No-bility of the Nobels

Alright, let’s face it, Obama is not the only person to be shocked over winning the Nobel Prize. Besides the Nobel committee that gave him the prize, everyone else is reeling in shock over this announcement. People in India were furious when, a few years ago, Saif Ali Khan won the National award for best actor for the movie Hum tum. Even back then, this announcement instigated people into passing acidic comments like "What next? National award for best actress to Malika Sherawat for ‘Bachke rehna re baba’?" [In case you’re wondering, yes that is the name of a movie that Miss Sherawat acted in, which you are (rightly) blissfully unaware of] But the Nobels are given at an international level, so the international outrage over this announcement is, if anything, understandable.

At a time when the world was battling with one of the worst recessions ever, while the unemployment and crime rate of the U.S. went through the roof, what else could Obama have ridden on but hope? At that time, hope was something that pretty much everyone was riding on.

And anyway, since when did the Nobel committee decide that the Nobel peace prize was to be given to people who spread the message of peace? In that case, the poor white flying dove with the perennial leaf in its beak, along with the white flag have been symbolic of the message of peace for centuries. Where did they go wrong? What, no Nobel prizes for animals? [Wait till PETA hears of this! Then they’ll axe (or is it ox?) the Nobels, so that they are then called No-baiyls!]

Plus, I have always been a strong vocal advocate and lobbyist for literature all my life, but no one ever thought of giving me the Nobel prize for Literature. Not fair. In fact, if I knew that you got Nobel prizes on spreading messages related to the prizes’ name, then I’d have set up websites dedicated to each category by now (Google, if you copy this idea of mine, you better pay me for it)

Yet, on the bright side, by giving the peace Nobel to Obama, the Nobel committee has given us all the message of ‘hope’ of winning a Nobel. They should probably start using the famous Indian tagline for AIDS - yeh mujhe nahin, tujhe nahin, humein nahin, usay nahin - NOBEL PRIZE TOH KISIKO BHI MIL SAKTA HAI! Or they could also use the tagline from Dil toh pagal hai - Somewhere, some Nobel is made for you. (They should make me their personal publicist). So, in short, forget love, spread awareness about the Nobel’s!

So here is my list of predictions of future Nobel prize winners (some of the categories have been created by me. After all, you get the gist of it - anything can happen!)

Next few Nobel Peace winners - Rakhi Sawant and every beauty pageant contestant who wants to ‘work hard to bring peace and hope in this war-torn world, as a second Mother Teresa"

No-bail prize: Bernard Maddoff - The Fonzie behind the Ponzie scheme.

No-belle prize: Kareena Kapoor, for refusing to share screen space with half the actresses of Bollywood.

No-baal prize: To Govinda, for having the courage to spread the message of ‘hair today, hair tomorrow’ by advertising for various hair oil brands despite his own ever receding hairline.

Anti-Nobel prize / Nobel war prize: To Ogden Nash, for coining the term ‘hope against hopen’ in his famous poem ‘This is going to hurt just a little bit’ as this phrase is in direct contradiction to Obama’s message of hope.

Nobel prize for economics: To every shopaholic, for spreading awareness about the term ‘recession’ (by also practically applying it to our world economics) and for causing the ‘credit crunch’ (which up till now, people thought was the brand name of that gold coin shaped chocolate)

Nobel prize for human rights: Gordon Brown, for standing for equality (after all, his surname is ‘brown’. How considerate.)

Nobel prize for medicine: The H1N1 virus, for spreading itself, and thus, spreading awareness about swine flu. We would never have known of this disease if it wasn’t for our thoughtful virus friend.

And last but not the least, this list simply isn’t complete without the….
Nobel piece prize: George W. Bush and Tony Blair, for breaking the world into pieces and thrusting upon us all a piece of their (malfunctioning) minds.

As an afterthought, in true honour of the ‘dynamite’ Alfred Nobel, the Swedes should probably stick to doing what they do best - hip hop music, Ikea and Sony Ericsson.

Disclaimer: The author holds no responsibility of guaranteeing that these people will win the future Nobel prizes. So don’t be too shocked if someone even more ridiculous eventually wins them.