2024 Wrapped! IWTK Style | #234
+ spot the hidden acrostic 🔎
Hello friends,
We do love our traditions here at India Wants to Know. One of them is to have a XL-sized issue to close out the year. This week’s edition recaps all the highs and lows of 2024 - in our trademark style. Presenting: IWTK Wrapped - featuring a neat acrostic.
This is our final issue of the year as we take a well-deserved break for the next couple of weeks.
Things we learnt this week 🤓
Manu Bhaker had a torrid time at the Tokyo Olympics, but had the Bollywood redemption story by winning 2 bronzes at the Paris Olympics in 2024. She nearly added a third bronze but finished 4th in the 25m pistol. As it happens with Olympic medal winners, she was seen everywhere - with Prime Ministers, at the Eiffel Tower, at a fashion show - all with her medals leading to some trolling. Baker did so well at the Olympics - she put Manuvygnanik Dhabav on her opponents.
Wearing those medals with pride Elections were held all over India to determine the occupants of the Lok Sabha. Modiji won a slightly muted third term - where he needed the support of sometimes-foe-sometimes-friend Nitish Kumar and Chandrababu Naidu, to get the numbers to form the government. It was a strange election in many ways. The party that got 240 seats looked like it lost and the party that lost with 99 seats, looked like it won. BJP then seemed to consolidate its position by winning important state elections in Haryana and Maharashtra.
Rohit Sharma’s up-and-down 2024:
Captaining India to a 4-1 test series win against England.
Dropped as Mumbai Indians captain whom he had captained to 5 titles.
Won the T20 World Cup and famously did the Ric Flair walk while collecting the trophy.
Became the first Indian captain to be whitewashed in a home test series, when the Kiwis beat India 3-0.
Welcomed the birth of his second child
Lost to Australia in the pink ball test match.
Ram Mandir in Ayodhya was finally consecrated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi ushering in massive spike in real estate in the city of Ayodhya. An idol prepared by Mysore based sculptor Arun Yogiraj was selected to be placed in the sacred sanctum sanctorum and was christened Balak Ram. Despite the frenzy of investments in the city, Ayodhya decided not to vote for BJP and instead elected Samajwadi Party candidate Awadesh Prasad.
Yemen faced air-strikes from a US-led coalition in retaliation of the Houthis blocking the red sea. Following the breakout of the Israel–Hamas war, the Houthi movement in Yemen blockaded Israel in the Red Sea and launched a series of attacks against commercial vessels heading or related to Israel. United states leads a coalition currently which has more than 20 members, of which ten are anonymously involved. The air strikes were given the name Operation Prosperity Guardian - clearly US is the guardian of Israeli interests everywhere.
Chess World Champion and Olympiad winners - First, team India decimated the opposition at the Chess Olympiad. Then in December, Dommaraju Gukesh, appropriately the son of one Dr Rajnikanth, pulled off a dramatic win in a 14 game showdown against current World Champion Ding Liren to become only the 2nd Indian and only the 18th individual overall in over 130 years to become the Chess World Champion. The position of the Indian chess scene is quite solid.
Hosni Mubarak is alive! Well not really, but Indian singer Abhijit Bhattacharya trended in Egypt due to his likeness to the deceased president of Egypt leading to Bhattacharya getting requests from the people of Egypt to visit the country. Abhijit had an interesting year - he called AR Rahman as a cut-paste artist and then had a moment in the sun when a viral mashup of his song - Woh Ladki Jo Sabse Alag Hai from Badshaah was mixed with Levitating by Dua Lipa and was performed by the artist in her concert in Mumbai. We only have this to say “aapke voice mein bahut saadgi hai abhijeet bhattacharya ji par aadmi suar ho”
Rachael Gunn, who went by the name, Raygun, gave the sport of Breaking (Break dancing) its 15 minutes of Olympic infamy, by getting a perfect 0 by all the judges for her performance which included some references to her native Australia like a Kangaroo Hop. And to add insult to injury, she became the world number one breakdancer after the Olympics, due to a quirk in the way points are scored for world ranking. In the end the attention was too much for her, and she decided to quit the sport. It was a truly headspinning journey.
Israel continued to bomb Gaza, then Rafah, then attacked the Iranian embassy in Syria, then launched air strikes in Syria, then decided to bomb Lebanon, then killed civilians in a devastating pager attack - all the while US vetoed any UN resolution of a ceasefire to ensure some peace in the region. The international criminal court has issued an arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu, but it seems unlikely that any step will arrest the escalation of war in the region.
Sheikh Hasina won a historic 4th consecutive, possibly rigged election at the start of 2024 and life was looking very good for her. But just like how test match pitches change rapidly in the sub-continent, life looked a lot tricky for her when the student protests regarding quotas engulfed the country in July and by August, she had to resign and face the indignity of seeking asylum in India. It was quite a hot time for Sheikh - definitely having Hasina ka Pasina.
Trump romped to a facile win and secured a second term as the President of United States. He was helped in large parts by the seemingly endless cashflow from the enfant terrible Elon Musk. And the fact that the Democratic Party seemed clueless to tackle the Trump narrative. Trump will be become the first person to become President after having been impeached twice previously and also having his mugshot taken at a police station. Harris could not do an operation Kamala and get more people on her side.
Maldives was boycotted by Indians causing a lot of anxiety for Bollywood celebs. Narendra Modi was photographed on the clean beaches of Lakshwadeep - three Maldivian deputy ministers made derogatory and racist remarks about Prime Minister Modi and Indians on social media, coinciding with his visit. Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu had campaigned on an India Out slogan and it looks like he succeeded, but not in the way he anticipated.
