For the people, by the people?

Making sense of the good, bad and often strange trending topics online

Mukul Roy, Minister of State for Railways, became a target of much ire after he was directed by our Prime Minister to visit Dhatkuchi in Assam where the Guwahati-Puri Express derailed.

Roy had reportedly decided to visit only 'if required,' to which a certain Kiran Manral acerbically responded: 'What commitment and dedication to his portfolio.'

Agnivo had a more forgiving point of view: 'Roy did what he could do best in Kolkata, and arranged for a special train to take relatives to Fatehpur.

Would his own visit make a difference?' There was also this telling tweet from Praveen Mysore: 'Mukul Roy is trending. Have they found someone to blame yet?'

Still a Guru
The 86th birth anniversary of Vasanth Kumar Shivsankar Padukone also known as Guru Dutt made him a trending topic possibly because, in a certain Diogeneb's words, 'He was one guy who knew melancholy ke peeche kya hai.' Surendra Chaplot commented: 'People called him a fool, and he probably was one a fool too good for this world.' Someone called Madhavan Narayanan said it was nice to see him trending, but then 'he might have sung, yeh Twitter agar mil bhi jaaye toh kya hai?'

Hot couture?
The folk on Twitter work in mysterious ways. Take, for instance, what many of them chose to do over the weekend improve film titles by adding the phrase 'in my pants.' And so, timelines were clogged with examples like That Thing You Do In My Pants, National Treasure In My Pants, I Know What You Did Last Summer In My Pants', The Pursuit of Happyness In My Pants and, inevitably, Free Willy In My Pants.' Sigh.

The last word
Consider lyricist Javed Akhtar's interesting observation: 'With ten major religions in the world, even the most religious person is 90% an atheist; he looks at the other nine with total rationality.'

Lindsay Pereira is Editor, MiD DAY Online