What were you doing in lockdown?
My friends often ask me, “What extra thing did you do during the pandemic lockdown? Did you make yourself useful to yourself or to society? Did you raise money for a progressive cause? As in, did you retweet a tweet seeking money for a progressive cause? If not, did you at least learn a new skill and post selfies of your achievements with this new skill?”
My answer to them is always the same: “No comment”. Not because I’ve been idle but because I’m a modest person who doesn’t want to make anyone feel small by exposing them to the sheer scale of my ambitions. In fact, I end up doing two rounds of ROFL every time I contemplate the trifling nature of my friends’ undertakings — how little it takes for them to feel happy, vain and self-satisfied!
Gooey images
For many, the first port of call for facile ego-inflation is cooking. Men whose outer limit of culinary expertise used to be boiled water have overnight blossomed into master chefs, flooding my timeline with gooey images of some exotic dish like sushi, khao soi or phoeey de grass. Others have taken up gardening. A former colleague got so involved in pots and plants that she’s become a full-time bonsai.
Another friend, a celebrated architect, has taken up emojis. Nowadays when I talk to him, he doesn’t use adjectives. He responds in emojis. Yesterday, for instance, I asked him, “What do you think of the government’s Central Vista project?” He said, “The emoji with the green puke coming out of mouth like waterfall.” I couldn’t talk to him after that.
Anyway, the point of all this is to demonstrate, by contrast, the loftiness of my own lockdown endeavours. Indeed, apart from single-handedly resurrecting the besmirched credibility of Indian media, I’ve been working hard on the only thing that matters right now: vaccines.
Every day I wake up and while other people are busy moving arms and legs in the name of exercise, I do vaccine research. I was naturally thrilled when I heard our finance minister announce that she has allocated ₹900 crore for corona vaccine research in her 27th Atmanirbhar stimulus packet.
While investment in corona vaccine research is important, 135 different corona vaccines are already in various stages of development, with several on the verge of being rolled out. It is, therefore, my humble submission that this entire ₹900 crore be disbursed to any one individual who is working on other vaccines that are equally urgently needed in India.
Take me, for instance. I’ve spent the past eight months researching and testing the following vaccines:
Contempt of Court Vaccine (CoC): Two sets of 20 judges each volunteered to take part in the clinical trials. The first twenty were given the actual vaccine, and the second set was given placebos. Then they were both, in turn, locked up for two hours in a room containing a deadly strain of Kunal Kamra. When the doors were unlocked, the judges who got the placebos immediately issued a contempt notice against Kamra. But the judges who received the CoC vaccine were laughing their robes off.
RTI Vaccine: Developed specifically for bureaucrats, I am really excited about this vaccine. While those who received dummy shots continued to deny RTI requests, 95% of the bureaucrats who received the vaccine disclosed 100% of the information sought, including information that could “prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the state, relation with foreign state or lead to incitement of an offence” such as copy of PM’s MA mark sheet.
Liberal Hypocrisy Vaccine: My most ambitious project, but little success so far. When subjects injected with the vaccine were asked, “Why did your marriage break up?” 69% of them blamed the Opposition. Of the remaining 31%, about 17% blamed Pakistan, while 13% insisted that “post-marital achhe din is a jhumla”. The vaccine worked on only 1% of the subjects, who readily conceded that the deep polarisation induced by Asterix and Obelix led to irreconcilable differences, causing the break-up of their marriage.
Anti-Corruption Vaccine: This is one of my success stories. As the name indicates, subjects develop 100% immunity to corruption charges. Even before completion of Phase 1 trials, I have pre-orders for 90,000 doses. Clients include the Who’s Who of India’s political, financial, social and anti-social elite.
Islamophobia Vaccine: Little progress due to scarcity of volunteers for clinical trials. But top research labs from EU and Canada have shown interest in acquiring my vaccine candidate and carrying out clinical trials in their own countries.
In view of the above, and to enable me to further enhance India’s glory by producing all these and more new vaccines for the benefit of humanity, I request that the ₹900 crore allocated for vaccine research be transferred to me by today evening. My bank account number, IFSC code, and internet banking password are already in government database.
G. Sampath is Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu.
