2013 Rearviewed
Everyone does one of these articles and most of those articles are better than mine. But I’ll do it any way. Cause I wouldn’t be able to cry myself to sleep at night if I don’t. I am doing this in no chronological order cause I hate time and all the problems it creates.
2013 would be remembered as the year when The (Honourable) Indian Supreme Court told the world how progressive we are by upholding the constitutionality of Section 377 of the IPC. The very same year when the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed Hollingsworth v. Perry, declaring that Proposition 8 remains invalidated- meaning California becomes the thirteenth state in the US of A where Gay marriage is now legal. These westerners are so bad- respecting human rights and equality…no morals at all.
I don’t really blame our Supreme Court for this is what some people from Bangalore actually think about Homosexuality:
We lost a lot of people we love- Roger Ebert, Farooque Sheikh, Hugo Chavez, Paul Walker, Margaret Thatcher, Peter O’ Toole, David Frost, The Maharaja of Mysore, The Maharaja of Travencore, Brian Griffin…
It would also be remembered as the year we lost a real superhero- Nelson Mandela . It’s a different thing that the sign language translator at his funeral was completely fucking with us and now claims to be schizophrenic. We also lost Mikhail Kalashnikov, the guy who made this gun that the Chinese would rip-off and call Type 56 or AK-56. And Sanjay Dutt finally went to jail this year for possessing 3 of those in 1993. We lost one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time, Lou Reed and then Macaulay Culkin lost his fucking mind by coming up with the most retarded tribute band in the history of retarded tribute bands- The Pizza Underground. That’s not even a joke.
In Music, What does the Fox Say went viral and people went mad talking about how shitty music is becoming- even though it was a comedy song. Talking of shitty music, Miley Cyrus had many open letters written to her after she lost her shit twerking during The VMA’s. Poster boy of shitty music- Justin Bieber said he’s gonna retire. Now I don’t know if that’s a good thing or bad thing- I am hoping it’s true and a good thing. Given the amount of shit he’s into- you never know when he’s serious. There was this one thing this year that made last years Gangnam shit look like gold and that was the Harlem Shake. I don’t even want to talk about it and I really don’t want to know why it went viral. Those answers might scare me of my own humanity.
Jeff Bezos saved the Washington Post by buying it with his personal money and then went insane with wanting to deliver Amazon products using drones. AOL killed Winamp, Google killed the Google Reader, Yahoo killed Alta Vista (wait Alta Vista was alive?), hype and over ambition killed the Ubuntu Edge smartphone. Oh and Apple killed the iPhone 5 with the iPhone 5c which is basically the same as the old iPhone but is unapologetically plastic. They also launched the iPhone 5S which costs about 52,00 rupees on Flipkart. Did we mention the iPad Air? Well no one cares about that. Editor’s note:If you love us[or hate us] send some money our way- cause we really want to but the new Mac Pro!
Like every year, 2013 had it’s share of calamities- there was a cyclone in the eastern part of India, buses burnt down on their way to Bangalore, there was a mall shoot out in Kenya, there number of incidents of rape in India continued to increase and there was a typhoon in the Philippines. I honestly didn’t even know about it until I watched this video which was funded by the money meant for the promotion of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty:
Pope Francis is probably the greatest thing that could happen to Catholicism in the recent past and it was this year that he became the new Pope after Pope Benedict XVI decided he had enough of being a Pope. Pope benedict XVI was the first Pope to voluntarily resign since Pope Celestine V who resigned voluntarily in 1294. I don’t believe in organised religion but Pope Francis is what the religious factions need. Here are a few reasons. Also the holy-man is Esquire magazine’s best Dressed Man of 2013.
Egypt realized it’s very religious and overthrew a democratically elected government- so much for the much hyped Arab Spring. Syria is still a troubled land and there was a protest in Taksim Square in Istanbul and the struggle still continues. At home, Arvind Kejriwal drove all of us cynics into a pit and actually became the CM of New Delhi- just like Anil Kapoor from Nayak, but obviously in a much awesomer , less muddy way.
Cricketing God Sachin Tendulkar retired (finally) and so did Jacques Kallis. Cricket will obviously not be the same. I just hope that out of the two Kallis takes to commentating, although a part of money will pay good money to hear “Aila! Six!” from the commentary box.
Edward Snowden became the most wanted man in America and is now believed to be in Russia. His revelations are scarier than George Orwell’s 1949 classic 1984 and it questions a lot of things which I think the next Captain America movie will question in a stupid way thanks to the Disneyfication of Marvel. What exactly is freedom? This is him delivering a really powerful Christmas message:
Iran sent a monkey to space, India sent a probe to mars. But it was the IMAX-eyegasm Gravity, that made space relevant again in 2013. (It was also more expensive than the Indian mission to Mars.) Half of that I think is because of that ‘they got it wrong‘ scene involving Sandra Bullock in her underpants. But what’s even better is when director Alfonso Cuaron’s son and co-writer Jonas Cuaron’s short film Aningaaq came out. It’s basically the other end of Sandra Bullock’s highly emotional distress call.
There were numerous Indian films that I personally loved- The Lunchbox, Lootera, Tasher Desh, Meghe Dhaka Tara, Lucia…I didn’t like Ship of Theseus all that much but seeing that movie in a multiplex was pretty insane. Here’s Abhin’s article on the 10 worst movies of 2013. That makes my job easier and reduces the size of this article considerably.
I have knowingly and unknowingly missed out on a lot of stuff.
And just the way I ended up my 2012 Rearview, this too shall end here. Abruptly.
It’s 2014 and the next episode of Sherlock is out tomorrow. Happy New Year indeed.
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About the Author: Aniket Dasgupta
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