Peters, Vir Das, Kunal Rao, Sorabh Pant, Sanjay Manaktala, Jeevashu Aluhwalia, Sahil Shah, Varun Grover, Azeem Banatwala, Atul Khatri, Maheep Singh, Angad Singh Ranyal, Neeti Palta, and there's many more. And this is just the names I got from YouTube. Just half of what you can watch on TV. And their improv comedy is so much more better and funnier than the scripted comedy of any other comedy show.

It's more of a social obligation to celebrate this one day. I say obligation because that's what everyone talks about when you go to school/work on the 2nd. Everyone boasts how awesome their party was and something like that.

But I fail to understand the motive behind the hype. For one, you end up spending your entire Christmas bonus in one night. Second, people are EVERYWHERE. That means, if you want to reach a restaurant by 9, you have to leave your house 2 hours before.

And well, since people are everywhere, you have to wait at restaurants/clubs/etc.

Of course, it's mostly just grown-ups that get to celebrate. But, even the kids are hyper before midnight on the 31st. Then, when it's midnight, they wish everyone by text, calls, Whatsapp, Facebook (can't meet in person because they're still kids) and everyone's really happy for 15 - 30 minutes.

After that, we all realize that that's it. We realize our holidays are about to end and we need to start studying again. So, that's it. The hype is about 15 - 30 minutes.

Even worse, in my opinion, are the cheesy messages you receive. Most ironical, as far as I know, is the fact that you get messages saying "May this year be full of joy...blah blah...and all your wishes come true." from people you haven't even heard from in months.

And the worst of all is the fact that this day or transition from one year to another does not count for anything. It amounts to nothing, at least in India. If you think about it, you'll realize, our fiscal year starts in April. (Source) And our academic year begins in June (for schools) and July (for colleges).

So, there is no apparent reason for celebrating.

I can understand the motive behind festivals. They're based on some historical event or according to some calendar etc, and religious people celebrate it with the proper rituals etc.

What I don't understand is, days like Mother's Day, Teacher's Day etc.


Teacher's Day, in that list, is the one that bugs me the most.

First of all, it's a different date in every country. I mean, it's an internationally celebrated day, why do you need separate dates for it? Are you worried one country's celebration will interrupt another country's celebration? Or that there's going to be too much celebration that day so it should be restricted to one country at a time?

In India, we celebrate it by having presentations for the teachers, usually a dance, skit/play, or speeches. And then, in some cases, the seniors teach the juniors while the teachers take the day off.

That's how we celebrate teacher's day in our school. From August, we start begging teachers for some time to discuss what we want to do. Then we start begging for practice time while negotiating with the teacher to let us celebrate it.

Then on the 5th, we make the teachers gather everyone in one place. We present whatever it is that we have done.

My question is, why do you need a day to show your gratitude? Because, seriously, that's the only day when students respect their teachers.

Every other day, it's just teasing behind their backs, irritating them to no end etc. So, why go out of your way to dance for them? Simple, you get a break from studies and a lot of free periods.

But, then, there are those speeches. Those emotional speeches that say how glad we all are to have teachers like you. And the very next day, we irritate you in our class, and you scold us to no end.

We know that no matter how much you scold us, you still care very much about us and you only scold us because we're doing something wrong.

And you know that we don't actually hate you and it's just human nature to slightly rebel against any authority figure.

So, why put up a show for all this?

And the most hilarious part about Teacher's Day is, the children are never wished on Children's Day. Teachers don't put up a show on Children's Day. In fact, this year, we had to remind our teachers that it was Children's Day. It was a childish thing to do, we're not considered children any more, but, there should be some reciprocated celebration.

And the grown-ups justify this by saying "every day is children's day". Well, it's not. If it is, they have a very bad way of celebrating it by yelling to our faces.

The same goes for the other days like Mother's Day, Father's Day (If it even exists) etc.

The worst of all, in my opinion, is Valentine's Day.

Sad part is, not many people know about it's origin. Not that they care, they just like to do what all people do, stupidly follow the trend without caring what it's about.

The story says that Saint Valentinus used to perform weddings for soldiers who had sworn not to marry. And it was said that when he was jailed for his actions, he (magically) healed the daughter of the person who jailed him. And he was later executed for all that he had done.

So, basically, we're all celebrating the fact that some priest, who married a bunch of people who weren't supposed to get married, was killed for spreading love.

What a romantic day!

