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Sunday Musings: The Business of outrage

The Protest Industry, King Charles’s Cufflinks, and Other Sunday Musings

What a year 2026 has been for the global protest industry! Yes, protests and selective outrage have become an industry in themselves. You have people who are passionate about causes, jumping on the bandwagon at the very first opportunity. I was watching a video of a protest against a political outfit when I noticed a group of protesters holding placards calling for the protection of the environment. Wait a minute. What?

People seem to be itching to protest, much like they are itching to attend fancy weddings. Last week, in India, the ruling party organised a massive protest to save democracy. Yes, I checked the news thrice. Why would a ruling political party organise a massive protest to save democratic principles when it is itself in power?

It is all turning into a fad, much like Valentine's Day. The big marketing and business types sit in fancy offices and devise new days to celebrate. Remember that? Something similar seems to be happening here. I read online (no, it wasn't a WhatsApp forward but an actual news report) that some Delhi Police personnel had recently protested against the Delhi Police. No idea why. Employees of IDBI Bank in India are protesting against their own bank because they are unhappy about its proposed sell-off.

In Serbia, protesters won an election. Then they reportedly set fire to some police property and went on a rampage against media outlets they didn't like. But wait. Hadn't the objective of the protest already been achieved? You won the election!

In other news, the people at MIT who should be protesting aren't doing so. In a development that wasn't entirely surprising, allegations of sexual violence made by a female colleague against a male professor were reportedly found to be false. Yet, MIT faculty members apparently don't want any action against the female group on campus that raised the allegations, because being a feminist is the new cool. The man lost his job, his career, everything. So what? When it comes to men's rights, we're apparently expected to shut up and bear it. Unless, of course, we're super-rich sugar daddies (with an expensive PR team) who can do as we please.

Protests remind me of a wonderful docudrama I watched on Amazon Prime. It's called Harmony, and I'd recommend it to everyone. It's about how King Charles has been telling us for ages to save the planet, but we simply don't listen. Well, if you read online comments, all people seem to want to talk about is Diana or his wealth. Nobody wants to listen to the boring pep talk about saving our ecology and building a better future. Let's talk about how rich Dodi was instead. Why bother discussing the debate on sustainable communities initiated by the then Prince, who is now King?

The highlight of the two-hour documentary is the hen-feeding scene. Let me explain. The director shows the King feeding hens and collecting eggs. Sounds mundane, right? Well, not exactly. The King is strutting around the coop in a brilliant beige suit, with cufflinks that made me positively envious. How can a man wear a tie, a light-coloured suit, and those cufflinks in a chicken coop and still look so effortlessly normal? His fashion sense is something we don't talk about enough. We men have a lot to learn from him, both about style and about delivering a good speech. Whoever writes his speeches, especially the ones on the environment, deserves a round of applause. From the age of 21 to the present day, as King, Charles has maintained a remarkable consistency in his speeches. That is no easy feat.

Books, Farming, and Jeremy Clarkson

I've been watching Clarkson's Farm, and it has inspired me to read Jeremy Clarkson's books. Although he is sort of banned in India, we can still read his books and watch his shows. Yeah, a win for democracy!

The show is great, but the books are repetitive. It's almost like reading the show's subtitles in book form.

Besides, the problems facing agriculture are the same everywhere, and everyone has been talking about them for ages. It's the weather, bureaucracy, climate change, and so on. The same wool is being spun over and over again. At some point, you do get bored.

Which brings me to the question: what are you doing to beat boredom? Any interesting books on your bookshelf this week?

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