Wednesday, April 19, 2017

O for Outrage

The doorbell was ringing incessantly. Outraged, Kovakkari* woke up and tossed the blanket aside. For a second, she blinked, and then picked up the blanket again, only to throw it across the room with tremendously righteous force of anger. 'When did I buy a saffron coloured blanket?' she yelled at no one in particular as she got up to deal with the doorbell.

As Kovakkari pulled open the door with a huff and a puff, the milkman stood there with the monthly card. It was that time of the month. Already. Kovakkari looked at the bill - 325.75 rupees was the value of the milk she consumed last month. "Bloody demonetization. Bloody saffrons. Bloody..." as she attempted to curse further, the milkman gave up, telling her he was ok to collect it next week if she could keep the exact change ready, and made off in a hurry.

Losing the one person audience she had for her anger, Kovakkari scuffed against something papery down on the floor. 'What the...' she started, realised it was her morning newspaper, picked it up in a hurry and brought it in. 

Making herself a cup of black tea (she had signed up for the 'Black is Beautiful' campaign against 'Fair and Lovely' the previous night) and picking up a Ragi cookie (the nearest to black that she could get without compromising on her 'Made in India, No Swiss chocolate' oath from day before yesterday), Kovakkari settled down and picked up her laptop. Of course, as the laptop booted up, she conveniently set aside the fact that it was a white coloured 'Made in China' device. If you had questioned her on the choice of laptop, she would have said, "Arrey yaar, it consumes lesser electricity. I am saving for the sake of my power deprived country no."

Going directly to her Twitter feed, she skimmed through for the latest in the world of outrages. Nothing worthwhile, she realised, as she started flipping through the 'Paper of India'. "Ah! Here it is, I got it!" she yelled excitedly as she circled an item in red, before going back to Twitter. "Yo saffron brigade, stop promoting exclusive orange sarees #bhakt #stopthisnonsense", she typed and clicked a photograph of the paper as evidence, to post along with her tweet. It was an advertisement for 'Govinda Sarees' with models waving the pallus of their red, orange and yellow coloured sarees into the air, heralding 'Ram Navmi'. 

As Kovakkari finished her black tea in silence while monitoring the RTs on her tweets, she came across a tweet on 'Azaan' by that famous singer. "What is this Azaan? Sounds Urdu-ish", she told herself as she googled up the meaning. 

Another outrage brewed in her mind, as it did elsewhere in the world of social media.

* Kovakkari means 'Angry Woman' in Tamil

P. S. This post is the fifteenth in the 
A-Z blogging challenge series for April. 

1 comment:

Yogesh said...

I was hoping Kovakkari would turn out to be your nick, but alas :p