I don't understand the need for this occasion either. Couples celebrate it by exchanging flowers, gifts and going out to a nice restaurant or something. I'm not saying every date is like that but Valentine's Day is nothing different. It's just a bit more fancy.

Valentine's Day is a relationship's equivalent of an Apple product. It costs more, but does the same thing that any other day does.

As a 10th grader, I hear this word at least 50 times a day.

Even the teachers, they hardly care if we understand the lesson/concept, they just tell us how to get the most marks out of it.

And the students are no different. I've seen students memorize mathematical problems. There's a limit, and these kids are way past it. I mean, some problems are fine, you need to see how it's solved a few times to completely understand it (geometric theorems and their proofs, mostly) but you don't have to go as far as to memorize.

And lately, it's all anyone cares about.

"Mom, look I built my own robot."

"Forget the robot, it's not going to get you marks. Go study."

When the idea for school came into the minds of the Ancient Greeks, Romans, Indians, Chinese etc. I don't think they wanted students to get marks. They wanted students to get knowledge.

I'm not even going to talk about the syllabus, that's retarded enough. But, the whole mark system is downright stupid. To be honest, the entire examination system is stupid.

I know, exams are supposed to test our knowledge and keep a check if we're actually studying. But, it really doesn't test our "knowledge". There are a lot of intelligent kids in my class, who are never classified as intelligent by the teachers. Why? Because they never score above 70% or 80%.

It's not like they're street-smart. One of them got 92 percentile in an IQ test whereas the kids who get 90% in exams only got 70 percentile or so. Again, it's not like IQ matters either. But, I'm just saying, these kids are legitimately intelligent.

But, that's the kind of influence that our education system has on us. It's not our fault that we're so mark-obsessed. It's not our teachers' fault for teaching us about marks instead of the subject. It's just that idiot's fault who designed this entire system. (I've been trying to find out who that evil genius is, putting millions of kids through this hell, but sadly, the Internet is not helping)

We, as a whole, have started rating students based on their marks. Right now, no one cares about talents. Sure, even in school we have talent based activities but guess what? They're all for a subject, which is graded, and doesn't count towards the overall report. Which means, the parents don't allow their kids to spend more time on it than necessary and so, all talent is lost.

As you can see, I'm trying to bring about a change, although small, by writing a blog. And whenever I tell this to my parents or friends, they just say the only way out of the system is to beat the system.

Well, after I'm done with 10th, I'll be busy with 12th, and then with college. By the time I'm done with my education, I seriously wouldn't give a shit about the education system. That's typical Indian mentality, if it doesn't bother me, I don't need to do anything about it. And I really wouldn't care about the kids who would be complaining about it when I'm done. I guess that's why today's grown-ups don't want their kids to complain about school either.

So, in our schools, the smart category includes people that get 90% in their exams, not people that have brains. To be honest, the only reason I'm considered to be "smart but a waste" is because I used to get good grades in 5th grade or so and I don't any more.

And EVERYTHING is done based on marks. As in, if there's a workshop where students are invited from certain schools and only 4 are allowed to attend it, there's an exam conducted to determine who those 4 students are. And the exam, like any other, needs the memory of an elephant and skills of a parrot, so, the same kids are sent to competitions, workshops etc and others get no chance.

I shouldn't be talking about that though because I'm one of the students who always represents the school in competitions. But, that's only because I'm in a school that doesn't have too many kids, so the teacher herself picks the children who get to go to these events.

Bottom line is, we're all becoming a mark-oriented society and that needs to change.


PS: I asked the studious kids in my class a simple question

2² x 2⁰

and as expected, I got the wrong answer, 0. We learned about the law of indices in 7th grade. If the studious kids don't remember that x⁰ = 1, what's the point of memorizing?

It's become something almost everyone knows. Like, anyone with a TV knows what Anime is. They don't know the exact definition, but they have seen at least one Anime. They call it cartoons but uh, lately, I really can't see the difference either.

One thing that's really annoying about Anime is it's fan base.

Some Anime series that were pretty popular on television include Naruto, Dragon Ball, Bleach, Fairy Tail, Inazuma Eleven etc (to the point where some of these were even dubbed in Hindi for Indian television) And there are a LOT of people who have just seen these popular Anime and go on to call themselves an "Otaku" (the word has lost all meaning now, those that were actual otaku don't even feel like calling themselves one)

These people, after having watched the big 4 Anime (Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Fairy Tail) go on and like 1000s of Facebook pages and join 100s of Anime groups. These groups have debates based on strength of characters and in every argument, there are those few people who just scream "Naruto beats both because he has rasengan."

