MV Suez's hostages were rescued by Pakistan paying off the hostages
Dark humor alert: “By 2020 India will have enough people taken hostage to give hostages a quota of their own,” announced a spokesman of an all party meet in New Delhi today. “There is still some disagreement about whether those Indians kidnapped by Somali pirates should be given a separate quota, but we’ll work it out. It’s not like the Women’s Reservation Bill where no one really wants it to move forward. This is happenin, yo.”
This limp-dick move was thoroughly condemned by AVX Shenoy. “Er… I thought they’d threaten to nuke Somalia or something, but that’s probably extreme. Yeah probably,” drifted off Shenoy fantasizing about mushroom clouds in our time. But temporary lunatics aren’t the only people against this move. “We still have about 3 dozen people held hostages by the Somali pirates. Then there are the usual scores taken by the Maoists for ransom. The North East has a veritable kidnap industry that fuels the insurgencies there. I see where the political parties are coming from, hostages will form a sizeable disgruntled vote bank, but this is pretty ridiculous,” said Thabish.
Much of the Indian establishment’s seeming overcompensation stems from the fact that Pakistan secured the release of the hostages on the MV Suez from the Somalian pirates. The Pakistanis talked to the Somalis “terrorist to terrorist” and paid the pirates off through money that human rights activist Ansar Burney had collected on the hostages’ behalf. India, however, did nothing, except to send a boat so late that the Pakistanis had a boat there before us.
“The Indian establishment seems to not have made the full circle. Yes, we don’t negotiate with terrorists. You were young, but we didn’t know this in the nineties, just ask Home Minister Mufti Sayeed and Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh. But after mugging up “don’t negotiate” we were supposed to move to the next lesson “then shoot them”. And you can also bomb their offices for extra credit, invasion is not necessary. This second lesson is where we have failed,” opines AVX Shenoy. “Perhaps nuclear weapons is a bit much, but setting up the Prime Minister’s Hostage Release Fund is not the answer. We just need to scare the Somalis a little. Like, show them we can predict eclipses or have a Sukhoi do a sonic boom over the Somali beaches every now and then. You know, keep em on their toes. I’d also like the Indian Ambassador to Somalia be someone like Vin Diesel. Can we get Vin Diesel?”
We at Mindry.in have no illusions. I’m confident by 2015 I will be posting something along the lines of “Mindry.in prediction 16 comes true. Prime Minister’s Hostage Release Fund set up.” I’m also willing to bet at least one cup of coffee on a 2020 post saying “Mindry.in prediction 17 comes true. Former hostages take hostages on train demanding quota for all hostages.” Stockholm syndrome will ensure that the new batch of hostages will back their kidnapper’s claims.
