Oddballs, fruitcakes and assorted nuts I will miss:

George W Bush (a man who was a caricature of himself)

RR Patil (wasted his entire tenure until sacking on non-issues)

Michael Jackson (is he dying, is he not, is he settling in Kashmir, is he now German, like endless pointless speculation)

Those best forgotten:

AR Antulay

Digvijay Singh

Vasundhara Raje

Those best out of sight and mind:

George W Bush (yes, I know he’s up there on the other list, still)

Narendra Modi (no such luck)

Pervez Musharraf (may be luck)

What we could do well without:

Third grade Hindi films masquerading as art house classics or cutting edge blockbusters (please)

Horrible Bollywood music (I can’t use the words I want to for ‘rock on’)

Rich people parading their garish taste to breathless journalists (the economic downturn has luckily made them poor)

TV news hosts and their shrill and credulous hysteria (yes, darling, India has had poor people for a long time, the Taj has been in Mumbai for 100 years, schoolchildren have always carried heavy school bags, Parliament House is in Delhi and people have been having sex for millennia – since the beginning of us as humans I gather)

Badly behaved Indian cricketers (even when they play well, enough already)

Ugly opinions from frenzied Indian all over the blogosphere

The doings of NRIs, PIOs and blah blah blahs – they left this country for a better time elsewhere, right?

What I hope for:

A good year for Roger Federer!

To look forward to:

General elections in India and state elections in Maharashtra

Barack Obama

New old forms of nuttiness