Eleven things you may see in 2011

This is a set of predictions which may happen in 2011. This is not a list of utopian dreams which I wish to happen in 2011. None of this is based on position of stars, planets or for the sake of it, satellite image. All of it is based on pure observations of things happened in past year. It has come late by a week to make derivations based on the early trend and also due to the reason the author was busy bashing people who were making public new year resolutions on social networks and those who were uploading image of new year e-cards and tagging people and assuming it to be a unique way to wish new year to someone. All these are mere assumptions of things that may happen, and in no form I take responsibility if anything does not. So here goes the list.

1. Suresh Kalmadi will walk scot free. No matter how much Kalmadi jokes are made on social networks and how much Arnab Goswami yanks on his news channel, no shit will happen to Suresh Kalmadi. Ultimately by end of year everyone will forget about him and he would be sitting coolly over the heaps of money he has made. After all, what has he done apart from making crores of rupees from public money? Isn’t that what is expected out of every bureaucrat in our country.
2. Mercy petition will be filed for Kasab just as it was filed some time ago for another terrorist named Afzal Guru. The signs are already there. Everyone seems to have forgotten what happened on 26^th November 2007 or was it November, 2008. Congress is a great party, they think of common good. Forgiveness is a virtue known to them. So they will sit pretty and take no action against the country nurturing terrorists. After all none of them and neither their close ones have ever been killed in terror attacks. So why worry of death of a few common people.
3. Shahrukh Khan will continue to whine after his team would yet against crash out of IPL. As I write this he has not picked Saurav Ganguly for his KKR. No wonder he may need police protection next time he goes to Kolkata, if he ever does. Add to that he will also lose out on the profit as people in Kolkata in most likelihood boycott all the matches. He will again flop on small screen as he has not learnt from his mistakes in KBC and another shitty kids show and is again coming to host a show which he himself mentions as ‘meri tarah pagal’ but media will still keep referring to him as King Khan.
4. Ravindra Jadeja will win a Man of the match award, given to him for ‘lack of cricketing ability’ quota by the winning team (Isn’t it obvious that he will be a part of losing team). He will continue getting picked for Indian team despite all Jadeja jokes (While I was writing this he has been picked for IPL for almost a million dollars). He will also be awarded with Ajit Agarkar award for all rounders this year.
5. Shitloads of stupid self-help books will be written and there will be buyers. There will be countless sessions on Spiritual healing, anger management, stress management which will be attended by people somehow believing this will improve their quality of life where the gurus will talk of not valuing money and in turn will make a lot of tax-free money. Chetan Bhagat will write another novel and sell it at Rs 95, and this will become a good seller despite having storyline and mellow drams of a bollywood movie simply because Indian readers want to buy something cheap and light to read on train which is expected to run late. So mediocre writers will still have a great year as no improvement is expected in services of Indian Railways. Add to that a few airlines like Indigo and GoAir do not give any magazine to read on the plane, so even if people start using flights instead of trains, they will still need to carry their own stuff to read.
6. Reality TV contestants would be specially trained in public crying skills and abusive language speaking skills. The beep sounds in Big Boss 5 will be replaced by fart sound so that contestants can be allowed some freedom of gas exit without anyone realizing. Ekta Kapoor will make four new shitty saas-bahu programs and people will continue to watch them. Rakhi Sawant will get a image makeover and this year she will host a new show called 'Rakhi karegi ghar saaf' in which she will go to each house and inspect cleanliness there. News Channels will continue to hold debates which will not result in anything. Sony TV will stop showing anything apart from CID. ACP Pradyuman will not be promoted this year too and he will still continue to be the ACP despite serving as ACP for past 11 years and cracking each case ingeniously. Daya will however be awarded the best 'darwaza todak' award.
7. Ian Chappell will write more articles whining India’s number 1 rank in Test Cricket and will demand for a better ranking system which can ensure Australia remain on top. Australians will still continue to screw up Indian cricket system. If Greg Chappell’s planned destruction of promising players and Buchanan’s Four captains theory was not enough, this year will see much more of Marsh, Lawson, Bevan and others who will complete what Chappell started and the effect will be seen during IPL4. Australia may continue to lose and India may continue to win, but Ian Chappel will be writing about flaws in ICC ranking system, and in each of these articles jingoist and jobless Pakistani cricket fans will be putting their expert comments, completely forgetting their own fuckups. Sachin Tendulkar will complete 100 international hundreds, yet there will be debates on who is the best batsman, and Australians will say he made his runs on ‘flat’ tracks, conveniently forgetting that on the same ‘flat’ tracks the average of Ricky Ponting is less than Harbhajan Singh. In other sports (no one cares a damn about) Sania Mirza will continue to lose in 2^nd rounds and still believe she is number 1 player. Hockey players will still continue to lose but will beat Pakistan occasionally. Charu Sharma will continue to haunt viewers with his fake ascent and his expert comments.
8. The Pakistani cricketers will find new ways of ball tampering, as ball biting did not taste too good. A new committee will be formed of former and present Pakistani cricketers along with underworld mafias to discover new ways of match fixing which cannot be caught. Cricketers will be trained to use the morse code to communicate with bookies as mobile phones have been found to be too risky and unsecure. PCB will ban the fixers for life and in two weeks overturn it. If all goes well Pakistan will only appoint 3 new captains in this year. The Pakistani cricket fans will continue to blame India for their fuckups.
9. More people will learn to use Photoshop or other image editing softwares. The sale of digital cameras will go up. For what? Did you guess it? Right. For picture uploads on Facebook. People will put their touched up photos more frequently than ever. Some people will continue to click on like on all status messages which do not make any sense. Traffic on google will increase as more people will google for status message. There would come forward a web based startup which will provide status messages to people at some price and will guarantee minimum number of likes.
10. The number of Man U/Chelsea fans in India will increase as the more village kids will come to cities and start believing the only way to show that you are not a villager is to start following Man U or Chelsea but not both, no matter whether or not you understand anything about football and no matter whether or not you know which country is Manchester even in. Colleges across the country will include a six week course on 'English Premier League for Villagers' in their curriculum in which they will be trained to learn the league table and made to swear their allegiance to one of the clubs preferably ManU or Chelsea. On current counts it seems there will be higher increase in number of ManU fans than Chelsea fans. However, there will be no improvement in Indian football and not the knowledge of Football among Indian youth will increase.
11. ManMohan Singh will continue to do nothing and still be the PM of the largest democracy on earth. More people will start using Bi-Cycles as price of petrol and diesel will continue to rise. Investment companies will come up with new investment schemes where one can invest in food grains and vegetables. Price rise will continue to happen and people will start locking up the bought food vegetables in lockers when they get home. Onion smuggling scam will be brought to light with the medium of leaked phone conversation between various politicians and Nira Radia. Poor people will struggle for food items and education will become more expensive for them. Then someone will make a Facebook page against all these and send cause invites to everyone and in a week the page will have 245467 likes. On the other hand India will be making a bid to the Olympics as possibly the only reason that China is more powerful than India is that China has hosted Olympics and nothing else. Off course who cares about the facts that China has a higher literacy rate, higher quality of living, lesser number of people under poverty lines, better defense system and other such things since the world only sees the Olympics. And on January 26^th, August 15^th and maybe October 2^nd we will be patriots for a day and watch all those patriotic movies coming on television.

Obviously I hope none of this happens in this year. May Kalmadi get nailed and terrorists do get punished. May Chappell brothers be ignored by rest of cricket world and may we see Pakistani cricket out of the turmoils. May the media finally get its act together and may price rise get controlled. I would have loved to end on this positive note but, honestly, you can’t bet against my predictions, Can you?