That's the thing, you can't debate about the strength of two characters from different Anime rationally. There's no real way of comparing the powers. We don't know if Ichigo was vulnerable to the wind-type Rasenshuriken, or if Goku blowing up planets would really kill some Hollow or Vaizard (they don't need oxygen and they can fly, go figure)

Of course, you can pit Luffy's haki against Naruto's shadow clone saying that he's capable of wiping 1000s of enemies in one hit but countering that Naruto can do this a lot of times whereas Luffy's energy source is limited and on and on. But you really can't find out which one's stronger.

It's only possible if there was a crossover or if the two characters come from two series that were written by the same person. And only he can compare them, by declaring certain weaknesses in both to make the debate a bit more logical.

So, mostly, there are 2 kinds of "otaku".

1. They watch 5 series, call themselves "otaku", forget about Anime and just socialize with other wannabe-otaku with their limited knowledge and basically fangirl all over the Japanese culture and say things like "OMG I WISH I WAS BORN IN JAPAN!!! I CAN EAT ONIGIRI ALL MY LIFE!!!"

2. They watch Anime and don't fucking waste their time fangirling over Japan, they know it's Anime that matters, not the language or the people that make it.

The "wannabe"s love Japanese for some reason. They only know a few words like Arigatou or Sayonara and shit like that. But then they say things like "I wish I could live in Japan."

It's not the dream place you think it is. It's just like your city. It has a small spot for the geek that you are, but the common people are still going to treat you like a loser because you watch cartoons. People there don't worship Anime, they think it's just as bad as your parents do.

I mean, it's not as if people wouldn't have seen Anime if it wasn't Japanese. It's just that it was made by the Japanese, so we can't imagine it in any other way. Like, if it was Indian, the world would still be watching it, because it was made that way. The same logic applies everywhere. Why do most people have their taskbar at the bottom? Because it was made that way. 

And for some reason, it's become a trend to role-play. No, not as characters from an Anime, as a family. I don't see how it's related to Anime other than the fact that everyone in the family is either nee-chan or nii-chan or ototo or kaa-san or oto-san etc. It's just a bunch of people taking up different roles in a make believe family, and yet, it only seems to happen in Anime related groups.

And normally, people that are this obsessed with such things are called no-lifers, as in, they don't study, socialize, work, just watch Anime etc. Well, I actually defend no-lifers saying that they can just maintain a balance between both but lately, it seems like no-lifer is too good a word for these "otaku".

No-lifers are supposed to not have any friends, well these people have too many in my opinion. All fake online friends, sure, but, that's too much socializing. They watch a 30 minute episode and then talk about it for 3 hours.

Now, I'm not saying mainstream Anime is bad and only for the wannabe otaku, the Anime is popular for a reason, it's because it's good. But, it's too over-rated and it's fanbase is too fucking cheap. I remember when I had only seen Naruto and I was new to Facebook. I would meet Naruto fans everywhere but when I asked them if they thought Madara Uchiha was alive, they just said "Lol who is Madara Uchiha? Is that Sasuke's father?" and on further asking, I found out most of them only watch the first season. So, out of the millions of fans that these Anime have, only a few 1000 are legit fans.

Non-mainstream Anime is much better. If you meet a fan of, say, Hyouka, you know he's going to be a true fan to have seen something that uncommon. Hyouka is still pretty common (for some reason) as even I'm not that much of an Anime watcher.

The point here is, people say that the Otaku community is growing at a rapid pace. Well, that's bullshit.

It's dead.

It's been taken over by weebs saying "Nee-chan, can we haz Sasuke as our ototo?" to their role-playing families, taken over by people that do "owo .w. ouo eue :3 -3-" instead of "Detective Conan has shown some remarkable improvement in it's 14 years of airing, it went from a poorly animated anime with tonnes of fillers to a solid storyline with good graphics that it is today." It's been taken over by "Erza <3 Lucy <3 Nami <3 Sebastien <3 Grey <3 Sasuke <3" instead of "I like how Light kills criminals instead of using the Death Note for his own reasons."

So, if you're thinking this is a good time for Anime, it's not. The world has too much Anime right now. Basic economy rules. When there's an increase in supply, there's a decrease in demand. And, I'm at a point where I wouldn't mind the whole thing ending.