It’s another year come and gone, and as we congratulate ourselves on successfully going through another year, we get nostalgic as well. Take a ride back with us, as we rewind through some of the most important moments in the year that has gone past, and let us relive and review the year of 2015.
1 THE YEAR OF BANS
For some reason, 2015 was the year our Indian government got very interested with what we put in our mouths. From a state-wide beef ban in Maharashtra (which led to Kerela mocking the ban too by celebrating a day of beef where succulent preparations of the controversial meat were cooked and given out in mass quantities on the streets), to banning the staple favourite Maggi noodles; we can safely call 2015 the year of bans. Thank God Maggi’s back though; we wouldn’t know what to do without it. But all in all, Nestle clearly had an eventful year with the almost nation-wide ban and the comeback, don’t you think?
2 AIB ROAST
The AIB Knockout sparked quite a controversy in March. While Aamir Khan and Twinkle Khanna voiced their opinions against the contents of the video, most others have been against the attack on AIB. It was hilarious to watch how most people missed out on the point of a roast, which is that it’s ‘insult comedy’. All in all, AIB tried really hard to introduce India to a new form of comedy only to have to issue an open apology for their hard work. Maybe we haven’t grown up as much as we would like to believe by 2015.
3 INDIA BECOMES THE HUB FOR WESTERN MUSIC VIDEOS
We are still lamenting over the time when Chris Martin randomly ended up in a pub in Delhi, partying with AIB. Oh no we love the fact that he was here, but no one knew, and we weren’t prepared, and that’s not cool! Funny thing, that wasn’t the only time he was here. Coldplay was spotted a few weeks afterwards in Mumbai shooting for their new music video. Turns out, India caught the eye of quite a few western music artistes as the perfect place for their music videos, with Major Lazer and DJ Snake also choosing to shoot the music video for extremely popular song, Lean On in Karjat.
4 INDIA’S DAUGHTER
If a documentary based on an inhumane crime is considered just as criminally offensive as the crime itself, BBC’s documentary film India’s Daughter stands guilty as charged. It caused an uproar when the Indian government feverishly tried to take down all sources of the video because “excerpts of the interview as published are highly offensive and have already created a situation of tension and fear among women in society”. In Shakespearean tongue, ‘to censor or not to censor, that is the question.’
5 CHARLIE HEBDO MASSACRE
January saw one of the most inhumane attacks in recent history. Two brothers, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi forced their way into the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in an terror attack that killed 11. However, the newspaper took only a week to bounce back from the attack, hitting the market with a rejuvenated fervour against terrorism. They reportedly published nearly five million copies of their subsequent edition; people had to wait for over an hour to get the magazine, and many stories all over France had to put up a ‘sold out’ sign soon after they ran out of copies. Is that a show of resilience or chutzpah
6 CELEBRITIES GOT ON DUBSMASH
Chances are you’re one of the millions of people who have fallen victim to the addictiveness and utter ridiculousness of Dubsmash that’s consistently entertaining us since it was launched. But what we really love is how the addictiveness took over tinsel town just as well as it did over the masses. Hollywood and Bollywood celebrities alike got sucked into the dub craze, and it’s amazing to watch.
7 WE REACHED PLUTO
Adding another feather to NASA’s cap was its spacecraft New Horizon’s maiden trip to the dwarf planet Pluto. Hurtling towards the farthermost planet in the galaxy, the spacecraft treated us mere mortal earthlings with one of the most gloriously detailed pictures of the planet ever. Talk about reaching new heights this year, right?
8 SUNDER PICHAI BECAME THE CEO OF GOOGLE
While Indians were still reeling (or rather, trolling) from Bobby Jindal’s refusal to acknowledge his Indian connection, Sunder Pichai came out as the light at the end of the tunnel this September. This Chennai educated man, now appointed as the CEO of Google, not only affectionately recalled his Indianness but also made India proud on an international platform. We are also proud of Indra Nooyi and Satya Nadella for their business prowess.
9 THE ASHLEY MADISON WEBSITE SCANDAL
Online community was aghast as it was cruelly exposed to the issue of privacy substantiated by the data breach from Ashley Madison, an online dating service for people who are married. With personal information such as email addresses and phone numbers of users leaked online, users were once again obligated to acknowledge the ever burgeoning threat to internet privacy. Moralistically, we understand the whole ‘they deserved it’ claim, but if personal information can be leaked that easily, will we ever be safe in our ever-growing digital world?
10 THE ZUCKERBURG-MODI AFTER EFFECTS
Following the Prime Minister’s revolutionary launch of Digital India, he met up with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg, and that interview kept the nation glued to their TV screens. But the after effects of that meeting were quite scary. Zuckerburg spoke about something called Internet.org, which, when read between the lines, was heavily against net neutrality. People added a tricolour tint to their Facebook profile pictures after the controversial meet, and there was a huge debacle about how adding the tricolour tint meant supporting against net neutrality. Thankfully, this claim was based on a viral image of a code, which was later identified as a coding error.
Volume 5 Issue 6
