After effects of 2009: A flashback!

Another year gone down the drain. 2009 was a sheer waste of time and I wish we'd skipped it and gone straight to 2010. I mean, nothing good can come out of a year that begins with people looking up the dictionary to check the spelling of recession and ends with an 86-year-old politician in bed with three naked women!

Politicians are the only people who had fun in 2009. Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for destroying India's peace of mind by pumping millions of dollars into Pakistan, a country whose politicians found an ingenious way of funding terrorism at India's cost. How? By demanding countless number of dossiers of evidence from India of Pakistan's involvement in the 26/11 terrorist attacks on Mumbai — and then selling off those dossiers at Rs 7 per kilo to the raddiwala!

Back home, the income tax department revamped its print ads and TV commercials with the tagline: "Pay your taxes on time! So that our ministers can go on holiday with family and friends!" This was soon after a bill was passed unopposed in the parliament that entitles politicians to take any number of relatives and friends on free air trips anywhere in India!

While Madhu Koda made Rs 4000 crore out of a small and relatively new Jharkand, the last few months of 2009 saw a mad rush for more new states across the country! The concepts of ahimsa and satyagraha were given a new spin by politicians who went on fasts while their followers went on rampage — thus making India the only country in the world where politicians cause more damage to public property and innocent lives than terrorists!

In sports, Sachin Tendulkar completed 25 years in cricket and displayed the right technique in playing a political googly - by maintaining a dignified silence as some people appealed LBW when he batted for nationalism over regionalism. Elsewhere, golfer Tiger Woods met with a car accident and his wife helplessly watched a dozen women tumble out of the boot of his Cadillac Escalade.

In movies, James Cameron donned the avatar of God and discovered a new planet called Pandora within weeks of Ronald Emmerich destroying Earth before we made it to year 2012! But as Bollywood sank at the box office, it was Shilpa Shetty who made her best career move — by getting married!