Airlines and airports among others suffered one of the largest global IT outages in history - American cybersecurity company CrowdStrike distributed a faulty update to its Falcon Sensor security software that caused widespread problems with Microsoft Windows computers running the software and the world wide financial damage was estimated to be upwards of $10 Billion. It did lead us to relive a simpler time - handwritten boarding passes.
Singapore saw its first ever Prime minister born after its independence in 1965. Lawrence Wong, born in 1972, assumed office in May after Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister from 2004, decided to step down as he had passed the sprightly young age of 70. Lee Hsien Loong is the son of the father of the nation - Lee Kuan Yew and will now serve as “Senior Minister”. Sounds like a made up post - but this is how Singapore retires its previous prime ministers and Deputy prime ministers.
Hemant Soren was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case linked to a land deal. Champai Soren (unrelated) tookover as CM and essentially warmed the seat till Hemant Soren was released. Hement made a resounding comeback by winning the elections in Jharkhand. This technique of arresting a sitting CM was also used in Delhi with Arvind Kejriwal being arrested. Arvind Kejriwal resigned as CM and was replaced by Atishi Marlena - an unfortunate surname especially in Delhi.
Auroraes in all their spectacular glory were seen in unusual places thanks to a series of powerful solar storms with extreme solar flares and geomagnetic storm components. These produced aurorae at far more equatorial latitudes than usual in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Aurorae were seen across Europe from as far south as Portugal, Spain, and Sardinia. Aurorae were also visible in Algeria and the Canary Islands in Africa. Below is an image of the Aurora seen in Leh!
Police in Papua New Guinea went on strike when they realized a “rounding error” had caused several policeman to see lower salaries ranging from $25 to $80. This rounding error had a catastrophic effect as chaos broke out in Port Moresby, capital of PNG, as looters and opportunists took advantage of a protest by the country's police leaving at least 10 dead. The image was not good for PNG.
Payal Kapadia was once thrown out of FTII when she protested the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as the FTII chairman. her film All We Imagine As Light - a film about 2 Malayali nurses in Mumbai, won accolades including the Grand Prix at the Cannes film festival and a Best Director nomination at the Golden Globes. Despite all the international acclaim, she has struggled to get the movie released in theaters in India and on OTT platforms and she was given the ultimate snub as her film was NOT SELECTED as the official entry for the Academy Awards from India. The film federation of India, which seemed lost for answers, said that the film was not Indian enough to send as the Indian entry 🤷🏽
Yoon Suk Yeol, the deeply unpopular president of South Korea, decided to take matter into his own hands by taking the extremely unpopular move of imposing Martial Law. Essentially South Korea would be a dictatorship akin to North Korea. The people responded by protesting and after a few hours of dictatorship - Yeol apologized and took back his decision. South Korea is so democratic that the police is now investigating his decision. Yoon Suk Yeol seems to be an ardent Narayan Murthy fan and has advocated for 120 hour work weeks - interesting PSYchology here.
Nirmala Sitharaman tried to squeeze every single rupee earned by people, towards the make benefit glorious nation of India. Her budget came in for severe criticism - she increased taxes on equity investments, which hit the investors below the belt…their purses. The lack of substantive reforms to address the agrarian crisis was glaring and middle-class taxpayers find themselves in the same old boat, with no substantial relief in sight. Ms Sitharaman runs a hard bargain and not a Nirmal one.
El Gallo won his battle against Iron. YouTuber Jake Paul nicknamed El Gallo beat a 58 year old Mike Tyson in a Netflix special boxing match in Texas, a fight that was sanctioned by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulations and was criticized for the 31 year age difference between the competitors. Don’t feel sad for Mike Tyson - he made a cool $20Million from this fight. Fighting at the age of 58, Tyson was really biting off more than he could chew.
Wegovy became a rage among Hollywood celebs as it received FDA approval to treat Weight Loss. It contains the same active molecule Semagultide which is present in the other viral rage - Ozempic. Ozempic is supposed to be prescribed only for Type 2 diabetes, but seems to be readily available to celebs who are quick to credit their weight loss to diet, exercise and peace of mind. Righto!
Year of 67 toppers - that was how we can describe NEET entrance exam conducted in 2024. The exam was so badly manipulated - Many students received scores deemed mathematically impossible due to the nature of negative marking in the exam. This led to student protests demanding the cancellation of the exam and a re-examination. The Supreme Court of India ruled that there were no indications of an overall systemic failure. Very NEET from the court.
Electoral Bond Scheme was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of India and asked SBI to release the data. SBI tried all its delaying tactics, but in the end had to give out the data. The number of zeros in the amount of money enchased by political parties boggles the mind. These bonds are opaque enough to leave voters in the dark.
Arshad Nadeem broke Neeraj Chopra’s dream of becoming a Double Olympic Champion by producing an iconic performance in the finals of the javelin throw at the Paris Olympics. Chopra’s throw was his 2nd best throw of all time and enough to emerge as India’s greatest individual Olympian with a gold and a silver in his kitty. It also produced the most heart-warming moment when both the mothers of Neeraj and Arshad proclaimed they are happy as both their children won medals. If only the world was run by women…
Rafael Nadal ended a glorious tennis career with a defeat in his final game at the Davis Cup. He ended his career with 22 grand slam titles including 14 Grandslams at the French Open. The best tribute was that he was asked to be a part of the torch relay during the opening ceremony at the Paris Olympics - something generally reserved for host country athletes. His career was so good - it’s apt to say Buon Nadale!
That’s it for 2024. Seasons greetings, and see you lovely people in 2025 👋
Brilliantly summed up the year !!.. kudos to your efforts...... Enjoy the holidays
fun reading